Rambles on the Riviera

by M. F. Mansfield

BIDVO SALTAVIT ET PLACVIT.

According to Michelet this was a memorial to “the child Septentrion, who, at the age of twelve years, appeared two days at the theatre of Antipolis; doubtless one of the slaves who were let out to managers of spectacles.”

Inland from Antibes, on the banks of a little streamlet, the Brague, lies Biot, once a settlement of the Templars, and later, in the fourteenth century, a possession of the Genoese, or at least peopled by a colony of them.

It is a remarkable little place, generally over-looked by travellers in the rush to the show-places of the Riviera, and the suggestion is here made that any who are seeking for a real exotic could not do better than hunt it here. The manners and customs, and even the speech, of many of the old people of the town are as Italian as those of the Genoese themselves. The tiny bourg possesses a series of arcades surrounding a tiny square, a product of the fourteenth century, and is as “foreign” to these parts as would be the wigwam of an Indian. There are also remains of the old ramparts of the town still visible, and the whole ensemble is as a page torn from a book which had been closed for centuries.

One need not fear undue discomfort here in this little old-world spot, where things go on much the same as they have for centuries. There is nothing of the allurements of the great hotels of the resorts about the two modest inns at Biot, but for all that there is a bountiful and excellent fare to be had amid entirely charming surroundings, and, if one is minded, he can easily put in a month at the retreat, and only descend to the super-refinements of Cannes or Nice—each perhaps a dozen miles away—whenever he feels the pangs which prompt him to get in touch with a daily paper and the delights of asphalt pavements and “dressy” society.

Not all Riviera tourists know the Iles de Lerins as well as they might, though it is a popular enough excursion from Cannes.

These isles give the distinct note which lends charm to the waters of the Mediterranean just offshore from Cannes, forming, as they do, a sort of a jetty, or breakwater, between the Golfe de la Napoule and the Golfe Jouan.

There are but two islands in the group, St. Honorat and Ste. Marguerite, the latter separated from the Pointe de la Croisette at Cannes by a little over a kilometre. It costs a franc to cover this by boat, and another franc to pass between Ste. Marguerite and St. Honorat.