The season is said to begin on the 25th October, and terminate on the 25th April, when the heat becomes inconvenient. I observed, however, that strangers have not fully arrived until the middle of December, and many depart at the beginning of March. Those who come first have of course the best choice of accommodation. According to a list published on the 1st of January 1870, there were 215 English, 41 Americans, 116 Germans, 13 Belgians, 12 Danes and Swedes, 98 French, 21 Dutch, 46 Russians and Poles, and 20 of other nations—total, 582. But as a very large number of the entries in the list were of husband and wife, or of families and suite, we cannot estimate the whole at fewer than twelve hundred adults, and it would be a moderate calculation to set down their aggregate expenditure during the season at less than £200,000. There were few with whom I conversed who did not complain of the charges of the hotel-keepers: one lady was quite excited on the subject, speaking of the exactions for fuel, lights, and service as something shameful. High charges are certainly more the rule than the exception, and may in the fluctuations of fashion help to drive visitors elsewhere. Nice, however, and other resorts in this quarter, are as dear as Mentone. The hotel-keepers are not without a plausible excuse. They pay high rents; they have to maintain an expensive establishment; their harvest of visitors lasts only six months; two or three bad seasons in succession might finish them. There is truth in this apology, but I would counsel them not to rely too greatly upon it. They may with advantage take into consideration the possibility of lowering the sum-total of their weekly bills. Rivals have entered the field. The people of San Remo, as if awakening from a trance, are making a push for a share of the visitor traffic; and if they render their town attractive by establishing a good promenade along the sea-margin, and by carrying out sundry other improvements to meet the fancy of visitors, they may seriously affect the hotel-keepers as well as the _propriétaires_ of every French winter-resort. It may be years, as I have said, before the railway is opened beyond Mentone (for Italy is in a sad state of impecuniosity, or, more correctly, is suffering from a bad administrative system, along with a want of credit), but there can be no doubt that the railway will be completed as far as San Remo some time or other; and when this event occurs, Cannes, Nice, and Mentone may look for a degree of competition in their staple dependence which at present they do not experience. They had better begin revising their tariff.