With little in the way of public amusement or general intercourse, Mentone and its neighbourhood offer some subjects of interesting inquiry. If employment does not come readily to hand, it may possibly be evoked by looking about. The medieval old town; the character and habits of the people; excursions on foot or donkey to the mountainous region, with its decayed castles and sun-baked villages perched thousands of feet above the sea-level; the picturesque sea-coast, with its caverns and traditions of Saracenic invasion; the mouldering tokens of Roman sway—all will yield matter for agreeable exploration. Turbia and Monaco should be deliberately seen, if not already visited; and so likewise should Ventimiglia and Bordighera—the latter for the sake of its palm-trees. I am sorry to say there is no handy local guide-book, affording that minute explicitness of detail expected from works of this nature. The native topographers write prettily, and even poetically, of the surrounding district; a guide-book, however, is not bought for fine writing, but, like an almanac, is looked to for plain trustworthy facts. The best of the books of the kind is entitled a Guide des Etrangers À Menton, by M. Pessy; it comprehends a good map, which is at all events indispensable. In the prevailing state of things, the explorer will have to rely greatly on his own powers of investigation, assisted, if it happily may be, by friends well acquainted with this outlying part of the Alpes Maritimes.
The ever present, and often noisy Mediterranean can scarcely fail to suggest historic recollections. Around it were clustered all the great nations of antiquity. It is the sea of the Bible, that on which Paul encountered misadventures. It is the sea which the Crusaders had to cross in their delirious expeditions to the Holy Land. Now, in comparison to the great oceans of modern discovery, it is only a salt-water lake, yet rich in the legends which undyingly hover about it. Physically considered, it is curious. Barred out by the Strait of Gibraltar, the tidal wave of the Atlantic operates but feebly on the Mediterranean. Residents at Mentone recognise little difference in the height to which the water flows on the beach. The sea may be twice a day a few inches higher or lower; but except in the case of winds affecting it somewhere, and causing it to dash high up on the shore, it has a monotonous uniformity of appearance. The beach consists of rounded stones and gravel, not agreeable for being walked on, and on that species of gray shingle the waves are everlastingly surging. Sometimes in the calmest days and nights, its roar is most outrageous and trying to the nerves. Suddenly, when level as a pond, it will assume an angry aspect, with white breakers in the distance. In short, it is very whimsical and incomprehensible in its varying moods; and those who dislike its more placid or its more uproarious proceedings had better live away from its shores. A distance of a hundred yards, with intervening trees or houses, will be enough.
As the sea neither ebbs nor flows to a perceptible degree, rocks on the beach are not periodically uncovered and exposed to the atmosphere, the consequence being that there is scarcely any marine vegetation—no large sea-weed, and no sea-like smell. Along the coast from Nice the beach has a rapid descent to depths ranging from three thousand to five thousand feet. So abrupt is the declivity that, unless at particular spots, bathing is somewhat hazardous. We observed preparations for bathing at Nice, in March; the wheeled machines employed being carefully tethered by a rope to the shore, lest they should dart down headlong into the depths. The occasional appearance of sharks adds another danger of which bathers need to be cautious.
The Mediterranean is said to abound in many species of fish; visitors, however, see little of them. The kinds which appear at table, and that very sparingly, are sardines, red mullet, mackerel, tunny, and whitings. Mentone has a fishing population nestling in the older part of the town, who with all their toil and patience make but a poor livelihood. Proceeding to sea in boats at an early hour of the morning, and keeping within a few miles of the shore, parties of them may be seen from nine to ten o’clock laboriously drawing in their nets to the beach. The produce is very insignificant, often not more fish than will fill a small basket, yielding perhaps three or four francs—sometimes the whole not worth a single franc. Since the railway opened, a few of the shops have begun to procure supplies of fish from distant and more productive quarters, and the selling of fresh oysters brought from the Atlantic coast, if not from the Channel, has in the winter season become a considerable trade. Amateur anglers using fishing-rods of cane try to lure a prey; the Quai Bonaparte, against which the sea is incessantly dashing, being a favourite spot. On no occasion did I ever see one of these anglers draw a fish from the water. The sport seemed to consist of a more than ordinary exercise of hope and patience.
