Kitabı oku: «A Book of The Riviera», sayfa 15
Thus enabling the bank on average stakes of 611·55 francs to realise £1,245,008. But it must be remembered that it is only during the winter season that considerable play takes place at Monte Carlo. Also that before profits are declared the prince has to pocket his share, all the officials have to be paid, the police, the lighting, the gardens have to be kept going, and the scores of unacknowledged dependents on the Casino have to receive enough to maintain them. Every season a little book appears, advocating an infallible system, and some of these cost twenty-five francs. Of course, every system is based on the assumption that there is no trickery. But if there be trickery, not one of these systems is worth the cost of the book that advocates it.
“Le rouge gagne quelque fois, le noir gagne quelque fois, le blanc toujours.”
A very good story is told by “V. B.” in Monte Carlo Anecdotes, London, 1901. A few years ago a nobleman attended the English chapel and slipped out as the hymn was being sung before the sermon, as he went for worship and not be bored with the discourse. Now the hymn was No. 32, Ancient and Modern. He sauntered up to the Casino whistling the tune, and as he entered the rooms he heard, “Trente-deux, rouge, pair et passe!” sung out from the table on his right; and then from that on his left, “Trente-deux, rouge, pair et passe.” “Bless my soul!” said he, “that is the number of the hymn; be hanged if I won’t stake on it.” He hurriedly felt in his pocket, and going to the third table he announced, “Trente-deux en plein, les quatres chevaux, et quatres carrés par cinq francs”; and up rolled the number. To make a long story short, by passing from table to table, and by constantly clinging to 32 with gradually increasing stakes, he left the rooms with over £500 in his pocket. But this got wind, and, to the perplexity of the chaplain, next Sunday half his congregation left the chapel during the hymn before the sermon and rushed off to the Casino to back the number of the hymn.
After this it became the rule at the Monte Carlo English chapel never thenceforth to give out a number under thirty-seven before the sermon.
On the promontory of La Veille at the water’s edge is a grotto. When Edward Augustus, Duke of York, brother to George III., was on his way to Italy on a man-of-war, feeling too ill to proceed he was landed at Monaco and received into the palace, where he died in 1767. The body was embalmed and taken to London.
Fishermen always make the sign of the cross when passing the entrance of the Grotte de la Veille, for they say that when the vessel on which was the Duke of York arrived in the bay, a white form was seen, as that of a woman, at the entrance, watching the evolutions of the ship. After the Duke was removed she still remained visible, with her face turned towards the palace. She was again seen when the cannon announced his death, and again when his body was removed. The sailors hurry by the cave, and will on no account enter it. It might be as well if travellers crossed themselves and hurried by, instead of allowing themselves to be drawn into the halls of the Circe of Gambling on the top of the cliff.
CHAPTER XV
MENTONE
Configuration of the land – Favoured situation of Mentone: suitable for mid-winter – Old and new Mentone – Oranges and lemons – History of Mentone – Roquebrune – Passion Mystery – Castellan – Depredations of corsairs – Open-air ball – Dr. Bennet – The torrent of S. Louis – The Barma Grande – Prehistoric men
THE traveller by rail from Nice to Mentone is hardly able to appreciate the configuration of the land, and to understand what are the special advantages enjoyed by Mentone over Nice and Cannes.
Let us take a sickle to represent the mountain system from the Swiss Alps to the Abruzzi. If the sickle be held with the point upward and the cutting edge turned away from one, then the great curve of the inner edge represents the vast basin of the Po and its tributaries. At Mont Blanc the Alpine sweep turns south and runs to Monte Viso, forming the Dauphiné Alps. From Monte Viso the ridge curves to the east till it meets the shank above Genoa, and the handle of the sickle is the range of the Apennines.
From Nice one can see the snowy peaks. Les Cimes du Diable are visible, but away to the north-east, for the chain is on the curve there. Above the Riviera di Ponente the chain draws very near to the sea, but throws out spurs and allows of a ledge resting against it, intervening between it and the Mediterranean. Now in leaving Nice by the Corniche Road we can see this formation, we learn how the Alps describe a great arc; but this is lost to us in the train, hugging the sea-shore and diving in and out of tunnels.
