242 CANNES. 



F"or the Arcliives of the town contain an account of a 

 wild animal that in 17S5 tilled town and couatrv with 

 panic. Not a single inhabitant of the to\\'n ventured to 

 stir abroad. At last a bod\- of valiant men took up 

 arms and succeeded in sla\-lng the animal on the borders 

 of the commune. Xo one had ever seen such a creature, 

 and the\- did not know what to call it. A violent dispute 

 about tlie skin now began between the communities of 

 Cannes. Grasse and Mougins, on ^-liose common boundar\- 

 the animal had fallen. ^V serious contfict threatened, but 

 was fortunateh' averted bv the Marquis de Caraman. 

 General in Command of Pro\'ence, wlio appropriated the 

 skin himself. It was then certified to be the skin of a 

 hyaena, but how the animal had ,stra\ed to C annes 

 remained unexplained. 



By the end of the eip-hteenth ccntar\' Cannes had 

 sunk into a quite unimportant communit\'. When Ilnrace 

 Benedict de Saussure visited it in 17^7 he found onh 

 two streets, which were inhabited almost entireh' b\' sailors 

 and fishermen. The beaut\' of the spot struck him. 

 "C'est un site ^■rainlent dclicieux"', he exclaimed on the 

 hill of St. Cassien, as his e\'es wandered over the blue 

 (jolfe, the green islands, the luxuriant \'alle\' of the 

 Siagne, Grasse and the grev limestone .Alps. The Hotels 

 in Cannes at that time must have been ver\' primitive, 

 nevertheless Heinrich Schubert, Professor at Eriangen. was 

 very comfortable in one of these houses when he came 

 to Cannes in the \'ear 1S22. He ancl ''Die gute Haus- 

 frau'" had been walking for eight hours over the I^>sterel 

 mountains to Cannes, and arrived there on a hot after- 