Although hitherto styled a sea-port, Mentone has little pretension to that character. The few small craft that belong to it are, along with the fishing-boats, drawn up high and dry at an open space adjoining the beach. After being in a primitive way delivered of their cargoes—barrels of wine, for instance, being lowered overboard and floated to dry land—the vessels are tugged up the ascent to their resting-place by a windlass, at which men, women, and children lend their assistance. Last winter, the French government commenced to form a harbour with landing quays; the first step taken being to lay down a tramway along the beach for conveyance of blocks of stone from Cap Martin. The tramway was so insufficiently executed that the greater part was washed away by the storm on the night of the 21st of December. It was replaced on a better footing, and the works were begun. Whether they will endure the impetuous battering of the heavy rolling waves may be gravely doubted. The spot selected adjoins the old martello tower, which remains invulnerable on the ledge of rocks in front of that medieval old town of which it was once the protector.
Possessing in some degree a resemblance to the steep and crowded lanes of the older parts of Edinburgh, I made this ancient town a kind of study. Originally walled for defence, it consists, as has been said, of a dense cluster of tall tenements, rising pile above pile from the sea-shore to the summit of one of those low hills which stand out in advance of the higher mountains. From the modern street, forming part of the thoroughfare of the Corniche, we ascend into this strange mass of buildings by steep paved lanes, which turn and wind in different directions, until we reach the top, where, on the site of the ancient castle, is found the cemetery of the town, from which there is an extensive prospect over sea and land.
At the foot of the ascent, wheeled carriages are left behind. The lanes, though dignified with the name of streets, are accessible only to foot-passengers or donkeys. The principal one is the Rue Longue, noticed as having been an ancient thoroughfare, protected at each end by a vaulted gateway and guardhouse. The gates have been long since removed, leaving free access to all who feel any interest in perambulating the narrow passage, now sunk into the character of a back street. Being paved with small rounded stones, with an inclination to a central gutter, and environed with tall antique buildings, you feel pretty much as if walking along the bottom of a drain; but there the resemblance ends, for, to do the inhabitants justice, the road is remarkably clean, which is more than can be said for some of the pretentious thoroughfares. The massive tenements, five or six stories in height, are laid out in separate dwellings, reached by narrow common stairs. In the lower floor were the shops, consisting of dingy vaults with round-topped doorways, some down and others up a step, and a good deal of irregularity throughout. The Quai Bonaparte having drawn away all general traffic, the Rue Longue has, in a business sense, correspondingly declined. You see vaults which had been great shops in their day, sorrowfully shut up, their clumsy old-fashioned doors dreadfully in want of paint, fastened with queer-looking decayed padlocks. As, however, there must still be a demand in the crowded floors above for the essentials of existence, the street is not without some traces of commerce. When grand concerns disappear, hucksters step in to occupy the field, just as when some imposing order of forest trees is swept to destruction, shrubs of various species start beneficently into existence. In the Rue Longue, accordingly, you will not be surprised, but rather on the whole gratified, to see a certain class of dealers—old women selling bread, oranges, and candles, modestly exhibited on a slip of shelf outside the door, with meal and flour in a small way in bags inside the threshold, along with possibly cheap cuts of salt fish in steep to meet demands on Fridays; establishments purporting to be a DÉbit de Vin; a Boucherie, authorised to sell boeuf, agneau et de veau au 2me qualitÉ; or a respectable middle-aged spinster retailing a miscellany of tapes and other small wares. Dull and composed even at mid-day, the long Rue has an air of solitude. There is little stirring. The only sound heard is that of a shoemaker, who, seated outside his door for the sake of light, is industriously hammering his leather; besides which spectacle of activity you will have the satisfaction of observing a wrinkled old crone airing herself on the outside step of a doorway, and spinning with the distaff—a picture for your sketch-book, if artistically inclined.
What traditions of historical events and distinguished personages could be told of the Rue and its surroundings! Some of the houses, the backs of which overlook the East Bay, and in old times reached down to the water’s edge, have still a wonderfully aristocratic aspect; and it might be safely affirmed at a venture that they had been the residence of dukes and counts in the stirring bygone times. A mansion of this kind, with tall windows and heavy cornices at the eaves, is pointed out as having been the dwelling of the Princes of Monaco. It is said to have been built by Honore II. in the early part of the seventeenth century. This prince, one of the best of the Grimaldis, rendered himself popular by causing the reconstruction of the church of St Michael, a puissant archangel in whom all classes of the Mentonians have ever in their emergencies placed great confidence; and it is a matter of no little pride to them that the handsome spire of the church under his invocation dominates over every other edifice. It is further said of Honore II. that he erected the martello tower or bastion on the ledge of rocks at the port. This would place the date of that conspicuous structure at about 1620. From appearances, I am inclined to think it is of greater antiquity, and that the prince only caused it to be repaired in the shape in which it has latterly remained.
