From La Trinité a rough footpath leads across the pine-clad hills to BIOT, a distance of about two and a half miles as the crow flies, but about an hour’s walk over the heath-covered heights, and through the deep ravines which have to be traversed. Some extensive quarries are passed on the way at Les Aspres. After a hot tramp over these rocky and barren hills, it is refreshing to reach the fertile and cultivated valley of the Brague with its steep and terraced banks richly clad with olive and orange trees. A very steep descent leads to the bottom of the valley, from which the walls and towers of Biot are seen rising on the crest of the hill above (Fig. 216). This is one of the most primitive old towns in the district. A very circuitous post road has now been constructed up to it, but the old accesses by long flights of wide steps, on which the peasants and their mules are constantly ascending and descending, are still preserved, and are in their way amongst the most picturesque streets in the Riviera. Climbing patiently up flight after flight, and winding round the narrow streets, we at length reach the highest point, on which stands the church. The following inscription is carved in the interior wall:--“Hanc Ecclesiam consecravit Illus, primus et reveredismus Inxpo P.D.D. Isnædus D. Grassa Episcopus Grassen, 1472 [Illustration: round symbol] DIE 19. JANU.” thus shewing that the church was consecrated by the bishop of Grasse at the above date. Some of the work corresponds with that period, _e.g._, the doorway in the west end (Fig. 217). But the south doorway (Fig. 217) has an earlier character. The exterior is all altered, and the interior has also been modernised in a very extraordinary manner, but some traces of the original building are still observable. Biot belonged to the Templars in 1247, and afterwards to the knights of Malta. In 1470 the bishop of Grasse brought hither forty-eight Genoese families, probably to help to re-people the town after the plague or some destructive assault of the Corsairs. This was evidently the occasion on which the bishop re-consecrated the church, which then no doubt required to [Illustration: FIG. 217. CHURCH OF BIOT.]