"On Saturday, January 30, we left Toulon in a _voiture_ or private carriage, the public conveyances towards Italy being now uncertain, inconvenient, and expensive. There were five of us and we made an agreement in writing with a _vetturino_ to carry us to Nice, the first city in Italy, for twenty-seven francs each, the same as the fare in the diligence, to which place he agreed to take us in two days and a half. Of course necessity obliges us in this instance to travel on the Sabbath, which we tried every means in our power to avoid. "At twelve we stopped at the village of Cuers, an obscure, dirty place, and stopped at an inn called 'La Croix d'Or' for breakfast. We here met with the first gross imposition in charges that occurred to us in France. Our _déjeuner_ for five consisted of three cups of miserable coffee, without milk or butter; a piece of beef stewed with olives for two; mutton chops for five; eggs for five; some cheese, and a meagre dessert of raisins, hazel nuts, and olives, with a bottle of sour _vin ordinaire;_ and for this we were charged fifteen francs, or three francs each, while at the best hotels in Paris, and in all the cities through which we passed, we had double the quantity of fare, and of the best kind, for two francs and sometimes for one and one half francs. All parleying with the extortionate landlord had only the effect of making him more positive and even insolent; and when we at last threw him the money to avoid further detention, he told us to mark his house, and, with the face of a demon, told us we should never enter his house again. We can easily bear our punishment. As we resumed our journey we were saluted with a shower of stones." The journal continues and tells of the slow progress along the Riviera, through Cannes, which was then but an unimportant village; Nice, at that time belonging to Italy, and where they saw in the cathedral Charles Felix, King of Sardinia. It took them many days to climb up and down the rugged road over the mountains, while now the traveller is whisked under and around the same mountains in a few hours. "At eleven we had attained a height of at least two thousand feet and the precipices became frightful, sweeping down into long ravines to the very edge of the sea; and then the road would wind at the edge of the precipice two or three thousand feet deep. Such scenes pass so rapidly it is impossible to make note of them. "From the heights on which La Turbia stands, with its dilapidated walls, we see the beautiful city of Monaco, on a tongue of land extending into the sea." The great gambling establishment of Monte Carlo did not invade this beautiful spot until many years later, in 1856. The travellers stopped for a few hours at Mentone,--"a beautiful place for an artist,"--passed the night at San Remo, and, sauntering thus leisurely along the beautiful Riviera, arrived in Genoa on the 6th of February.