Wandering through the sinuosities of this ancient town, we are apt to be destructively inclined. In one sense it would be a pity to tear down what long ages have spared. To the archÆologist, the whole cluster of buildings is a curiosity which he would consider it a species of sacrilege to destroy. Sanitary reformers, though not devoid of respect for antiquity, are forced to be less scrupulous. Knowing the evils that had ensued in Edinburgh from overcrowding in tall buildings closely packed together, I thought a clearance here and there would be pardonable. ArchÆologists, however, may calm their apprehensions. Looking to the slow and apathetic way public affairs are conducted in Mentone, as well as to the general indifference which prevails on matters of social concern, there is no reason to fear that the visitor fifty years hence will find any change whatsoever on this clustering old citadel.
Outside the Rue Longue on the south, where things have a more modern aspect, there is a street running east and west, now called the Rue Brea, possessing some good specimens of domestic architecture, dating from the seventeenth century, if not earlier. A tenement at the west corner on the south side, bearing traces of frescoes on the walls, is that in which General Brea was born in 1790, the fact being commemorated by an inscription on a marble slab over the doorway. Mentone has some credit in having put up several inscriptions of this nature in memory of incidents of local or historical interest. Brea was killed in the streets of Paris on the 24th of June 1848, when fighting in the cause of order, wherefore the inhabitants honourably acknowledge him as a native. In the same street, near the middle on the north side, there is a wall enclosing a piece of ground in which stands a house that had been temporarily occupied in 1814 by Pope Pius VII., on his return towards Italy, after a compulsory residence in France. This visit of the pope, and the circumstance of his having graciously blessed the people at this spot, are matters carefully recorded on a marble slab inserted in the wall.
One more incident needs to be recorded concerning the Rue Brea. Here for a night or two resided General Bonaparte, when, in April 1796, he was, as commander-in-chief, proceeding with the French army along this difficult piece of coast to open his famed Italian campaign. The tenement, marked No. 3, on the north side of the street, is a tall building, distinguished by a handsome doorway, leading to a spacious, and what had formerly been a finely ornamented common stair. The stair, consisting of intermediate landings, is at first of blue slate, and afterwards of tiles faced with wood. There are two dwellings on each floor. Eighty years ago, the house on the second floor, entering by the door on the right hand, was occupied by a M. Pretti, a nÉgociant of some local importance, and was selected as the most suitable for accommodating General Bonaparte. At present, there is a decayed look about the stair, the houses in it having been relinquished by its former genteel inhabitants, though, still, they have by no means sunk to a degraded condition. Ringing a bell by a cord which hung at the side of the door, we were admitted by an aged female domestic through a lobby into a singularly elegant salle de rÉception, such as could scarcely have been expected in this back street. It measured upwards of thirty feet in length by about twenty in breadth, with two windows at each end, hung with figured lace-curtains. The floor of smooth tiles was carpeted in front of a sofa, which, like the chairs ranged along the sides of the apartment, was covered with yellow damask. From the centre of the ceiling depended a handsome chandelier. The most remarkable feature of the room were the decorations on the walls, consisting of classic scenes in raised stucco, disposed in panels, serving the place of pictures. While noting these particulars, the abbÉ entered the room, and there ensued the ceremonial of introduction. Made acquainted with my views, the abbÉ proceeded in the first place to say something of the house. The room in which we were seated was that in which Bonaparte gave his receptions, and here, during his stay, there was a dance. The small dingy room adjoining, into which we were conducted, was his salle À manger, and beyond that was his chambre À coucher, now forming the bedroom of the abbÉ. In one point of view these were small particulars, but anything which concerns the life of a noted individual is worth knowing. I considered it rather curious that Napoleon the Great had dwelt even for a short time in a house on a second floor in a common stair in Mentone.
