THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS, NICE-CIMIEZ: DIRECTRESS, THE COMTESSE DE
LAGRANGE
These prettily situated Gardens are well worth a visit, if only for
the magnificent views obtainable from them. They can be reached from
Nice by excellent electric tram-cars having first and second class
compartments. (Why are tram-cars so very much better abroad than in
England?) Close by the Gardens is the fine Excelsior Regina Hotel,
where our late Queen Victoria used to stay. The rooms in the hotel
should be visited on the way back from the Gardens; an excellent lunch
can be had there, for the cooking is truly first-rate.
The Zoological Gardens were founded by the late Comte de Lagrange, a
great traveller and naturalist, who died in 1893 at Singapore, at the
early age of thirty-six. His widow, the Comtesse de Lagrange, is now
sole proprietress and directress.
The entrance fee is one franc, and one franc for a carriage; the latter
fee can be saved by alighting at the entrance and simply walking in on
foot.
The Gardens are of small extent, and the whole of the animals and birds
can be seen in a very short time.
As at Marseilles, I experienced the most shocking weather at Cimiez,
and the first day not a ray of sun shone, whilst a shower of rain
almost gutted my camera. There is a nice collection of lions at this
Zoo, and they form quite the greatest attraction of the place. The
old mother, which is to be seen in a cage close by a large tiger, has
produced three litters of young, all of which are now to be seen in
the Gardens. The father of these lions died at the age of seventeen.
The children of this pair comprise two lions three and a half years
old, three lions two and a half years old, and three lions fourteen
months old. All these eight animals are extraordinarily tame and
healthy-looking. I was enabled to stand right up against the cages,
without the slightest fear of getting mauled, in order to photograph
them. One of the oldest lions allowed me to stroke him; and when I
put my face up against the bars, he at once licked it with his rough
tongue--a perfect feline kiss. I was perfectly charmed with these
lions, and was quite loth to leave them. In another set of cages was
a common leopard, and the invariably savage black variety, with its
beautiful yellow eyes and snarling jaws. It is a curious fact that
these black leopards are nearly always savage. There were two brown
bears and a polar bear in pits opposite the young lions, and a poor
old brown bear, totally blind, in a pit by himself. There was a very
handsome old ‘black buck’ from India, with a younger one much lighter
in colour. It was comical to watch them at play, butting at each other
with their horns. It is often extremely difficult to photograph these
creatures in confinement, because they are so tame. This sounds odd,
but the difficulty lies in the fact that the animals, expecting to be
fed, will insist on coming close up to you to the bars, and utterly
refuse to go away, in spite of shouts, hisses, showers of stones, and
prods with umbrellas. One cannot go back one’s self with the camera,
or the bars or wire-netting will show in the photograph, and look
unsightly. Oddly enough, the bars or wire-netting do not show in the
photograph when the camera is held close up against them.
An ostrich and its baby could be seen near a rather mangy duck-pond.
There were also some monkeys, animals I am not fond of; they are too
much like human beings. But one of them was amusing. When a man said
‘Salût’ to him, he saluted in proper military fashion; but if a woman
asked him to do so, he would do nothing of the sort, but would snarl
and show every symptom of anger and annoyance. He was, like some really
good military men, a true woman-hater and despiser.
On the second day I visited the Cimiez Zoo I was more lucky in the
weather, for it was a lovely sunny day. On the way there I was obliged
to run the gauntlet of scores of masqueraders, as the Nice carnival
was on. They threw hard pellets of clay with great force into my face,
and I can assure the reader they hurt considerably. Nearly every other
person I met wore a wire mask to protect himself from these attacks. At
length the very excellent electric tram was reached, which soon brings
one up to the Zoo. The head keeper, Andruetto François, is a very
genial and chatty man, and helped me a great deal in taking photographs
of all the lions, of which he seemed immensely fond and proud. I took
him in the lion’s den, and a very pretty picture of a fine lion in the
act of kissing him was unfortunately spoilt in the developing.
At the back of the lion-cages was a side-show, given by Richard List
from Hamburg, who performed twice daily with a ‘happy family’ of lions,
tigers, leopards, bears, monkeys, dogs, etc. Close by were a pair of
extremely pretty white goats, a rather mangy camel, a bull zebu or
Indian sacred bull, some eagles, and a picturesque duck-pond.
The Gardens certainly looked better bathed in sunshine, and the view of
the Alpes Maritimes seen from them was superb.