It is he who rears pleasant towns at the foot of the Pyrenees,
and lines the sunny coasts of the Riviera with villas that gleam white
among the olive groves. It is his finger that stirs the camels of
Algeria, the donkeys of Palestine, the Nile boats of Egypt. At the first
frosts of November the doctor marshals his wild geese for their winter
flitting, and the long train streams off, grumbling but obedient, to the
little Britains of the South.

Of these little Britains none is more lovely than Cannes. The place is a
pure creation of the health-seekers whose gay villas are thrown
fancifully about among its sombre fir-woods, though the "Old Town," as
it is called nowadays, remains clinging to its original height, street
above street leading up to a big bare church of the Renascence period,
to fragments of mediaeval walls and a great tower which crowns the summit
of the hill. At the feet of this height lie the two isles of Lerins, set
in the blue waters of the bay; on the east the eye ranges over the
porphyry hills of Napoul to the huge masses of the Estrelles; landwards
a tumbled country with bright villas dotted over it rises gently to the
Alps. As a strictly winter resort Cannes is far too exposed for the more
delicate class of invalids; as a spring resort it is without a rival.
Nowhere is the air so bright and elastic, the light so wonderfully
brilliant and diffused. The very soil, full of micaceous fragments,
sparkles at our feet. Colour takes a depth as well as a refinement
strange even to the Riviera; nowhere is the sea so darkly purple,
nowhere are the tones of the distant hills so delicate and evanescent,
nowhere are the sunsets so sublime. The scenery around harmonizes in its
gaiety, its vivacity, its charm with this brightness of air and light.
There is little of grandeur about it, little to compare in magnificence
with the huge background of the cliffs behind Mentone or the mountain
wall which rises so steeply from its lemon groves. But everywhere there
is what Mentone lacks--variety, largeness, picturesqueness of contrast
and surprise. Above us is the same unchanging blue as there, but here it
overarches gardens fresh with verdure and bright with flowers, and
houses gleaming white among the dark fir-clumps; hidden little ravines
break the endless tossings of the ground; in the distance white roads
rush straight to grey towns hanging strangely against the hill-sides; a
thin snow-line glitters along the ridge of t