At one time, perhaps even then, the sea came up to the foot of the rock, where are now orange and lemon orchards, but the current that sets from west to east along this coast filled it up. On digging, the old sea-shore is found, and the name Bordighera signifies a creek provided with stakes and nets for catching fish. Bordighera is happy in having had an exhaustive historian, Mr. F. F. Hamilton (_Bordighera and the Western Riviera_, London, 1883), and this work is supplemented by Mr. W. Scott’s _Rock Villages of the Riviera_, London, 1898, by which he means the villages built upon rocky heights. He describes only such, however, as are near Bordighera. This book will be a help to such as desire to make excursions from that winter resort, and these two works together render it unnecessary for me to enter more fully into the history of Ventimiglia and its offspring Bordighera, and into minute description of them and their neighbourhood. CHAPTER XVII SAN REMO Two San Remos—The Pinecone—Earthquakes—Matuta—Sold to the Genoese—Church of S. Syro—Domestic architecture unchanging—Narrow streets—Leprosy—San Romolo—Lampedusa—River names—Taggia—Doctor Antonio—Home of Ruffini—The Bresca family—Raising of the obelisk in the piazza of S. Peter—Palms—How bleached—The date-palm. THERE are two San Remos, that of to-day, with its pretentious villas rivalling each other in ugliness, and the old San Remo. The former is clean with open spaces, a broad main street, and is dotted about with palms and agaves in sub-tropical gardens. The old San Remo is a network, a labyrinth of narrow, tortuous lanes. This old portion goes by the name of _la Pigna_, the Pinecone, because of the manner in which the ancient houses are grouped, pressed together one on another, rising towards a culminating conical point. [Illustration: A STREET IN BORDIGHERA]