In the still more modern street immediately below, forming the roadway through the town, is a mansion which, by an inscription, we learn was the residence of the patriotic Carlo Trenca, who, in the course of his onerous public duties, died in 1854. The example set by the town in this species of mural commemoration, might, as some will think, be advantageously followed in places of greater size and importance.
As regards the inhabitants generally, who are crowded into the narrow passages in the old town, we have, I believe, a proper specimen of the aborigines—a people illiterate and uninstructed, but from naturally good dispositions, industrious and well conducted. The older among them are said to be unable to read, which is not unlikely, considering their past history; at anyrate, I never saw either book or newspaper in their hands. Since the expulsion of the Grimaldis, the town has been provided with schools, at which there is a large attendance of children; but beyond some efforts of this kind, nothing is attempted to enlighten the humbler classes. The town possesses no school of arts for the improvement of mechanics, no lectures on miscellaneous subjects of interest, no popular concerts, no native newspapers to concentrate and direct public opinion. The young are suffered to grow to manhood without intelligent direction. The only provision for their leisure hours is made by the keepers of cafÉs and billiard-rooms. This state of things is not very creditable to the more thoughtful part of the community; and does not come up to what is frequently represented as the activity of continental governments in stimulating advancement in arts and science.
The humbler operations of the day-labourers employed on the tramway were on an awkward, and to us amusingly rude scale; the implements they used were such as an English navvy would have treated with disdain. In rough manual operations, things are far behind, and we are painfully reminded of the fact, that a country may excel in science and the fine arts, and yet not be acquainted with the use of a shovel and wheelbarrow. The man who repairs the roadway of the Promenade does so by the slow and painful process of bringing small basketfuls of shingle on his shoulder from the beach, thus taking days to perform what, under a more intelligent system, might be effected in a few hours; and, after all, the thing is badly done. There is not that amount of knowledge which prescribes making provision for water to run off to each side; the consequence being that, after rain, the roadway is in pools.
To make up for the absence of local public spirit, the central authorities in Paris beneficently prepare and circulate a news-sheet gratuitously all over France. It is designated the Moniteur des Communes, and resembles a page of a newspaper, closely printed in columns. Dispersed from the Ministry of the Interior, it is stuck up as a placard in every commune. Besides scraps of news on such subjects as the opening of the Suez Canal, the paper contained, when I saw it, a variety of information regarding movements in commerce and agriculture, with advices as to the treatment of vines. The thing is really well done and well meant, but so far as Mentone is concerned, it experiences the usual fate of all that is given for nothing. Although this sheet is regularly stuck up at the market-place, no one is ever seen reading it—not that the people despise the information which is offered, but because it is not their practice to read anything.
With such an entire absence of wholesome mental exhilaration, it does not surprise us to see that there is an inordinate number of DÉbits de Vin, dingy vaults, furnished with deal tables and benches, where the imbibing of thin potations drawn in jugs from the cask, forms a popular solace. I am bound, however, to add, that whether from the weakness of the liquor, or an indisposition to spend, there is little or no external demonstration of drunkenness. As a whole, the people are sober and thrifty in their habits. Here, as in other towns in France, intemperance in tobacco-smoking is greatly more conspicuous than in stupefying liquors. I see it stated among national statistics that the quantity of cigars smoked in France during a year, would, if put end to end, go twice round the globe at the equator. In this monstrous wastefulness, the female population take no part. It is impossible to over-rate the painstaking assiduity of the humbler class of women, both old and young. Their small industrial occupations for a subsistence are most meritorious. One of their pursuits is the sale of roasted chestnuts, an article much in request. In one of these female vendors I took some interest. Verging on eighty years of age, and with a wrinkled countenance that would have been the delight of Rembrandt, this poor woman carried on business in a packing-case, which stood on end without a lid, placed at the termination of the Quai Bonaparte. Here seated in her box with her chauffer and bag of nuts, and cheerfully chattering to her customers, or to the douaniers who loiter hereabouts in sky-blue uniforms, she made a living by her petty merchandise, exemplifying what may be done under depressing circumstances to rise above a degrading dependence on charity.
