Opening on to the margin of the harbour is a great gorge, a sudden breach in the earth which serves to separate the sober town of Monaco from the frivolous town of Monte Carlo. It is a strange thing—this ravine. It is deep and full of shadows. Its walls, lit by the sun, are sheer precipices of biscuit-coloured rock, tinted faintly with red as with rust. From every crack and cranny on its towering sides something green is bursting; while, here and there, a flower, yellow or blue, clings to a ledge like a perching bird. From the balustrade of a garden on its summit there hang festoons of scarlet geraniums and a curtain of blue heliotrope. Along the bottom of the chasm runs a fussy stream, with a noise like that of many flutes and by its side—among a jumble of rocks, bushes and brambles—an inconsequent path creeps up, out of pure curiosity, since it leads nowhere. This ravine, as wild and savage as it was a thousand years ago, is a strange thing to find in the middle of a town, for houses crowd about it on either side and press so far forward on its heights that they appear likely to topple into the abyss. A huge railway viaduct crosses its entrance, while its floor slopes to a road where motors and tramcars rattle along, without heed to this quiet nook in the mountain side. It is as incongruous and out of place as a green meadow with buttercups and cows spread out by the side of the blatant traffic of Fleet Street. There are other anomalies about this Ravin des Gaumates. It is so reckless-looking and so theatrical a chasm that one is convinced that duels have been fought here and that here conspirators in cloaks have met, and buccaneers have stored their surprising spoils. At the present day, however, the sea rover’s camp is occupied by a laundry shed, where unemotional women, with red arms and untidy heads, are busy; and where, in the place of brigands’ loot, sheets are spread upon the rocks to dry, together with white articles of underclothing. At the mouth of the gorge—standing quite alone—is the little chapel of St. Dévote. It is a humble church, modern, plain as a peasant, and of no intrinsic interest. It is notable only in its position. The building seems to be as surprised at the place in which it finds itself as is the visitor who finds it there. Possibly no more strangely situated house of prayer exists in Europe. Behind it is a wild, disorderly glen; on each side is a precipice and in front is a gigantic railway viaduct of such immoderate proportions that it towers above the very steeple of the church. The building viewed from the road where the tramcars run looks like a small shrinking figure enshrined in a niche provided by a vulgar, overbearing and irreverent railway arch. [Illustration: MONACO.]