pots of selected flowers,
favorite seats, well-worn paths, carefully-tended beds, trailing
climbers, torn and snapped branches, all lying to be shovelled away as
fast as the road-menders could ply their pickaxes and spades.

At length this task was accomplished; the diligences were hauled over
the broken ground (their contents being also "hauled over" at the
custom-house); the passengers (after the important ceremonial of handing
their passports for inspection, and having them handed back by
personages who kept their countenances wonderfully) were in again and
off again.

But one more torrent to cross,--where the foremost coach had nearly been
overset, and where the occupants of the hindmost one, profiting by
example, got out and walked over the footbridge, in time to behold the
owner of the British accent wave his hat triumphantly from the _coupe_
with a hearty (English) "Huzza!" as the vehicle recovered, by a violent
lurch to the left, from an equally violent one to the right, issuing
scathless from the last flood that lay in the way,--and then both
diligences began at a leisurely pace to crawl up a long ascent of road,
bordered on each side by olive-grounds;--until the view opened to a
fine stretch of prospect, now colored and vivified by a glance of the
afternoon sun,--the diminutive peninsular kingdom of Monaco, lying down
in the very sea, bright, and green, and fairy-like; the bold barren crag
of the Turbia rock frowning sternly in front, with its antique Roman
tower and modern Italian church; the rocky heights above to the right,
with their foreground of olive-trees, vine-trellises, and orange-groves,
interspersed with country-houses; while through all wound the
ever-climbing road, a white thread in the distance, with the telegraphic
poles, dwindled to pin-like dimensions, indicating its numberless turns
and bends.

As the sun sank over the far western lines of the Estrelle Mountains,
and the sky faded into grayish purple, succeeded by an ever-deepening
suffusion of black, unpierced by a single star, the high reach of road
above Villafranca Bay was passed; and, on our turning the corner of the
last intervening upland, full in view came the many lights of Nice, with
its castled rock, its minarets and cupolas, its stretch of sea, its look
of sheltered repose;--all most welcome to sight, after our sensational
journey on the Cornice Road in a great rain.

INCIDENTS OF THE PORTLAND FIRE.

Never had Port