During one of the days of the week upon which it did not rain, I took a walk with a friend to the gorge of St. Louis. The road was very muddy, in consequence of the rain which had fallen; indeed, it is very seldom this road is in an agreeable condition. It is laid with soft limestone, which is ground down by heavy carts laden with enormous stones which are being conveyed from the rocks from which they are blasted to the breakwater. The dust so formed lies about three inches deep upon the road. Every horse, carriage, and cart which passes raises a cloud; but when the wind blows, it becomes insufferable, and there is hardly any possibility of brushing the dust out of one’s clothes. Rain converts the dust into mud, and when the mud has obtained a consistency by being baked in the sun, it forms into hard ruts trying to the pedestrian.
The gorge was fully two miles distant from our hotel, and was a frequent point to which we subsequently walked or drove. To reach it from the west end we may pass through the Avenue Victor Emanuele, where the shops are, and its continuation, the Rue St. Michael. The road then skirts the water by the Quai Bonaparte (so called after Napoleon I., who constructed the Corniche road, of which this is a part), and looking up, we saw the old town with its ridge upon ridge of high old dingy houses, like so many terraces one over the other—a very hanging garden (though garden is anything but the suitable word) of old roofs and chimney-tops; while, looking over the parapet wall, the water lying 15 or 20 feet below, a fine view of the bay and little harbour is had. But this part of the road is always under shade after twelve o’clock, and is exceedingly trying to invalids. I have often thought that the municipal authorities might effect a vast improvement if they would construct a diagonal road across from its commencement at the well to the Hotel de la Paix. The water is very shallow, apparently only a few feet deep; and though it would be a work of time and would require much material, it would really be of vast importance to Mentone, as then the invalid could walk or drive either to or from the east bay at any time of day without danger. The space intervening between the embankment so to be formed and the Quai Bonaparte, might afterwards be filled up and converted into a large public garden. The operation, however, would be costly, although the stone for forming it is at hand. But taking things as they are, the road continues in front of the various hotels I have already mentioned. Whether it was that the air here is more confined than in the west bay, I know not, but we never could walk along this long dusty stretch without a feeling of languor such as was not experienced in other and much longer walks, so that we were always ready to take rest on one of the seats placed by the roadside. After proceeding a good way, the road at the east bend of the bay divides, and one fork winds up to the gorge and on to Italy. The other fork turns aside into a promenade (now in course of formation), as yet short, by the margin of the sea and along the rocks of the coast, which will, when completed, become, as even now to some extent it is, a very agreeable accession to the amenity of the east bay, where there are not so many nice walks as are in the neighbourhood of the west bay. Reaching the gorge, which forms a dividing ravine between the mountains of the Berceau and Belinda, and is crossed by a bridge, conspicuous from most parts of Mentone, standing about 200 feet above the stream below, and a good deal more below the rocks towering above, we can at the north end of the bridge place one foot in France and the other in Italy. The Italian douaniers have a station-house a little beyond, perched prominently on the summit of the rock. The French douaniers have theirs on the road near to the junction of the above-mentioned two roads, the two houses being stationed considerably apart, as if to prevent the possibility of quarrel.
The view from the bridge is remarkably fine, and should be seen in the morning, as when the sun gets round to the west or south-west, it throws much of the scene into the shade, and is, besides, too dazzling to behold. The harbour lies under us, a good mile off, with its few ships and boats, and the picturesque old town; beyond it, the west bay, Cape Martin, and all the panorama of mountains which stretch to the north and north-west of Mentone, the aspect of whose outlines and rugged tops, being so near, changes at every different point of view.