As at Nice, the carrying of articles poised on the top of the head is a common practice of the women of Mentone. They may be seen coming daily into the town loaded with baskets of oranges or lemons, or with huge bundles of sticks for fuel, in some instances their hands being employed in knitting. As suitable for this kind of drudgery, they wear a straw-hat, almost flat like a trencher, with a small round space raised in the middle, on which the load is balanced. These hats, formed by an ingenious interweaving of straw and cotton, are one of the peculiar manufactures of the district around. Some hats of a superior quality, with fanciful trimmings, are becomingly worn by young ladies. Besides fruits and sticks, bundles of fir-cones are brought into the town for sale. Of all the toils of the women of Mentone, this is the most severe. The cones, called here pommes des pins, are gathered among the scattered forests of pines high up on the mountains, and brought down in bags to be sold for lighting fires. Arrived at the market-place, the girls sit down patiently with their loads, which are offered at the price per bag of twelve sous—sixpence for all this excessive labour. I could not help pitying these females, brown, skinny, and bare-footed, with faces like leather, who are engaged in these rude occupations; but painful as is the sight, is not the labour honest? and how much more distressing is the spectacle of flaunting vice and wretchedness in our own country?
The want of water led in pipes to the houses, entails another heavy department of labour on the humbler class of women. In the older part of Mentone, there are some public fountains, supplied from the hills, and from these all water has to be carried for domestic purposes. Subject to this inconvenience, the water so obtained is pure and wholesome, though yielding a slight limy deposit. In this respect, therefore, the inhabitants at the centre of the town are better off than the occupants of hotels and villas, which depend on pump wells. The HÔtel d’Angleterre has the advantage of being close to the fountain in the Place NapolÉon, and of readily getting water from it. The husbanding of water does not seem to engage the attention of the authorities. During wet weather, there is such a profuse and wasteful overflow at the fountain situated at the end of the Quai Bonaparte, as to suggest that, by proper storage, supplies could be widely distributed. It is the destiny of every town, with any regard for health or decency, to have a ‘water question’ forced some day peremptorily on its attention. Mentone’s day is coming.
The custom of washing clothes in rivulets or pools leads to some difficulties in the profession of the blanchisseuse. It cannot be easy to wash when there is no water possessing washable qualities. Cheerful in this as in everything else, the women of Mentone are exemplary in making the best of things. They will wash clothes in a dub which a dog would not drink out of. Kneeling in a kind of basket, to keep their knees from the stones, and using square lumps of white soap streaked with green, like old Stilton cheese, they cluster in groups around pools in the Borigo or Carei, and there carry on their operations. The pools which have settled among the rubbish of the Carei, dirty and offensive though they be, are the recognised washing-tubs of the town. Around one favourite gutter, I one day reckoned as many as fifty-two washerwomen, all kneeling as close to each other as possible, and all using the same opaque frothy liquid. The sight of these bands of kneeling figures at the outlet of the Carei, where a pool accumulates, after having served the like purpose farther up the bed of rubbish, is about as extraordinary as can be witnessed. How clothes can be cleansed by washing in such puddles is somewhat incomprehensible. Persons knowing on the subject ascribe all to the force of soap, and the detergent power of fine air and sunshine in drying. The explanation is not very satisfactory.
In this as in other toilsome occupations, the women of Mentone exhibit a spirit of ceaseless and uncomplaining industry. Be the weather cold or hot, there they are at their work. When frost put a film of ice on the pools, they still continued their labours. Poor as the females evidently are, they shew uncommon skill in the patching and mending of clothes. The needle must be in frequent requisition, for nowhere is there to be seen a ragged garment on man or woman. It does not detract from the ingenuity of the needlewomen to say that, in patching, they do not concern themselves greatly as to harmony of colour. A light patch on a dark ground, or dark on a light ground, red upon blue, or any other incongruity as it may happen, answers every required purpose. A square patch of bright green on the back of a fisherman’s gray jacket, shews a fine indifference to public opinion, and is rather amusing than otherwise. The grand thing evidently is to overcome raggedness, no matter about colour, and the design is fully realised. By the mending process, garments of all sorts, masculine or feminine, are spun out to a respectable longevity—that is to say, as long as they will hold decently together. This thriftiness, I think, speaks well for the character of the humbler classes. There is poverty, but no squalor. The only unpleasing feature is street-begging. In all quarters we were beset by mendicants. Public begging is doubtless forbidden, but where there is no comprehensive method of succouring the necessitous, and no proper police, how is it to be prevented? The feeling we had about it was, that the sergents de ville benevolently winked at the practice. However this may be, the letting loose of beggars on the Colonie des Étrangers is not a very discreet procedure; neither is it very commendable to take so little trouble to enforce cleanliness in some of the highways and by-ways.
