Some of the noble commissioners who were stout and advanced in years (as commissioners often are) must have been hauled, dragged and pushed up the cliff side, like so many bulky packages. Burdened as they were with official robes and olive branches, which had to be carried with decorum, they would have found the ceremony very exacting. They did more than merely stumble about on the top of the rock, panting and perspiring and trying to look official under sweltering conditions. They laid down the lines of a fort. It was to be a square fort and very large, with a tower at each of the four angles, and it was to be designed in the Moorish style. This fort or castle was erected in the year 1215 on the site of the present palace and was provided with a garrison by the Genoese. Outside the fort the rudiments of a town appeared—the first huts and houses of Monaco. That town, therefore, has already passed the seven hundredth anniversary of its foundation. The harbour of Monaco of to-day is a model harbour as perfect as the art of the engineer can make it. Two stone piers guard the entrance and at the end of each is a lighthouse. There are two wide quays where feluccas and other rakish-looking ships land barrels of wine; while the basin itself can accommodate a fleet of yachts. This haven which has sheltered the very earliest forms of sea-going ship now shelters—during the regatta season—the latest development of the motor boat and the racing launch. History repeats itself. There was amazement at Monaco when the first hydroplane dropped on to the water by the harbour’s mouth: there was amazement also, centuries ago, when the loungers about the beach saw enter the new ship, the astounding vessel that was propelled not by paddles or oars, but by sails. Above the pebble beach is a modest promenade and a road—the main road to Nice. On the other side of the highway are genial hotels where people lunch and dine out of doors, amid a profusion of white tablecloths and green chairs and where the menu of the day is suspended from the railings. At the far end of this Boulevard de la Condamine are an avenue of trees and the old Etablissement des Bains de Mer which, even as late as Hare’s time, was “much frequented in summer.” The Etablissement is now little more than a ghost. The sound of its gaiety has long since been hushed into silence. There is a somewhat frivolous-looking building by the water’s edge which has a rounded glass front and some suggestion that it may once have been a palace of delight. It has now fallen into a state of decrepitude and shabbiness and is given up to quite commonplace commercial uses. It is like a dandy in extreme old age who, dressed in the thread-bare clothes which were the fashion a generation ago, still sits on a parade which once was rustling with happy people and which is now as sombre as a cemetery lane.