A few days after our arrival, we joined a party of friends for Castellar, which is about three miles distant. We started after lunch, about half–past one, having six donkeys for those who rode. It was the 2d of December, and the day was overpoweringly hot. The ascent commences at once from the town, and the mounting was almost continuous, diversified, however, by stretches of level path. For protection of the road, which would otherwise be soon worn away, it is, like most other donkey paths, in its steeper parts paved sometimes with the small round stones commonly called petrified kidneys, which are very trying to the feet of the walkers, at least till they get accustomed to them. After we had gone up a short way, we obtained the shelter of trees, which lessened the fatigue. It was a lovely walk the whole way, the views at every turn being so fine; the sky overhead, bright, clear, blue, against which the bold outlines of the adjacent mountains broke in most picturesque lines; while, whether we looked down the thickly–covered slopes below or across the ravines to the wooded slopes of the Berceau above, or to the hill ridges fringed with trees or capped by picturesque buildings, it was a scene of grandeur and beauty blended; while the silver–lined blue–green of the olive leaf, mingling with the dark green of the pines, and the grass and the wild shrubbery, combined with the bright glitter of the sun through the branches to make it fairy–land. Notwithstanding the shade afforded by the trees, I felt the ascent very hot work, and perspired at every pore. At last, in about an hour and a half, we reached Castellar, perched upon the summit of the rock or acclivity, which is 1200 feet above the level of the sea. We found it a very curious old Italian village—a type, however, of others which we subsequently saw. It consists of two long narrow streets, and of three ranges of miserable old houses, offering wretched uncomfortable holes for the inhabitants, the wretchedness being probably to some extent redeemed by the natural purity of the air. On the outside walls, the windows, where they exist, stand high, and are small (in many places merely loopholes for guns), the town being so built as to afford some protection against the roving expeditions of the Moors. Poor and miserable as the place looks, it has, like all such villages, a grand church—that is, grand in comparison with the dwellings and with the apparent poverty of the people. The church is adorned by the usual spire, which forms a feature of the little town or village, which, though picturesque at a short distance, does not afford as much scope for the pencil of the artist as some other similar villages. From the platform on which the town stands, we obtained a splendid view of the mountains of Mentone and of the bay below. After halting a very brief time, the party descended, to be back before sunset—a precaution essentially needful to be