It is only by the Corniche Road, when we have reached La Turbie, that we discern how specially privileged are Mentone and the Italian Riviera. We see before us an amphitheatre, with mountain stages, and the blue sea for arena. The mountains run up to 3,000 and 4,000 feet, and wall about the fertile bottom, the seats about the sea, sheltering them from every blast. The higher mountains of grey limestone are bare, but below all is rich with luxuriant vegetation.
“The entire bay and the town of Mentone, with its background of swelling, olive-clad hills closed in by the amphitheatre of mountains, are thus thoroughly protected from the north-west, north, and north-east winds. To thoroughly understand and appreciate the district and its singularly protected character, a boat should be taken, and the panorama viewed a mile or two from the shore. The extreme beauty of the coast will amply repay the trouble. Thus seen, all the details are blended into one harmonious whole; the two bays becoming one, and the little town scarcely dividing them. The grandeur of the semicircular range of mountains, generally steeped in glorious sunshine, also comes out in broad outline. These mountains positively appear to all but encircle the Mentonian amphitheatre in their arms, to thus separate it and its inhabitants from the world at large, and to present it to the blue Mediterranean waves and to the warm southern sunshine.
“Behind the mountains which thus form the background of the Mentonian valleys, are still higher mountains, rising in successive ranges to an altitude of from 5,000 to 9,000 feet. The higher ranges constitute the high Alps of Savoy and Dauphiné. The presence of this second and higher mountain range greatly increases the protection afforded to the coast-line by the lower one, and partly explains its immunity from the winter cold of continental Europe.
“Thus the Mentone amphitheatre, being only open to the south, south-east, and south-west, the Mistral, as a north-west wind, is not at all felt, and but slightly as a deflected south-west wind. All the northerly winds pass over the higher mountains and fall into the sea at some distance – several miles from the shore. When they reign there is a calm, not only in the bay at Mentone, but for some distance out at sea; whilst at a few miles from the shore it may be crested and furious.”17
But this protected and warm nook can be enjoyed only during the months in the depth of winter. When the sun begins to gather warmth, the heat becomes oppressive, the lungs gasp for air, and one feels desirous to be invested with sufficient faith to be able to move the mountains some miles back. There are two Mentones, the very dashing, frivolous, up-to-date modern town, with expensive tastes; bound for life to the elderly Mentone, grave, a little dilapidated, and intent only on business. But young and gay Mentone is stealing an arm round the old partner and laying hold of the even more sheltered and balmy bay beyond, now dotted with villas, and punctuated with hotels.
Mentone is pre-eminently the district of lemons and oranges, grown here for the fruit, and not, as at Grasse, for the flower. Lemons at Mentone are more numerous than oranges. They are not so beautiful, as the fruit has not the golden hue of the orange – it is green or pale sulphur yellow. The fruit of the orange tree will bear 7° Fahr. below freezing point without being seriously affected, but the lemon tree is much more sensitive, and is killed by 8°; it may also perish by over-much moisture in the atmosphere. When a sharp frost sets in, the owners of a plantation of oranges or lemons are in dire alarm, and light fires in the groves, strewing green leaves and grass over the flames to produce smoke, which to a considerable extent prevents radiation, and the temperature falling too low.
The lemon tree flowers throughout the year, never resting, flower and fruit being on the tree at the same time. On no other part of the coast do these trees grow as freely as they do at Mentone and Bordighera. But there are no ancient lemon trees, as about once in thirty-five years a bitter winter sets in, and the poor trees perish.
The orange tree flowers once only in the year, and bears but a single crop. The fruit ripens in autumn and winter. We, in England, never have the orange in its perfection, as it is picked when green or turning golden and ripens in the cases in which it is packed. But for the orange to be in perfection, luscious and sweet, it should be left on the tree till the end of April, or even into May. It is a beautiful sight, during the winter, to see the orange groves laden with their glorious fruit. The most delicious oranges are those with thin skins, the Mandarin or Tangerine, which ripen earlier than do the Portuguese thick-skinned species.
The history of Mentone is not of great interest, and it may be dismissed in a few words. Mentone and rock-perched Roquebrune belonged to the Prince of Monaco. The Grimaldi, John II., having quarrelled with Genoa, appealed for help to the Duke of Savoy, and to buy this help, in 1448 ceded these two places to him for an annual rent of 200 gold florins. However, the Grimaldi got this territory back again, but lost it in 1848, when Mentone and Roquebrune revolted against the fiscal burdens imposed on them by the Prince, and declared themselves independent republics. The President of the Republic of Mentone was Charles Trenca, who died in 1853. Finally, in 1860, both places were united to France, and the claims of the Prince of Monaco were bought off for the sum of four million francs.
