THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY A VISIT TO 
THE ITALIAN RIVIERA. 
By FRED. J. GRANT, J.P. 14th October, 1902. 

The Paper recorded some of the impressions produced on the 
mind of the essayist during a nine weeks’ sojourn at Bordighera, 
a small Italian village just across the French frontier, in the 
early months of 1902. The great highway of the district is the 
Via Romana, a road originally made by the Phenicians. The 
district for centuries formed the battlefield of Europe. On the 
western extremity it merges into Provence—the land from the 
Rhone to the Roya, glowing with the orient light of romance and 
chivalry. At the dawn of history—1000 years B.C.—the 
Ligurian people were settled in what is now known as the 
western portion of the Italian Riviera. Later the land was 
conquered by the Pheenicians ; then by the Greeks, who brought 
with them the three-fold gift of corn, the olive, and the vine. 
Afterwards the Romans held sway, but it took that great power 
nearly two centuries before the Ligurian tribes were subjugated. 
Ruins of the immense monument erected in 14 B.C., in honour 
of the triumphant Emperor Augustus, still remain at La Turbie. 
Other evidences of the Roman occupation can still be traced, 
although fourteen centuries have passed since the Goths and 
Vandals, from the north-west, drove out the armies of imperial 
Rome. From the Highth to the Twelfth Century the land was 
overrun, from time to time, by the Saracens and the Moors. It 
was the incursions of the fierce Saracens that led the inhabitants 
of Liguria to fortify the villages on the hills. These rock 
villages exist at the present day, very little altered. They are 
difficult of access—to some of them there is no road by which a 
vehicle can traverse, all the carrying to and fro is done by the 
patient mule. These villages were once small republics, with 
laws and coins of their own. Sasso, Seborga, and Perinaldo 
were among the rock villages visited. 
Amid all these mutations there is one thing which continues 
as it was in the haleyon days, when the world was young, and 
that is the tideless Mediterranean sea. 
A stranger visiting the Italian Riviera notices the absence of 
smoke—the olive wood fires give out scarcely any smoke. The 
atmosphere is wonderfully clear. One evening, just before sunset, 
the essayist had a marvellously clear view of the northern corner 
of Corsica—a hundred miles distant. Indeed, he could distinctly 
discern the serrated hills crossing the island some twenty miles 