In the afternoon of the same day, we took a walk up one of the valleys. These valleys are all favourite walks to those residing in the west bay. The views from the bridges which span them at the mouths of the river or rivers, supposed to run below them, are each different from the other, and are exceedingly picturesque. The one next to us was the Carrei or Turin valley. The torrent bed of this river course is confined from its mouth, where it is narrowed (speaking from recollection) to about 60 or 80 feet, and for a considerable way up and beyond the railway viaduct, by sloping bulwarks of masonry. After this the bed, no longer so confined, widens very considerably, and about a mile from the mouth gets broad and bare; farther up still, it narrows again, and becomes the rocky bed of what sometimes may be called a river, but usually is nothing but a small stream. Within Mentone the bed is crossed by two wooden foot bridges, one wooden suspension bridge for carriages and foot passengers, and a railway viaduct. Looking up and northward from the wooden foot bridge which spans the river course at its mouth, and placed for the purpose of connecting two portions of the promenade, one of the grandest views in Mentone is had.[21] On either side of the spectator the Eucalyptus and Spanish fig trees, the flowering aloes and other trees of the public gardens, offer a leafy inclosure; and carrying the eye along upon the left side up the right bank of the Carrei to the railway viaduct, and beyond it, we observe the tall plane trees of the avenue leading to the railway station casting their shadows over the road, and in the afternoon over the river course, giving the aspect of agreeable shelter from the sun. On the right side, like theatrical side scenes run in one behind the other, bright-looking villas with their coloured jalousies and red-tiled roofs, diversified by an occasional one in blue lead and French roof, project out of gardens,—the Hotel du Louvre and the Hotel des Îles Britanniques, in the rear of all, being by a bend of the river scarcely visible from this bridge. Then a mountain ridge within half a mile from the bridge crosses the view above 1000 feet high, and crowned by a monastery (St. Annunciata), and with slopes here concealed by olive, lemon, and orange trees, in regular terraces, and there broken and exposed by rock and steep earthy-looking sides, as if washed away, and dotted elsewhere by coloured houses, and with straggling pine trees bristling up from the immediate background; while behind all this, as a grand back scene, rising boldly out of rounded, verdant, or stony slopes, mingled and varying in aspect each hour with the course of the sun, which throws the shadows in the morning westward and the afternoon eastward, and sometimes bathes them in light, and sometimes veils them in shade, the rocky, rugged heights of the mountains (seen here in part only), some of them only two to three miles distant, tower up, thrown, in lines clear and strong, upon the limpid blue sky tying cloudless and serene above. The subject is one which frequently engages the pencil or the brush of the amateur; but the situation is public, and one cannot attempt a sketch without inviting inquisitive looks by crowds of those who are too polite to stop and hang over one’s head in heaps, like the wondering and intently watchful, concerned, and admiring gamins of the street, but who are rude enough sometimes to pass repeatedly back and forward, shaking the bridge with every footfall, and jostling each other and the artist for a look over the shoulder as they pass. The scene is one which I never could tire of beholding. It has been photographed, but photographs never give a mountain view with the clearness and effect of a good drawing.
But leaving the bridge and proceeding to the Avenue de la Gare, we find on inquiry that this is the commencement of the road to Turin, which is nearly 100 miles off, although about half way it is met by a railway from Cuneo to Turin, and is now all but superseded for traffic by the coast railway towards Genoa, the direct line to Turin branching off at Savona, making a distance by rail of about, according to my calculation, 183 miles. This road is the only one up the valleys which can be traversed for any distance. A strong current of air frequently blows down the valley and renders it occasionally in its shady parts a cold walk for the invalid, who must in winter months carry wraps for use when either he gets out of sunshine or the sun retires behind a cloud. This current is, I presume, the cause of the west bay being cooler than the east. It is, however, a charming walk up the road, level for nearly two miles, and the greater part of the way—indeed, almost the whole of it—being fringed with trees. For a little distance after passing under the railway viaduct, pretty houses, in gardens full of orange and lemon trees covered with fruit, are seen on both sides of the river; and in spring, women are constantly met bearing on their heads to town immense basketfuls of lemons and oranges. Farther on, and on emerging from the shade of the monastery hill, a curious range of oil-mills has been placed like steps one over the other on the slope of the hill, driven each by a separate water wheel of large diameter—the same water, apparently, by an economical arrangement, driving the wheels successively as it falls. Some way beyond these mills, the road begins to ascend and to wind, and, as the valley closes in, thickly planted with trees on both sides, seems to become more and more inviting; while peeps are had of Castellar, high overhead, on the right, embosomed among olive groves. Rocky mountains, bold and bluff, oppose themselves nearer and nearer to the spectator; the small village of Monti and its white church and long spire is attained, and after some miles by a zig-zag road, the summit, upwards of 2000 feet high, and three miles from the sea, is won. An excellent excursion by carriage along this road is to the picturesque village of Sospello, 22 kilometres, or about 14 miles distant from Mentone, passing and visiting by the way the curious old town of Castiglione, which lies perched up among the mountains (inaccessible by carriage) at a height, it is said, of over 2500 feet above the sea.[22]
OIL MILLS CARREI VALLEY,
MENTONE.