There is little of architectural interest in Mentone. The church, built in 1619, and added to in 1675, is in the tasteless style of the period, but tower and spire are effective from a distance. In the church is preserved a processional cross, the staff of which is formed out of a Turkish lance taken by Prince Honoré I. of Monaco, in the battle of Lepanto, 1571. But if Mentone be somewhat deficient in picturesque features, the same cannot be said of Roquebrune, which for so many centuries shared its fortunes. It is dominated by the castle of the Lascaris. At Roquebrune, every year, on the first Sunday in August, the Mystery of the Passion is represented in a procession that illustrates the various scenes of the portentous tragedy. It starts from the chapel of N.D. de la Pansa, on the east side of the little town, a chapel decorated with frescoes of the fifteenth century. The narrow streets, passing under vaults, the quaintness of the houses, above all the superb panorama commanded by Roquebrune, make it a place meriting a visit.
Still more quaint and picturesque is Castellar, forming a quadrilateral fortress, planted on a plateau commanding two valleys. It is composed of three long parallel streets. The exterior of the village or town is the wall that encloses the place, and the houses thus form the wall, and look outward only through eyelet holes. Turrets flank the angles. The chapel of S. Sebastian is romanesque. Here also the Lascaris had a palace. Castellar stands 1,200 feet above the sea. We can hardly realise till how late a period the pirates of the Mediterranean were a scourge to this coast, and forced the natives to build every village and town in a place not easily accessible, and form of it a fortress.
For many centuries first the Saracens, then the Turks and Moors of Tunis and Algiers, ravaged this coast. Not so much for gold and silver – for of this the poor fishermen, shepherds, and tillers of the soil had none, but to capture slaves. The women were handsome and the men able-bodied.
“There are still men living at Mentone,” says Dr. Bennet, “who in the early part of this century (i. e. 19th) were seized on the coast by Moors, and subsequently lived for years as slaves at Algiers and Tunis.” Indeed, piracy reigned supreme on the Mediterranean until the year 1816, when Lord Exmouth bombarded Algiers; but it was not finally stamped out till the conquest of Algiers by the French in 1830. When Lord Exmouth bombarded Algiers, there were thousands of Christian slaves, mostly captured on the Riviera, serving in the Algerine galleys. It was against the sudden descent of these pirates that the watch towers were erected along the coast, which may be seen at intervals as far as Genoa.
At Castellar, on the Place de la Mairie, is given on January 20th, every year, an open-air ball which winds up the series of festivities, religious and secular, accorded in honour of the patronal saint, S. Sebastian.
Mentone was “invented” by Dr. J. Henry Bennet, whose delightful book on Winter and Spring on the Shores of the Mediterranean, 1861, has gone through several editions, and is still the best guide to such as are in quest of a winter resort. He settled at Mentone in 1859, and speedily appreciated its climatic advantages. These advantages are inestimable for the worst winter months. But when the sun gathers strength, it is advisable for the traveller to break his return journey to the cold and fogs of England by a cool bath in S. Raphael “ventosa.”
Sir Thomas Hanbury has also done much for the place. His gardens are well worth seeing. An electric tram will take a visitor along the bay to a fountain erected by Sir Thomas Hanbury, near the frontier of Italy. That frontier runs down the torrent of S. Louis, where may be seen, on a fine day, sketchers and painters engaged in transferring to their books or canvases the impression produced by this ravine, with arches one above the other, for the railway and for the Corniche Road, whilst below are women washing garments in the little stream. The magnificent cliffs rise here in sheer precipices, and are composed of nummulitic limestone. Formerly the headland stretched to the sea, leaving only a strip between the rocks and the waves, along which strip ran the Via Aurelia. The rock was perforated with caves, nine in number. But it has been cut back for building stone, and the grottoes have been much reduced in depth. The caves served as a habitation for man from a remote period, and not solely as a habitation, but also as a sepulchre. The Barma Grande was filled to a depth of thirty feet of deposit, that deposit consisting of fallen stones, bones of beasts, flint weapons and tools, remains of hearths and charcoal, and human skeletons.
It has been dug into by many and various explorers, and not always with judgment, and with precise record of the depths at which various discoveries have been made.
