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Jobson was informed that six days journey from St. John's Mart, the name which he gave to the factory at Tenda, was a town called Mombar, where there was much trade for gold. Three stages farther was Jaye, whence the gold came. Some of the native merchants, finding that Jobson had not any salt with him, refused to enter into any commercial dealings with him, and returned highly dissatisfied.
It looks as though we're to have a bad thunderstorm, and, if so, we shall catch it up on the Col di Tenda!" Thus impelled, the quartette went back to the well-lit little building, where the beetle-browed driver again chaffed the police-agents, while the Customs officer placed his rubber stamp upon the paper, scribbled his initials and charged three-lire-twenty as fee.
In February, 1794, he was appointed at Nice general in command of the artillery of the Army of Italy, which drove the Sardinian troops from several positions between Ventimiglia and Oneglia. Thence, swinging round by passes of the Maritime Alps, they outflanked the positions of the Austro-Sardinian forces at the Col di Tenda, which had defied all attack in front.
On both sides of the Tenda were hidden fortresses, and at many points squads of Alpine soldiers were manoeuvring, for the frontier is very strongly guarded from a military point of view, and both tunnel and road is, it is said, so mined that it might be blown up and destroyed at any moment.
Bondou is bounded on the east by Bambouk, on the south-east and south by Tenda and the Simbani wilderness, on the south-west by Woolli, on the west by Foota Torra, and on the north by Kajaaga. The country, like that of Woolli, is very generally covered with woods, but the land is more elevated, and, towards the Faleme river, rises into considerable hills.
Thus, the incessant broils between the Lascaris of Tenda, the Grimaldis of Monaco and the Dorias of Dolceacqua desolated the surrounding country, and often reduced the city to a state of siege. The Niçois were compelled to keep up a perpetual guerilla, which, however inspiriting, was by no means conducive to their material prosperity.
Accordingly, Fortune's favorites of all countries have long, even from the old Roman times downward, thickly studded the district with their villas and gardens and palaces and parks. But the possession of a villa on one of the Italian lakes implies that the happy owner is nothing very much less than a millionaire. And it has been reserved for these quite latter days to find the means of placing within the reach of the many all the delights which were heretofore the exclusive privilege of the few. In no instance has this been done with so complete a measure of success as at Varese. The hotel is situated about a mile from the little town. Its gardens look down on the lake, the intervening slope being covered with forest. To the left, as one stands at the garden-front of the house, looking toward the lake, are the hills in the midst of which the Lake of Lugano nestles, and on the right, beyond the Lago Maggiore, is a view of Monte Rosa with its eternal snows, perhaps the finest to be found anywhere. I have seen Monte Rosa and its chain very finely from the top of the pass called the Col di Tenda, between Turin and Nice, but I think the view from the terrace in front of this house is finer. Immediately at the back of the house we have the hills mountains they would be called in any other part of Europe of which Monte Generoso, now covered with snow, though with a hotel on the top, is the most conspicuous. The country more immediately around us is a district of rolling hills, partly vineyard, but in a larger degree wooded, and here and there diversified by the well-cared-for gardens of some large villa. Our outlook, it will be admitted, is pleasant enough. The house I am speaking of, now known under the style and title of the "Excelsior Hotel," was recently a magnificent villa of the Morosini family at Venice. The name will not be new to any who have visited Venice; for the traveler, even if his tastes did not lead him to take any heed of such matters, will not have been allowed by the ciceroni to overlook the tombs of the doges of that family in the grand old church of the beheaded Saint John, San Giovanni decollata, or "San Zuan Degol
Departing from Kirwani on the morning of the 20th we entered the Tenda Wilderness, of two days' journey. The woods were very thick, and the country shelved towards the south-west. About ten o'clock we met a coffle of twenty-six people and seven loaded asses returning from the Gambia.
Liszt and Karasowski, who follows him, say that the Countess sang the Hymn to the Virgin by Stradella, and a Psalm by Marcello; on the other hand, Gutmann most positively asserted that she sang a Psalm by Marcello and an air by Pergolesi; whereas Franchomme insisted on her having sung an air from Bellini's Beatrice di Tenda, and that only once, and nothing else.
To cross the Alps by the Col di Tenda and the tunnel would, I knew, take about six hours from Nice by way of Sospel. The despatch was sent from Milan, from which I guessed that for some reason Bindo was about to enter France by the back door, namely, by the almost unguarded frontier at Tenda.
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