CHARLOTTE F. BATES.
MONACO.
There are three ways of reaching Monaco from Nice—by sea, by rail, and by carriage viâ the Corniche road. This last is the longest, but by far the most interesting route. The railroad takes you to Monaco in about an hour, and the steamer employs pretty nearly the same time. A carriage, on the other hand, requires not less than five hours for the journey, but then the scenery passed through is perhaps the most striking in Southern Europe. I have often gone on foot, leaving Nice early in the morning, and arriving in Monaco at about four in the afternoon, having been able to rest fully two hours on the way. Once beyond the town, the road begins to ascend what is called the Montée de Villefranche, and at every step the views become more and more varied and picturesque. Presently an olive wood is traversed, and the town is lost to sight until the summit of the mountain which separates the Bay of Nice from that of Villefranche is attained. This olive wood is of great antiquity, and, like almost all similar thickets in this part of the country, doubtless owes its origin to the Romans, who are said to have introduced the tree into the Maritime Alps and the south of France. Many of the trees are very large, and their trunks are black and much twisted, their branches long and weird-looking, but the exceeding delicacy of their foliage, which is dark green on the outside and silver gray on the inner, lends them a very fascinating appearance, especially on a moonlight night, when the arching boughs of an olive grove look exactly as if covered with shawls of rich black lace. The leaf of the olive tree, which is an evergreen, is attached to the bough by a very slender stalk, so that the slightest wind sets it in motion, as it does that of the quivering aspen. The fruit resembles an acorn without its cup, and is brown and dingy. The flower is very insignificant.
The olive trees at Nice are cultivated on terraces cut like deep steps up the mountain-side. All the earth which fills these terraces has been placed there by human labor; and when it is taken into consideration that many hundreds of miles of mountain-side have been thus redeemed from waste, that the work dates back at least fifteen centuries, and was performed at a period when agricultural implements were of the rudest, they must be acknowledged as among the most gigantic of undertakings. They are from ten to twenty feet high, about a quarter of a mile long, and from fifteen to twenty-five feet wide. In order to form them the rock had to be cut away, blasting being of course unknown at the time, and every handful of earth brought up from the plain below, often to a height of two thousand feet. The Provençal writers consider them the work of the Moors, but it is probable that they were commenced under the Phoceans and the Romans and continued by the Arabs. I have been shown several terraces the masonry of which was undoubtedly Roman, and coins bearing the effigies of the earlier Cæsars have been often found in the brick work. Corn is grown on them under the shadow of the olive trees, to whose branches the vine is frequently twined. I have seen two wheat-harvests gathered in one year on these narrow terraces, and nothing can be imagined more charming than their appearance late in autumn. Then the golden corn waves beneath garlands of vine heavily laden with luscious fruit, the olive tree, emblem of peace, waves its silvery foliage overhead, the peach is ripe, and so are the bright green October figs, and there is a mellowness in the air that makes one almost inclined to believe that the age of gold has returned to earth.
As the summit of the mountain is approached vegetation becomes less luxuriant, and finally disappears altogether. Mont Borron, for so is the mountain in question called, is about two thousand five hundred feet high, and the plateau at its top is barren and rocky, though the short tufty thyme and myrtle grow in great abundance, to the delight of the sheep and bees. The view obtained hence is amongst the most beautiful in the world. Facing you is the deep blue Thyranean Sea, sparkling with sails, and often on a clear day with the hazy outline of the island of Corsica distinctly visible on its horizon. To the right lies Nice, with all her domes, towers, churches, hotels, quays and the interminable line of her palatial villas traced out as in a map. Then range after range of mountains of every shape and nature, grass grown, rocky, forest-covered, barren, rise one above the other until the mists of distance alone efface them from sight. Along the coast of France can be counted, from this point, not less than fifteen separate bays and as many peninsulas and capes. Wherever the eye lingers it is sure to discover enchanting districts—gardens of surpassing loveliness, where grow groves of orange and lemon trees white with blossom or golden with fruit; stately palms of many varieties; the two-leaved eucalyptus; rose-bushes whose flowers are far more numerous than their leaves; magnolia and camellia trees capable of producing a thousand flowers; villas of Venetian, English, Swiss, Italian, and Oriental architecture. Here by the sea is one of such perfectly classical appearance that every moment one expects to see issue from its marble peristyle the gracefully shaped Ione, Julia or Lydia; there is a sweet little cottage, half buried in banksia roses, which might have been transported from the Branch, Cape May or the Isle of Wight. But if the view to your right is beautiful for its luxuriant fertility, that to the left surpasses it in grandeur. Below you is the pretty village of Villefranche, with its old church and forts half hidden amongst the palms, which, together with the innumerable aloe-plants of colossal proportions, give the scene a truly African character. Villefranche reflects herself and her palms upon the surface of the most mirror-like of bays, for even in the stormiest weather no ripple stirs its waters—waters so deep that the largest ships of war can anchor in them close to the shore. The American frigates cruising in the Mediterranean usually make Villefranche their winter resort, and the stately presences of the Richmond, Plymouth, Shenandoah and Juniata are often to be seen here, giving life to a scene which otherwise would lack animation. Beyond Villefranche the long hilly peninsula of Beaulieu and St. Hospice stretches for fully three miles out into the bay, as green as an emerald, with some twenty pleasure-boats usually clustering about its shores, for the cork woods of St. Hospice are famous for picnics and merrymaking, and its little hotel is renowned throughout Europe for its fish-dinners.