The present proprietor used the soil for the purpose of making a garden, and it was only when he came upon human remains that it occurred to him that he could turn the cavern into a show place, and get more out of it in that way than he could by growing cabbages in the soil removed from it. In these caves a considerable number of skeletons have been found; in the first, the Grotte des Enfants, two bodies were discovered of children of six and four years old, lying at a depth of eight feet, side by side. They had evidently been clothed in little loin-cloths embroidered with pierced shells.
In the fourth cave, the Grotte du Cavillon, was found the skeleton of an adult twenty feet below the surface, lying on his left side, the cheek resting on the left hand, and the head and body had been dusted over with red ochre, which had stained the bones. The head had been covered with a sort of cap made of, or adorned with, perforated shells and dogs’ teeth, and similar ornaments must have been stitched on to garters about his legs.
The sixth cave, Bausso da Torre, furnished two bodies of adults and one of a child, and with these were flint weapons, bracelets, and necklets of shells.
In 1884 M. Louis Julien found a human skeleton lying at a depth of twenty-five feet, the head bedded in red ochre, and near it numerous flakes of flint. Since then others have been found, and the present proprietor has preserved them in situ, under glass, in the cave, at the precise levels at which discovered. In 1892, three were found, all lying on their left sides. One of these had pertained to a young woman. All three had been buried along with their personal ornaments, and all with the ferruginous powder over them.
Finally, in 1894, another human skeleton was unearthed at a higher level; and soon after again another.
All these interments belong to man at a period before the use of metals was known, and when the only tools employed were of bone and flint. The purpose of covering them with red oxide was to give to the bodies a fictitious appearance of life. The men were of a great size, tall and well built, taller indeed than are the natives of the Riviera at the present day; and the heads are well developed – the skulls contained plenty of brains, and there is nothing simian about the faces.
A little prehistoric museum has been built on a platform near the caves, where most of the relics found in them are preserved; but some are in the museum at Mentone itself.
CHAPTER XVI
BORDIGHERA
Ventimiglia – Internecine conflicts – Republics – Genoa obtains the Ligurian coast – Siege of Ventimiglia – Guelf and Ghibellines – The Lascaris family: Paul Louis Lascaris – The Cathedral and Baptistery – S. Michaele – Camporosso – Dolceacqua – Bordighera – San Ampelio – Relics – Retreat of the sea
VENTIMIGLIA, crowning a rocky ridge above the Roya, was formerly the capital of a county comprising of all the coast to Porto Maurizio. What Mr. Adington Symonds says of Italian towns generally in the Middle Ages applies equally to those on the Riviera: —
“It would seem as though the most ancient furies of antagonistic races, enchained and suspended for centuries by the magic of Rome, had been unloosed; as though the indigenous populations, tamed by antique culture, were reverting to their primeval instincts. Nor is this the end of the perplexity. Not only are the cities at war with each other, but they are plunged in ceaseless strife within the circuit of their ramparts. The people with the nobles, the burghs with the castles, the plebeians with the burgher aristocracy, the men of commerce with the men of arms and ancient lineage, Guelfs and Ghibellines, clash together in persistent fury. One half the city expels the other half. The exiles roam abroad, cement alliances, and return to extirpate their conquerors. Fresh proscriptions and new expulsions follow. Again alliances are made and revolutions are accomplished. All the ancient feuds of the towns are crossed, recrossed, and tangled in a web of madness that defies analysis.”18
Certain prominent and prevailing features pertain to this portion of the Ligurian seaboard. The towns, even the villages, are planted in spots as inaccessible as could be obtained; they were all walled about in the rocks whereon they stood, and were so crowded within their walls that the “high street” does not attain to a width beyond nine feet, and every lateral street is six feet and even less in width. The houses run to a great height, and hold themselves up mutually by throwing out buttresses, arched beneath, for their stay one against another. The inhabitants of the seaboard were driven to this by fear of the Moorish pirates.
These little communities organised themselves as republics, with their consuls, freely elected. But the nobles, living in their castles, looked upon them with jealous eyes. They had their serfs under them, and they saw that these villages and towns were growing in consequence and in wealth. Unhappily every town was at enmity with every other town – each was jealous of the other; and the nobles offered their services, generally to a distant town against that nearest at hand. When they had served against the rival place, they asked for, and were allowed, a town residence. Then the palace of the noble in the walled city, or even village, became a centre of intrigue. Parties were formed in every town, and the nobles and wealthy burghers arrogated to themselves supreme control over the affairs of the place. This led to revolts and fighting in the streets. On the Ligurian coast, the Republic of Genoa stepped in, took advantage of these civic broils, and, by plausible assurances of good government under her strong hand, managed to get nearly the whole seaboard, with its towns, under her protection. The protection Genoa afforded soon turned to exaction and interference with the liberties of the towns she protected. Thenceforth ensued a series of revolts.
