At each turn of the road our point of view changed and the panorama unrolled before us. We looked down upon a series of beautiful pictures. The Mediterranean lay two thousand feet below us, its surface reflecting every shade of blue and green, its coast a succession of inlets, bays, promontories, and peninsulas. White roads winding among the shrubbery on the peninsulas looked like white ribbons on a green background, the red tiled houses like little toys, and the harbor of Ville Franche like a pond on which floated tiny boats that a child might play with.
"What a picturesque town!" exclaimed a tourist.
"That is the city of Eze. It is a very old city," said the driver.
"Perched among the mountains, with its odd castle on a detached hill top," said one of the tourists "it reminds me of a painting by one of the old masters. Cimabue, I think, or Perugino. I cannot remember which. I am constantly regretting while traveling abroad that we are not more proficient in history and art. While the professor and the artist were with the party we could turn to them for information. But now we must depend upon ourselves."
"Not necessarily," replied another, "for we have Baedeker and the guides; and there are the drivers, too, to call upon when they can understand our English or we can understand their French."
For some distance beyond Eze the road followed the side of rugged limestone cliffs surmounted by fortifications and signal stations. At the old, queer-looking town of La Turbie, while the horses rested for an hour, we selected postal cards and took kodak views. Soon after leaving La Turbie, while descending the mountain, we looked down upon the little principality of Monaco, its capital, the city of Monaco, the palace of the Prince built upon a rocky promontory, and the white buildings of Monte Carlo.
Mentone is a popular winter resort on the Mediterranean with handsome houses and flower-filled gardens. Vineyards and groves of orange, lemon, and fig trees, cover the hillsides surrounding the city. We lunched in Mentone, and were entertained under the palm trees of the hotel garden by a band of Italian musicians, one of whom, an amusing character actor as well as singer, responded cheerfully to our requests for special selections and solos.
THROUGH THE PARK THAT SURROUNDS THE CASINO.
Our return from Mentone to Nice was through a succession of towns and villages. Along this coast road are many white hotels, comfortable-looking villas, and trimly kept lawns. In the gardens there were century plants, orange, lemon, and palm trees, and rose bushes of great size covered with bloom. On the tops of the garden walls, plants of various kinds were growing. Some of the walls were covered with long clusters of pink geraniums, some gracefully festooned with masses of overhanging heliotrope, and others draped with trailing vines aglow with scarlet bloom. The exuberant growth and bloom of these flowers attracted much attention and drew forth exclamations of delight.