Behind Villefranche, and continuing for fully fifty miles along the Italian coast, rise the majestic mountains of the Riviera. Nothing can be imagined more awe-striking than their appearance: their weird shapes, their gloomy ravines, their fearful precipices, beetling over the sea many thousand feet, their crags, peaks, chasms and desolate grandeur produce a panorama of unsurpassed magnificence. But what impresses one most is perceiving that, however barren they seem, they are nevertheless thickly peopled. Towns, villages, convents, villas and towers cover them in all directions, and in positions often truly astonishing. Yonder is quite a large town clustering round the extreme peak of a mountain at least three thousand feet high, and utterly bald of vegetation; there is Eza perched upon a rock rising perpendicularly from the sea, so that a stone thrown from the church-tower would fall straight into the waves below through fifteen hundred feet of space; far away in the distance, and close upon the shore, looking as white as a band of pearls, are the villas of Mentone, and just in front of them the castle-crowned heights of Monaco; yonder, almost touching the clouds, is the famous sanctuary of Laghetto, and there is Augustus's monument at La Tarbia—a solitary round tower, so solidly built that it has resisted the ravages of eighteen centuries.
But what pen can describe the splendor of this scene? what brush reproduce its ever-changing hues, its delicate mists, its broad shadows, the deep blue of the sea, the rosy tint which Aurora casts over all, or the vivid purples and crimsons which glow upon the mountain-crags and strew the indigo of the Mediterranean with jasper, ruby, Sapphire and gold when the sun falls to rest behind the beautiful Cape of Antibes? Nature defies Art in such a spot as this, and seems to triumph in bewildering our delighted senses with the infinite variety of her products. Here her sea and mountains are sublime in their grandeur, and at our feet are wild violets and heath and rosemary and thyme, each, too, sublime in its way. She defies us with her colors, her odors, and even with her music, for overhead "the lark at heaven's gate sings," and the bees go buzzing home laden with honey stolen from the wild honeysuckle, caper and myrtle which grow abundantly around.
It was my fortune once to escort to this view the illustrious French artist Paul Delaroche. His delight can be better imagined than described. "Ah!" he exclaimed, "ceci c'est trop bien!" He assured me that no painter could attempt it excepting perhaps Turner, and vowed that although he had visited many lands he had never witnessed anything to surpass it. Turner perhaps could have reproduced such a scene, for he possessed the power of giving the general effects of extended landscapes admirably, without entering too minutely into their details. In the "Loreto necklace" and "Golden bough" he has painted two marvelously varied views full of ranges of mountains, rivers, lakes and classic buildings, without confusion, and with great skill displayed in portraying various and vaporous distances.
But it is high time that we leave the fine arts and hasten on to Monaco. Space, like time, is limited, and much as I should love to conduct my readers all the long way on foot, to show them the monster olive tree at Beaulieu, which is seven yards in circumference, and reputed the largest of its species in the world, to pause a little amidst the Roman ruins of La Tarbia and the Saracenic remains of Eza and Roccabruna, I must hasten on to the capital of the Liliputian dominions of his Serene Highness Prince Florestan II.