Ventimiglia, which was a place under the rule of its count, was taken and sacked by the Genoese in 1140, and its count constrained to make submission. The mouth of the Roya, with its harbour, excited the jealousy and ambition of Genoa, as did in like manner Nice and Villefranche; for Genoa desired to monopolise the whole of the trade of the Mediterranean along the Ligurian coast and Corsica. Allies and friendly towns could traffic freely with Genoa; but the ships of independent states were taxed, and their freights almost crushed by onerous duties, before they could enter the port. The sea-coast towns like Ventimiglia and Villefranche, not under Genoese control, were a hindrance to the control and monopoly of the entire trade by the grasping Republic, consequently the Genoese were persistent in their attempts to force them to submission.
In 1196 the count and the Genoese combined against the city of Ventimiglia, and failing, in spite of a siege of two months, to capture the town, they organised a league of the whole of Liguria against the gallant and resolute place. The allies established their camp on the Cape of S. Ampelio and ravaged the country, but could not reduce Ventimiglia. Then the Genoese spread a report that a large Ventimiglian galley which had been cruising off the Spanish coast had been captured, and that all the crew would be hung unless the town surrendered. The Ventimiglians, in great alarm for their kinsmen, submitted, and the Genoese entered and took possession of the town.
In the year 1238 ensued a general rising in places of importance along the coast occasioned by the intolerable exactions of Genoa, and its interference with the liberties of the towns. The governor of Ventimiglia took refuge in the castle and sent a messenger to Genoa for help.
Fourteen Genoese galleys were despatched to his aid, and hovered about the mouth of the Roya. After a severe conflict, the Genoese succeeded in landing and taking the city. At this time a number of the citizens migrated and founded a colony at Bordighera, but of this the Genoese disapproved, and they sent a fleet in 1239 and destroyed the little settlement. The contests of Guelfs and Ghibellines broke out, to aggravate the disorder and misery of the country.
Some clear-headed men saw that Italy was, like ancient Greece, a congeries of conflicting atoms with no bond, no consistence, and no chance of becoming a nation, a power, that no chance existed of domestic strife being stayed unless there were some strong central government to hold all the jarring elements in compulsory quietude. They looked back to the grand days of Rome, and hoped, under an emperor, to make of Italy once again what she had been, a dominant power in the world, and one in which, within her Italian borders, peace would be maintained. This was the Ghibelline dream and policy. But the opposed faction was for the maintenance of the present disintegration, the continuance of the independence of every little town, or rather of its own party in the town. The Pope naturally was zealous on this side. He dreaded an united and strong Italy, which would control him. His only chance of occupying the most prominent place and exerting the greatest power in the Peninsula lay in fomenting disorder, in setting every princeling and every town by the ears. Accordingly, whilst posturing as champion of the liberties of the republics, he was actuated solely by self-interest, which lay in keeping all powers in Italy weak by periodical blood-letting. The Papacy was the great and persistent enemy to national unity. The party of independence was that of the Guelfs.
Frederick II. united the empire and the kingdom of the Two Sicilies under one sceptre. Master of the South, he sought to recover the lost prerogatives of the empire in Lombardy and Tuscany, and it is probable that he would have succeeded and consolidated Italy into one kingdom but for the bitter hostility of the Papacy, which carried on an implacable war of extermination against the house of Hohenstaufen. The struggle was for an united Italy, a strong Italy, a peaceful Italy, and this was precisely what the Popes would not endure to have. They dreaded the formation of a single kingdom in Italy, with, as a consequence, the presence there of a rival and predominant power. But this purpose of the Popes was not seen clearly at the time. Dante saw it; he knew that the future of Italy was involved in the contest, and he could not understand aloofness in the strife. He terms those who did not feel the pangs and ecstasies of partisanship in this mortal strife, “wretches who never lived,” and he consigned them to wander homeless on the skirts of limbo, among the off-scourings of creation.
