One of Buonaparte's projects was to render the Corniche, as this giddy track is expressively called, practicable for carriages; but the Sardinian government, instead of completing, have defaced (as we heard, out of jealousy) the part which he had begun: this is, I think, rather too absurd for belief. It is at the same time probable enough, that the undertaking has been abandoned for want of adequate funds. We were lighted homewards by myriads of fire-flies, a circumstance which produces on a person unaccustomed to the sight, a more novel and brilliant effect than any other accompaniment of an Italian climate.
June 2.—Our original idea had been to have proceeded to Genoa either by a felucca or the Corniche, but learning that the latter route was impracticable, excepting on mules, and that the variable nature of the wind on this coast rendered feluccas a dangerous and uncertain mode of performing the journey, we preferred the road into Italy by the Col di Tende.
To Escarene twelve miles: the first four skirt along the beautiful valley at whose mouth Nice stands, following, and sometimes crossing, the course of the river Poglion; the rest gradually winds up into the heart of the mountains, through deep ravines and woods of gigantic olives, which in this district become picturesque forest-trees. We breakfasted at Escarene, a quiet pretty village, possessing tolerable accommodation. To Sospello fifteen miles of good road, the first seven or eight of which ascend the lofty wall of mountain which closes up the entrance of the valley, and appears at a distance like a score of corkscrews laid in a Vandyke figure. Up the whole of this we walked, mounting, by an easy but tedious circuit of good road, a long series of crags, and courses of torrents, and sometimes looking almost perpendicularly down upon the point which we had passed half an hour ago. Nothing can be more bare or desolate than the rocky mountain ridge in which this ascent terminates, and on which vegetation seems at its last gasp. A dance of Satyrs might be appropriately introduced to complete the wildness of a sketch from this spot, but that it does not afford a single berry or blade of grass to regale them, even if they could live like their cousins the goats. A large family of peasants, as wild and merry as these "hairy sylvans," accompanied us up the mountain with their cattle, on their way to the summer chalets, exhibiting the laughing side of human nature in a manner which it is delightful to witness in the poor.
"Pleased with a feather, tickled with a straw,"
and grateful for the slightest civility, they seemed to consider the mere change of place as a festival. The wife had twitched off her husband's cocked hat, which she wore in frolic; the bare-legged children appeared ready to dance to their own voices as they walked; and the very infant, committed in his cradle to the entire discretion of the family donkey, was equally pleased and satisfied with his own situation, as he headed the patriarchal cavalcade.
The view of the Mediterranean and the coast of France, which this point commands, is prodigious; and the intermediate ranges of mountains which shut out Nice, and which appeared elevated peaks when seen from its citadel, seem from this spot only masses of wavy ground. From hence a descent much steeper than the ascent and almost equally long, conducted us into the rich and well-inhabited valley in which Sospello stands. The inn at this place is rather below mediocrity; the mistress sturdy and rapacious in her demands, and shameless in retracting them when forced to do so.
From the valley of Sospello, which appears as completely insulated by nature from the society of the world as Rasselas's happy valley, we wound next morning up another eight miles of ascent as steep and tedious as the last. On a wild heath between the tops of two mountains called the Col de Brouais, in which this ascent terminated, we unexpectedly discovered a hut tenanted by an old gend'arme, a pet lamb, a kid, and two tame hares, to all which quadrupeds we were introduced by the master with great glee, while waiting for the carriage under his roof. We were so much pleased and diverted by the whimsical manner in which this merry contented mortal lived among his menagerie, that we sent the horses on to Breglio, and complied with his eager desire of entertaining us at his cabaret, if a hut the size of a tea-caddy, without another human habitation visible for four miles, could be so called. He produced, to our surprise, bread, milk, cheese, fresh curd, eggs, fruit, and preserves, all clean and neatly served, and was equally surprised at our giving him two francs a head, which tender he at first remonstrated against with great naivété as too extravagant. The trouble which he had taken in fetching most of these articles from a distance of five miles appeared not to enter into this honest fellow's calculation. The French were encamped in some force on the Col de Brouais at the time of the session of the Comtat of Nice and of Savoy by the king of Sardinia in 1796. It was, also, about four years previous to our visit, infested by a band of robbers, to whom its lofty situation afforded great facilities: these were, however, swept off and conveyed to the galleys by the exertions of the mountain patrole, of whom our host was one, and the whole of the country is now perfectly safe and undisturbed. After contemplating for a short time the principal summit of the Col de Tende, which from this point appears at its full