The Pont St. Louis, with the picturesque ravine it crosses, had been passed, and the pretty town of Mentone was full in view, when we caught sight of the other diligence, some way on the road before us, brought once more to a stand-still, while a crowd of persons surrounded it, and its passengers were to be seen, in the distance, descending, with the baby cap among them. At this instant, an excited French official darted out from a doorway by the side of the road near us, raising his arms distractedly, and throwing his sentences up at the conductor, who understood him to say that there was no going on; that a whole garden had come tumbling down across the road just at the entrance to Mentone, and prevented passing. We drove on to the spot, and found it was indeed so; the grounds of a villa, skirting the highway on a terrace-ledge, had been loosened by the many days' rain, and had fallen during the forenoon, a heap of ruins,--shrubs, plants, garden-walls, flowers, borders, railings,--one mass of obstruction. With a glance at the _coupe_ passengers, another French official (the newly-appointed frontier custom-house being close at hand) stepped forward to suggest that the "insides" could be accommodated, during the interim required for the _cantonniers_ to do their work, at a lately-built hotel he pointed to; but the four agreed to spend the time in walking round by the path above the obstruction, so as to see its whole extent. The wet, percolating and penetrating through the softer soil, gradually accumulates a weight of water behind and beneath the harder and rockier portions, which dislodges them from their places, pushes them forward, and finally topples them over headlong. This is generally prevented where terrace-walls are built up, by leaving holes here and there in the structure, which allow the wet to drain through innocuously; but if, as in the present instance, this caution be neglected, many days' successive rain is almost sure to produce the disaster in question. It had a woful look,--all those garden elegances cast there, flung out upon the high-road, like discarded rubbish; 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.