Banners, ensigns, heraldic colours, followed the divisions of faction. Ghibellines wore the feathers in their caps on one side, Guelfs on the other. Ghibellines cut up their fruit at table crosswise, Guelfs straight down; Ghibellines sported white roses, Guelfs affected those that were red. Yawning, throwing of dice, gestures in speaking, and swearing, served as pretexts for distinguishing the one half of Italy from the other. So late as the middle of the fifteenth century, the Ghibellines of Milan pulled down the figure of Christ from the high altar of Crema, and burnt it, because the face was turned towards the Guelf shoulder.19 The Grimaldi were strong Guelfs; the county of Nice was so as well, but the town was Ghibelline. The Lascaris of Tende and Ventimiglia, the Dorias of Dolceacqua and Oneglia were Ghibelline.
The county of Ventimiglia had been formed in 778 by Charlemagne, and given by him to a Genoese noble, Guido Guerra, with the title of Marquess of the Maritime Alps, on condition that he should maintain at his own cost a company of soldiers to defend the littoral within his Marquisate. The county passed in the thirteenth century to William, son of the Greek Emperor Lascaris II., of Nicæa, who married the heiress and descendant of the Guido Guerra family. But William Lascaris soon after ceded the county to Charles of Anjou, in exchange for diverse other fiefs in the interior of Provence, amongst others that of Tourvès, between Brignoles and S. Maximin, where may be seen the ruins of the noble castle of the Lascaris. In 1266, Charles of Anjou, in his turn, ceded the county of Ventimiglia to the Grimaldi and Fieschi, consuls of the Republic of Genoa, on the condition that they should furnish provisions and munitions to the Provençal troops occupying the kingdom of Naples.
The county of Tende was founded by Charles of Anjou for the Princess Irene, daughter of Theodore Lascaris, and sister of the above-mentioned William, when she married Robert Guerra of the family of the Counts of Ventimiglia, and Robert then abandoned his patronymic of Guerra and assumed that of Lascaris. The county of Tende subsisted till 1579, and was then ceded by Henrietta, Duchess of Maine, last descendant of the Lascaris-Guerra to Emmanuel-Philibert, Duke of Savoy.
Theodore Lascaris I. had married Anna, daughter of Alexis III., and he was chosen Emperor of Constantinople at the time when the Crusaders occupied Byzantium and founded there a Latin empire, under Baldwin of Flanders, 1204. Theodore was constrained to fly into Anatolia and make of Nicæa the capital of the Greek empire; so it remained till the expulsion of the Latins in 1261. The only daughter of Theodore Lascaris I. married John Ducas, who succeeded to the Empire of Nicæa. Ducas died in 1255, leaving a son, Theodore Lascaris II., who died in 1259, and his eight-year-old son John remained to be the victim of the unscrupulous Michael Palæologus, who had his eyes torn out. This John had, however, five sisters, and one of these, Eudoxia, in 1263 married William, Count of Ventimiglia; and another, Irene, became, as already said, the mother and ancestress of the Lascaris Counts of Tende. The Lascaris arms are: gules, a two-headed eagle displayed, or.
Paul Louis Lascaris, who entered the Order of Malta, belonged to the Ventimiglian branch of the family. He was born in Provence in 1774. He was on the isle when Napoleon appeared before Malta in 1798. Hompesch was Grand Master, a weak old man; the knights of the Order might easily have defended the island till the English fleet under Nelson came to its aid, but French gold and promises had created a party of traitors within; of these Lascaris was chief, and on June 11th La Valetta capitulated. “On my word,” said General Caffarelli, “it is well that there was someone inside to unlock the gates to us, for otherwise we should never have got in.”
After his treason Lascaris did not venture to remain in Malta, but attended Bonaparte to Egypt. Upon the rupture of the Treaty of Amiens in 1803, Napoleon, having resolved on attacking the English in India, commissioned Lascaris to go to the East, there make the necessary studies for the execution of his plan, and explore the frontiers, map down roads, wells, etc. Whilst Lascaris was in the East he married a beautiful Georgian akin to Soliman Pacha. In 1810 he visited in succession the Arab tribes in Mesopotamia, and turned his face homewards in 1814. On reaching Constantinople he heard of the fall of Bonaparte, and departed for Cairo, where he died shortly after, and all his notes and maps fell into the hands of the British consul there. All known of his adventures in the East comes from a narrative given to the world by his dragoman Fatalba.
