In the afternoon of the same day, we took a walk up one of the valleys. These valleys are all favourite walks to those residing in the west bay. The views from the bridges which span them at the mouths of the river or rivers, supposed to run below them, are each different from the other, and are exceedingly picturesque. The one next to us was the Carrei or Turin valley. The torrent bed of this river course is confined from its mouth, where it is narrowed (speaking from recollection) to about 60 or 80 feet, and for a considerable way up and beyond the railway viaduct, by sloping bulwarks of masonry. After this the bed, no longer so confined, widens very considerably, and about a mile from the mouth gets broad and bare; farther up still, it narrows again, and becomes the rocky bed of what sometimes may be called a river, but usually is nothing but a small stream. Within Mentone the bed is crossed by two wooden foot bridges, one wooden suspension bridge for carriages and foot passengers, and a railway viaduct. Looking up and northward from the wooden foot bridge which spans the river course at its mouth, and placed for the purpose of connecting two portions of the promenade, one of the grandest views in Mentone is had.[21] On either side of the spectator the Eucalyptus and Spanish fig trees, the flowering aloes and other trees of the public gardens, offer a leafy inclosure; and carrying the eye along upon the left side up the right bank of the Carrei to the railway viaduct, and beyond it, we observe the tall plane trees of the avenue leading to the railway station casting their shadows over the road, and in the afternoon over the river course, giving the aspect of agreeable shelter from the sun. On the right side, like theatrical side scenes run in one behind the other, bright–looking villas with their coloured jalousies and red–tiled roofs, diversified by an occasional one in blue lead and French roof, project out of gardens,—the Hotel du Louvre and the Hotel des Îles Britanniques, in the rear of all, being by a bend of the river scarcely visible from this bridge. Then a mountain ridge within half a mile from the bridge crosses the view above 1000 feet high, and crowned by a monastery (St. Annunciata), and with slopes here concealed by olive, lemon, and orange trees, in regular terraces, and there broken and exposed by rock and steep earthy–looking sides, as if washed away, and dotted elsewhere by coloured houses, and with straggling pine trees bristling up from the immediate background; while behind all this, as a grand back scene, rising boldly out of rounded, verdant, or stony slopes, mingled and varying in aspect each hour with the course of the sun, which throws the shadows in the morning westward and the afternoon eastward, and sometimes bathes them in light, and sometimes veils them in shade, the rocky, rugged heights of the mountains (seen here in part only), some of them only two to three miles distant, tower up, thrown,