These blemishes, along with certain excesses in tobacco-smoking (which must drain the not over-enriched pocket of many a sou), and some carousing in a mild way in CafÉs and DÉbits de Vin, constitute the leading social defects. An absence of crime of a serious, or it might almost be said of any, kind must be deemed a favourable characteristic. In this respect the surrounding district, whether nominally French or Italian, differs greatly from those southern parts of Italy which were colonised by Greeks. The ancient Ligurians, a brave but docile Celtic race, have left their impress on the inhabitants of the Riviera. All strangers concur in speaking well of their honesty, sobriety, and industry. The late Rev. Dr Robert Lee, who spent a season at St Dalmas di Tenda, and afterwards gave an account of his experiences, compliments them highly for these and other good qualities. In conversing with the abbÉ who occupies the house in the Rue Brea in which Bonaparte resided, I learned that the more odious vices common in our large (and some small) communities were next to unknown in Mentone; and this coincided with what I had often casually observed. The people, men and women, said this clergyman emphatically, were bon pour la morale. This good moral conduct is, I believe, greatly owing to a prevalent tone of courtesy and refinement among even the humbler classes. Coarseness of manners and low habits are at the root of much that we lament as evil.
Quoting from Dr Bottini on the medical statistics of Mentone, Dr Siordet states that among the native population ‘epidemic diseases do not occur to any great extent,’ and that some other diseases are very rare. This may be true. I was informed, however, on what seemed good authority, that the death-rate of the settled inhabitants of the commune was as high as 26 per 1000 per annum, which is 6 or 7 above what it ought to be. Assuming that I was correctly informed, the comparatively high rate of mortality might be explained by hard work, poor living, and overcrowding of dwellings, with perhaps other insanitary conditions.
Hard grinding labour in all states of the weather might alone account for much. It would be a great mistake to imagine that the French, with all their light-heartedness, are an idly-disposed people. Taking them all in all, they work too much; for as there is no law in France against working or transacting business on Sunday, many who are so inclined labour seven days a week. The blanchisseuse knows no recurring weekly Sabbath—not because she is irreligious, for she is frequently seen popping into the churches to go through some devotional exercises; but that a regard for a periodical day of rest is not part of her spiritual system. As in the case of the humbler orders generally, her reverence for Sunday is merged in the great solemnities of Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter, at which times alone do we observe that there is a scrupulous laying aside of ordinary occupations. Such a constant round of drudging labour cannot have a beneficial effect. The sight of it gives one the heart-ache. We feel that an error is committed, not only in a religious point of view, but in social economics, and in all that tends to elevate and adorn humanity. A residence abroad convinces me more powerfully than any argument, that a due and reasonable observance of a weekly rest on Sunday is one of the noblest attributes of civilisation. I am glad to observe that a change for the better is in this respect creeping over France. At Mentone, from whatever cause, there is a growing abstinence from work on Sundays. The practice of closing the shops is more common than it was some years ago; comparatively few loaded carts are seen in the streets; building operations are for the most part suspended; and scarcely any donkeys with their burdens are observed trooping in from the country. These may be deemed gratifying symptoms of an improved tone of feeling, the more creditable for being spontaneous, at least without legal obligation.
It might perhaps be argued that the cessation of donkey-traffic on Sundays is as much due to commercial as to religious scruples. I am not aware that any animals are kept ready for hire at the Stations des Anes. These establishments are only dÉpÔts for ass-saddles, where orders can be executed. The donkeys come from the hills in the morning laden with fruits or other articles, in charge of a female; and having done what might be thought a fair day’s work, are ready for hire at the Stations, to go on excursions with invalids on their backs to and from places in the neighbourhood. As few visitors employ them on Sunday, it may seem advantageous not to bring them to town on that day. If so, the donkeys have reason to be thankful. These docile creatures, contriving ‘a double debt to pay,’ might be styled the true bread-winners of the peasant proprietary. Travelling by pathways wholly inaccessible to wheeled carriages, they are seen not only bringing down loads of native produce, but carrying up stones, lime, and other building-materials to places two thousand feet above the sea-level. But for these useful animals, the hilly region would be in a great measure valueless. So far as the Riviera is concerned, the ass must be considered to be a beneficent gift of Nature.
