CORRESPONDENCE.
CASTELLAR AND GORBIO.
I mA.Y probably be told that these villages are well known to most people. But to judge from one's own experience, those who know them already will be glad to see them again; and for those who do not, no excuse is necessary.
From the old town of Mentone, with its narrow, climbing streets, its deep archways and flights of worn steps, where at -every turn you see a picture, where the dark Italian faces smile on you, and bright colour breaks in wherever it is wanted, and the warm sun and deep shadow, with the clear, dazzling air, enter into your cold Northern nature, and teach it all the wonder of the South,—from this town, with its neighbouring gardens of palms and aloes, with its setting of flowers, of olive-yards, of woods, of golden lemon and orange trees, with its red and brown roofs and white or painted walls, and its great foreground of blue sea, always changing and varying,— ultramarine, indigo, purple, but always blue and brilliant and clear, and edged with foam like snow,—from this little middle- :age Southern town, keeping its characteristic beauty in spite of English and hotels and villas by the hundred, we went driving up the other day into one of the beautiful valleys that lead into the background of mountains, their peaks and -slopes even now whitened with fresh snow.
One must suppose that these Mentone valleys have lost a good deal of their old free character since the days when Mr. Symonds wrote of them, and told us of that well with violets and maidenhair dropping into it. Since then, the Mentonese have become more practical and more civilised ; wells with violets and maidenhair seem mostly to have gone .the way of unlimited wanderings in the valleys, and unchecked gathering of flowers under the lemons and olives,—also of any real enjoyment of the Cap St. Martin ; but that is a painful subject, and need not be entered on now. If there are wire fences in the valleys, and if the lemon orchards are generally shut in by gates, still the most fascinating mule- paths, rough and stony, go wandering in all directions, high up into the hills where no carriage-road is to be found; and still the groves of grey-green olives on their green terraces, some of them old and far-branching, have their own solemnity, and give this brilliant landscape the softness and shadow that it wants. It would be hard to imagine anything more beautiful than the shadowy, silvery shades of the olives, as they stand contrasted with the bright colouring of oranges or lemons ; behind, perhaps, a deep blue mountain, if the day is cloudy, or a more brilliantly blue sea.
Our young driver beguiled the way by telling us his history. He was an Italian from Como, and very proud of his nation. He had no relations, and since he was a boy, had lived with his present old master, whom he ungratefully described as un petit pen fou. We were not surprised, having seen the old master in rags in the market-place. The driver was a well grown, handsome young fellow. As we dawdled up the good but steep road that winds through the vallee de Menton to Castellar, he was here, there, and everywhere about the road, singing and whistling to himself, gathering wild flowers for us, while his horse, a skinny animal, toiled steadily on. All the lower part of the road ran above and under terraces of lemon-trees, loaded with fruit ; the size and the quantity of lemons seems this year to be something unusual. Higher up, the olives had it all to themselves, except a few fir-trees on a rocky point ; the forests of olives in this country are hardly to be understood without being seen. The wells, built in and over with stone ; the terraces, green and stony ; the little streams that run in their stone watercourses all about the mountain-side,--all have an Eastern, almost a sacred effect. " Green terraces and arched fountains cold,"— some such words as these for ever haunt one in the long, slow climb. And if we tarn round, over the long descent of grey and green and gold there rises the great blue wall of the sea.
For some distance, under the olives, the ground was blue with violets. Then a few sharp windings brought us to the mountain spur on which Castellar stands, looking down the valley, seeming itself not far from the level of those snowy mountain peaks and slopes behind, towards which a rough mule-path goes wandering on. Castellar is a strange little village, with two piazzas, and two streets running parallel with each other, very narrow, very Italian, very dirty. It has a large white church, now being restored, at the end nearer the mountains, and near this are the remains of the old house of the Lascaris ; for this now degraded village, with its wonderful beauty of situation and view, was one of the many strongholds of that great family, now extinct. The people of Castellar look poor, and dirty and melancholy ; the children even beg in a depressed way; they are much excelled in this art by their grandfathers, two of whom waited on us very anxiously in the piazza. Here, in front of the streets and houses is a curious old lopped tree, with a stone bench all round it, which looks as if the popula- tion could be sociable. But it seemed to us that Castellar was mentally a little out of joint : a mountain village of the Middle Ages, such as I have described, with its houses many hundred years old,—and yet the streets named, and the houses numbered, in white and blue paint, and large advertisements of chocolat lifenier and Le Petit Journal emblazoned here and there on the walls. If these things go much further, Castellar will be demoralised, and lost.
