Among so many delicious excursions it were invidious to single out any for special praise; yet there can be little doubt that the most popular, at least with the general throng of tourists, is the magnificent coast-road by Villefranche (or Villafranca) to Monte Carlo and Monaco. This particular part of the coast, between Nice and Mentone, is the one where the main range of the Maritime Alps, abutting at last on the sea, tumbles over sheer with a precipitous descent from four thousand feet high to the level of the Mediterranean. Formerly, the barrier ridge could only be surmounted by the steep but glorious Corniche route; of late years, however, the French engineers, most famous of road-makers, have hewn an admirable carriage-drive out of the naked rock, often through covered galleries or tunnels in the cliff itself, the whole way from Nice to Monte Carlo and Mentone. The older portion of this road, between Nice and Villefranche, falls well within the scope of our present subject.
You leave modern Nice by the quays and the Pont Garibaldi, dash rapidly through the new broad streets that now intersect the Italian city, skirt the square basins lately added to the more shapeless ancient Greek port of Limpia, and begin to mount the first spurs of the Mont Boron among the villas and gardens of the Quartier du Lazaret. Banksia roses fall in cataracts over the walls as you go; looking back, the lovely panorama of Nice opens out before your eyes. In the foreground, the rocky islets of La Réserve foam white with the perpetual plashing of that summer sea. In the middle distance, the old Greek harbor, with its mole and lighthouse, stands out against the steep rocks of the Castle Hill. The background rises up in chain on chain of Alps, allowing just a glimpse at their base of that gay and fickle promenade and all the Parisian prettinesses of the new French town. The whole forms a wonderful picture of the varied Mediterranean world, Greek, Roman, Italian, French, with the vine-clad hills and orange-groves behind merging slowly upward into the snow-bound Alps.
Turning the corner of the Mont Boron by the grotesque vulgarisms of the Château Smith (a curious semi-oriental specimen of the shell-grotto order of architecture on a gigantic scale) a totally fresh view bursts upon our eyes of the Rade de Villefranche, that exquisite land-locked bay bounded on one side by the scarped crags of the Mont Boron itself, and on the other by the long and rocky peninsula of St. Jean, which terminates in the Cap Ferrat and the Villefranche light. The long deep bay forms a favorite roadstead and rendezvous for the French Mediterranean squadron, whose huge ironclad monsters may often be seen ploughing their way in single file from seaward round the projecting headlands, or basking at ease on the calm surface of that glassy pond. The surrounding heights, of course, bristle with fortifications, which, in these suspicious days of armed European tension, the tourist and the sketcher are strictly prohibited from inspecting with too attentive an eye. The quaintly picturesque town of Villefranche itself, Italian and dirty, but amply redeemed by its slender bell-tower and its olive-clad terraces, nestles snugly at the very bottom of its pocket-like bay. The new road to Monte Carlo leaves it far below, with true modern contempt for mere old-world beauty; the artist and the lover of nature will know better than to follow the example of those ruthless engineers; they will find many subjects for a sketch among those whitewashed walls, and many a rare sea-flower tucked away unseen among those crannied crags.