Rambles on the Riviera

by M. F. Mansfield

Napoleon set foot in France, for his final campaign, on the shores of the Golfe Jouan, in 1815.

History-making then slumbered for a matter of a quarter of a century. Then, in 1848, Menton and Roquebrune revolted against the Princes of Monaco and came into the French fold. It was as late as 1860, however, that the Comté de Nice was annexed.

This, in brief, is a résumé of some of the chief events since the middle ages which have made history in Provence.

It is but a step across country from the Rhône valley to Marseilles, that great southern gateway of modern France through which flows a ceaseless tide of travel.

Here, in the extreme south, on the shores of the great blue, tideless Mediterranean, all one has previously met with in Provence is further magnified, not only by the brilliant cosmopolitanism of Marseilles itself, but by the very antiquity of its origin. East and west of Marseilles and the Bouches-du-Rhône is a region, French to-day,—as French as any of those old provinces of mediæval times which go to make up the republican solidarity of modern France,—but which in former times was as foreign to France and things French as is modern Spain or Italy.

To the eastward, toward Italy, was the ancient independent Comté de Nice, and, on the west, Catalonia once included the region where are to-day the French cities of Perpignan, Elne and Agde.

Of all the delectable regions of France, none is of more diversified interest to the dweller in northern climes than “La Provence Maritime,” that portion which includes what the world to-day recognizes as the Riviera. Here may be found the whole galaxy of charms which the present-day seeker after health, edification, and pleasure demands from the antiquarian and historical interests of old Provence and the Roman occupation to the frivolous gaieties of Nice and Monte Carlo.

Tourists, more than ever, keep to the beaten track. In one way this is readily enough accounted for. Well-worn roads are much more common than of yore and they are more accessible, and travellers like to keep “in touch,” as they call it, with such unnecessary things as up-to-date pharmacies, newspapers, and lending libraries, which, in the avowed tourist resorts of the French and Italian Rivieras, are as accessible as they are on the Rue de Rivoli. There are occasional by-paths which radiate from even these centres of modernity which lead one off beyond the reach of steam-cars and fils télégraphiques; but they are mostly unworn roads to all except peasants who drive tiny donkeys in carts and carry bundles on their heads.

One might think that no part of modern France was at all solitary and unknown; but one has only to recall Stevenson’s charming “Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes,” to realize that then there were regions which English readers and travellers knew not of, and the same is almost true to-day.

Provence has been the fruitful field for antiquarians and students of languages, manners, customs, and political and church history, of all nationalities, for many long years; but the large numbers of travellers who annually visit the sunny promenades of Nice or Cannes never think for a moment of spending a winter at Martigues, the Provençal Venice, or at Nîmes, or Arles, or Avignon, where, if the “mistral” does blow occasionally, the surroundings are quite as brilliant as on the coast itself, the midday sun just as warm, and the sundown chill no more frigid than it is at either Cannes or Nice.