CHAPTER XII. 



NEW YEAR S DAY IN THE RIVIERA. 



HOSE who have endured a succession of Enghsh 

 Winters, and have grown grey without extending 

 their travels beyond the British Isles, must find 

 difficulty in realising the fact that a journey of 

 thirty-six hours from London can carry them to a 

 land where the palm tree flourishes in the open air, 

 where geraniums and roses may be seen covered 

 with flowers by the road-side in December, and where green peas 

 are gathered on Christmas Day, Indeed, were an untravelled 

 Englishman to take a sleeping potion on a tempestuous winter's 

 night, and not awake before he reached Cannes, at a point over- 

 looking the sparkling sea, with the purple heath-covered mountains 

 rising in the back-ground until they end in perpetual snow, he might 

 not unreasonably imagine that he had arrived at those delectable 

 regions described by Bunyan. 



But not only are the cloudless skies, the warm sun, and beautiful 

 scenery of the Riviera towns — Cannes, Nice, and Mentone — 

 inducements for migration to escape the English Winter, but as yet 

 the English rough has not penetrated so far, and consequently the 

 surrounding country, with its pine woods, its orange and myrtle 

 groves, are open to all, and the traveller may explore the neighbour- 