height, we dived into the intervening valley of Breglio by a rapid descent, like the road into a mine. The trout stream, which runs past this place in its way to Vintimiglia, is such as would cause a traveller fond of fishing, to regret the want of his rod and tackle. After leaving Breglio we ascended the course of this river till it narrowed into a defile between two rocks; on entering which the town of Saorgio appears, after a mile or two, piled on the top and shelving side of the precipice to the right in a singular manner. The architect who planned it must have taken his idea from a colony of swallows' nests in a sand-rock, for it seems hardly possible to get to or from it without wings: to judge of it from the road, there is no room or footing for streets; a man might jump down the chimney of his neighbour's house, or be dashed to pieces on its roof, by leaping from his own ground floor; and the fall of a house in the upper tier would probably open a clear downward passage to the valley. A traveller desirous of making a sketch of what is an unique thing in its way, would do well to get three hours start of his carriage from Breglio,[56] and scramble among the heights to the right of the river, for a point which gives a more accurate idea of Saorgio than we could obtain from the valley. The view is attempted in aquatinta in Beaumont's Maritime Alps, and badly as it is executed, the original drawing must have been good, and, as far as I can judge, have given an accurate idea of it. The peasants call the place by some name sounding in their patois like Chavousse; it cannot, however, be mistaken. This is the only spot between Breglio and Tende which would be adapted for a drawing; but the scenery, nevertheless, is of the most stupendous and extraordinary nature I ever witnessed, exceeding, on the whole, the defile of Gondo and Iselle in the route of the Simplon, and more decided, though less varied in its features, than that justly admired spot. The pass is not on a larger scale than the Val d'Ollioules, as far as Saorgio; but after leaving the latter village, the rocks rise to a much greater height, and assume a more savage character. It is impossible to form an adequate idea of the depth of the defile and its effect on the eye, without actual inspection; the nearest approach to it will be made by conceiving a chasm rent from top to bottom by an earthquake through Snowdon, or any other mountain of similar height. For about twelve miles you travel in the condition of those fabled criminals,
"Quos super atra silex jamjam lapsura, cadentique
Imminet assimilis."
Jutting rocks, whose gradual change of posture is marked by the inclination of the pines on them, hang toppling over your head at a height to which the strongest voice could not be heard from the valley; and above and between them just peep glimpses of still more elevated heights, where a tree appears hardly of the size of a pin's head. A peculiar gray, sombre atmosphere overspreads the whole at noon day, similar to that which prevails during a solar eclipse; and the deep echo of the river is the only sound heard for miles. On the whole, I never saw any place so calculated to convey gloomy and wild ideas, and the Sicilian name of "Val Demone," or John Bunyan's "Valley of the Shadow of Death," would be appropriately applied to this savage spot. Nor would the danger be imaginary at the breaking up of a frost, or after violent rains, which might bring one of the highest rocks perpendicularly down without the intervention of a single crag to give warning and break its fall. The visible rents made in the road from time to time, and the obstructions in the deep bed of the stream, show sufficient marks of these formidable incursions. In one place the valley originally afforded only a passage for the river, and the road has been cut and blasted along the cheek of the rock: Close to this spot an inscription on the stone informs you that this road was the work of the late king of Sardinia; and he had in truth a right to be proud of such an undertaking. The whole road from Nice to Turin is admirable, presenting hardly a single mauvais pas. The natural difficulties which the construction of the road presents have been surmounted in a manner which might be a study to a civil engineer, and the whole is, perhaps, as fine a specimen of labour and skill as Buonaparte's route over Mont Cenis or the Simplon. The natural features of its wilder parts resemble those in the pictures of Salvator Rosa, but on a larger scale than he ever attempted to give an idea of.
Within a mile or two of Tende,[57] the chasm in the rocks (for it was no more) widens into a small narrow valley of a peculiarly quiet character, in which the monastery of St. Gervase occupies one of those retired green spots which prove so well the good taste of the monks of old. A turn which this valley takes to the left affords the view, first, of the old castle of Tende, looking quite ghastly in the dusk of evening, and next of the town of Tende itself, which stands piled like Saorgio, against the shelving side of the valley. Tende is a large and apparently flourishing town, affording two inns of very respectable appearance. The Albergo Imperiale is high in its charges, but makes amends for it by the liberality and comfort of its appointments. It fronts one of the principal peaks which form the chain of the Col di Tende, which we contemplated as it caught the last rays of the evening sun, forming different guesses how we were to get up it.