The Corniche road below, running between the lines of villas, conducts to a little village called Verviers, about three miles from town. Here there is a large forest of umbrella pines bordering the coast, furnishing opportunities of study to the artist and to the photographer, and where one can enjoy a forenoon’s rambling about. The railway cuts the forest off from the shore, and flanks the beach all the way till it arrives close upon Cannes, and must therefore operate injuriously to the amenity. So far as the villas are concerned, they have, by means of bridges or otherwise, communication with the sea. Fortunately, however, for Cannes, the railway leaves the coast about half a mile from town, and passing through a tunnel proceeds by the back of the town, where the station is. From near the point where the railway diverges from the shore, the public promenade on the west bay commences. This is lined by palm trees, but the dust and the sea air together seem inimical to their development. The main promenade is that which, commencing with the harbour, runs eastward to the point of Croisette, a distance of from two to three miles. It is a great resort of visitors both on foot and in carriages. A band of music plays alternate days on the east and west bays. In each of these bays there are bathing establishments of a construction peculiar to the Riviera, being somewhat of the nature of the Lacustrian dwellings. They are simply wooden sheds for undressing and dressing in, resting upon poles stuck firmly into the beach, with depending ladders to enable the bathers to descend to the water. As the beach shelves very rapidly down, I presume that bathers who cannot swim must always be in charge of an attendant or be tied by a rope; but whether it was that the bathing may have taken place at an early hour, I have hardly ever seen any person indulging in a bath at Cannes during our brief visits, although the temperature is seldom such throughout the winter as to forbid the exercise to persons in good health either at this or at other parts of the province. I have seen at Nice (a colder place than Cannes) people bathing towards the end of November. By a strange fatality, for one can hardly suppose it to be the result of deliberate arrangement, we observed that close by each of the bathing establishments a drain has been run into the sea, the same practice occurring also at Biarritz. These drains are so odoriferously disagreeable as to make it unpleasant to walk along the promenade, while one would think that some parts of Cannes ought in consequence to be unhealthy. At all events, they must to a certain extent nullify the good got from residence at this otherwise agreeable and fashionable watering–place. * * * * *