We began our journey down the mountain road at a spirited pace, but had not gone very far when the horse tumbled down.
The poor beast was not hurt, however, and the point of interest was the tragical change in our young Italian, who stood lamenting with all the picturesqueness of his nation, crying oat, " Ah, Bellottina ' !" (which we imagined to be the poor old horse's name), without making any attempt to get it up again. His rosy face was pale, and his smiling blue eyes
were like thunderclouds. We thought it possible that le vie= maitre might be more than un petit pen /cu, when this acci- dent came to his knowledge. We were confirmed in this idea
by the extreme steadiness and solemnity with which, a few days later, the same young man drove us up the valley towards Grorbio.
This valley is perhaps more beautiful and interesting, because more varied, than that leading up to Castellar. The woods of lemons and olives are the same ; but the road is lower down, nearer to the torrent, now a peaceful brown stream splashing quietly among great stones, like any York- shire river; and the mountains above and beyond look grander, more craggy, and majestic. Several old grey oil-mills are at
work in this valley, their wooden wheels going steadily round, their stone troughs swimming—a great geranium-bush by the door, perhaps, and green things trailing on the old walls. A background of grey and gold and purple mountain ; in front, over shining trees and red roofs, the sea. This valley is full of pictures. The road, which is excellent, has only lately been made, and even now stops a good way short of the village of Gorbio, which stands very curiously perched on a hill, not far from the head of the valley, with the mountain wall surrounding it behind. The last part of the way is a rough and steep up-and-down climb by a mule-path under rocky banks, and above terraces on terraces of olives. A strong wind the day before had strewn the ground with the small black fruit. At length, creeping up behind the hill, we found ourselves at the entrance of ancient Gorbio, which appeared, in these weary windings, quite the inaccessible fortress it was formerly. Gorbio is, in fact, an old castle with its pre- cincts, now all burrowed into dwellings for five or six hundred people. It, like Castellar, was a stronghold of the Lascaris, and it has its stories of battle and siege, which are not very difficult to realise, even now, in the gloomy little labyrinth of dark and cavernous streets, deep black archways, flights of rugged steps. The donkeys of Gorbio, the large, handsome, intelli- gent asses of the South, came scrambling up and down these streets with their loads of sticks or grass. There was not much room for passengers ; but the ready and kind politeness of the drivers, men or women, never failed. The children came cheerfully out to beg ; one special group overflowing from a cellar, where several whole families, mothers, babies, boys and girls, were lolling comfortably about on heaps of dry grass. A crowd of dark heads, bright eyes, and coloured handkerchiefs looked up laughing out of the darkness as the Inglesi passed by. Gorbio is, on the whole, more consistently ancient, and therefore, in spite of the gloom of its little, dungeon-like streets, a more satisfactory place to visit than Castellar. We saw no advertisements here, no painted names of streets or numbers of houses. These things, no doubt, will come with the march of civilisation, represented by the road up the valley, which is only too quickly making its way nearer to Gorbio. A place only accessible by mule-path is still, in 1889, a little out of the world. The most curious view of Gorbio, perhaps, is to be gained from the beautiful sandstone ridge that runs along between the Gorbio and Borrigo valleys. This is one of the most enchanting walks in the neighbourhood of Mentone. It is a wilderness of pines, arbutus, myrtle, rosemary, and other spiky and aromatic plants, with large bushes, now in full flower, of the beautiful little white Mediterranean heath. As we walk up the ridge, the great craggy mountains face us, brown and grey, with purple shadows as the afternoon wears on, and here and there a slope streaked with snow ; and we look down towards Gorbio, and see the little old fighting village on its watch-tower hill, still gazing down its subject valley to the sea.
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