NICE, September 2, 1764.
DEAR DOCTOR,--I wrote in May to Mr. B-- at Geneva, and gave him what
information he desired to have, touching the conveniences of Nice. I
shall now enter into the same detail, for the benefit of such of your
friends or patients, as may have occasion to try this climate.
The journey from Calais to Nice, of four persons in a coach, or two
post-chaises, with a servant on horseback, travelling post, may be
performed with ease, for about one hundred and twenty pounds, including
every expence. Either at Calais or at Paris, you will always find a
travelling coach or berline, which you may buy for thirty or forty
guineas, and this will serve very well to reconvey you to your own
country.
In the town of Nice, you will find no ready-furnished lodgings for a
whole family. Just without one of the gates, there are two houses to be
let, ready-furnished, for about five loui'dores per month. As for the
country houses in this neighbourhood, they are damp in winter, and
generally without chimnies; and in summer they are rendered
uninhabitable by the heat and the vermin. If you hire a tenement in
Nice, you must take it for a year certain; and this will cost you about
twenty pounds sterling. For this price, I have a ground floor paved
with brick, consisting of a kitchen, two large halls, a couple of good
rooms with chimnies, three large closets that serve for bed-chambers,
and dressing-rooms, a butler's room, and three apartments for servants,
lumber or stores, to which we ascend by narrow wooden stairs. I have
likewise two small gardens, well stocked with oranges, lemons, peaches,
figs, grapes, corinths, sallad, and pot-herbs. It is supplied with a
draw-well of good water, and there is another in the vestibule of the
house, which is cool, large, and magnificent. You may hire furniture
for such a tenement for about two guineas a month: but I chose rather
to buy what was necessary; and this cost me about sixty pounds. I
suppose it will fetch me about half the money when I leave the place.
It is very difficult to find a tolerable cook at Nice. A common maid,
who serves the people of the country, for three or four livres a month,
will not live with an English family under eight or ten. They are all
slovenly, slothful, and unconscionable cheats. The markets at Nice are
tolerably well supplied. Their beef, which comes from Piedmont, is
pretty good, and we have it all the year. In the winter we have
likewise excellent pork, and delicate lamb; but the mutton is
indifferent. Piedmont, also, affords us delicious capons, fed with
maize; and this country produces excellent turkeys, but very few geese.
Chickens and pullets are extremely meagre. I have tried to fatten them,
without success. In summer they are subject to the pip, and die in
great numbers. Autumn and winter are the seasons for game; hares,
partridges, quails, wild-pigeons, woodcocks, snipes, thrushes,
beccaficas, and ortolans. Wild-boar is sometimes found in the
mountains: it has a delicious taste, not unlike that of the wild hog in
Jamaica; and would make an excellent barbecue, about the beginning of
winter, when it is in good case: but, when meagre, the head only is
presented at tables. Pheasants are very scarce. As for the heath-game,
I never saw but one cock, which my servant bought in the market, and
brought home; but the commandant's cook came into my kitchen, and
carried it of, after it was half plucked, saying, his master had
company to dinner. The hares are large, plump, and juicy. The
partridges are generally of the red sort; large as pullets, and of a
good flavour: there are also some grey partridges in the mountains; and
another sort of a white colour, that weigh four or five pounds each.
Beccaficas are smaller than sparrows, but very fat, and they are
generally eaten half raw. The best way of dressing them is to stuff
them into a roll, scooped of it's crum; to baste them well with butter,
and roast them, until they are brown and crisp. The ortolans are kept
in cages, and crammed, until they die of fat, then eaten as dainties.
The thrush is presented with the trail, because the bird feeds on
olives. They may as well eat the trail of a sheep, because it feeds on
the aromatic herbs of the mountain. In the summer, we have beef, veal,
and mutton, chicken, and ducks; which last are very fat, and very
flabby. All the meat is tough in this season, because the excessive
heat, and great number of flies, will not admit of its being kept any
time after it is killed. Butter and milk, though not very delicate, we
have all the year. Our tea and fine sugar come from Marseilles, at a
very reasonable price.
Nice is not without variety of fish; though they are not counted so
good in their kinds as those of the ocean. Soals, and flat-fish in
general, are scarce. Here are some mullets, both grey and red. We
sometimes see the dory, which is called St Pierre; with rock-fish,
bonita, and mackarel. The gurnard appears pretty often; and there is
plenty of a kind of large whiting, which eats pretty well; but has not
the delicacy of that which is caught on our coast. One of the best fish
of this country, is called Le Loup, about two or three pounds in
weight; white, firm, and well-flavoured. Another, no-way inferior to
it, is the Moustel, about the same size; of a dark-grey colour, and
short, blunt snout; growing thinner and flatter from the shoulders
downwards, so as to resemble a soal at the tail. This cannot be the
mustela of the antients, which is supposed to be the sea lamprey. Here
too are found the vyvre, or, as we call it, weaver; remarkable for its
long, sharp spines, so dangerous to the fingers of the fishermen. We
have abundance of the saepia, or cuttle-fish, of which the people in
this country make a delicate ragout; as also of the polype de mer,
which is an ugly animal, with long feelers, like tails, which they
often wind about the legs of the fishermen. They are stewed with
onions, and eat something like cow-heel. The market sometimes affords
the ecrivisse de mer, which is a lobster without claws, of a sweetish
taste; and there are a few rock oysters, very small and very rank.
Sometimes the fishermen find under water, pieces of a very hard cement,
like plaister of Paris, which contain a kind of muscle, called la
datte, from its resemblance to a date. These petrifactions are commonly
of a triangular form and may weigh about twelve or fifteen pounds each
and one of them may contain a dozen of these muscles which have nothing
extraordinary in the taste or flavour, though extremely curious, as
found alive and juicy, in the heart of a rock, almost as hard as
marble, without any visible communication with the air or water. I take
it for granted, however, that the inclosing cement is porous, and
admits the finer parts of the surrounding fluid. In order to reach the
muscles, this cement must be broke with large hammers; and it may be
truly said, the kernal is not worth the trouble of cracking the shell.
[These are found in great plenty at Ancona and other parts of the
Adriatic, where they go by the name of Bollani, as we are informed by
Keysler.] Among the fish of this country, there is a very ugly animal
of the eel species, which might pass for a serpent: it is of a dusky,
black colour, marked with spots of yellow, about eighteen inches, or
two feet long. The Italians call it murena; but whether it is the fish
which had the same name among the antient Romans, I cannot pretend to
determine. The antient murena was counted a great delicacy, and was
kept in ponds for extraordinary occasions. Julius Caesar borrowed six
thousand for one entertainment: but I imagined this was the river
lamprey. The murena of this country is in no esteem, and only eaten by
the poor people.
Craw-fish and trout are rarely found in the rivers among the mountains.
The sword-fish is much esteemed in Nice, and called l'empereur, about
six or seven feet long: but I have never seen it. [Since I wrote the
above letter, I have eaten several times of this fish, which is as
white as the finest veal, and extremely delicate. The emperor
associates with the tunny fish, and is always taken in their company.]
They are very scarce; and when taken, are generally concealed, because
the head belongs to the commandant, who has likewise the privilege of
buying the best fish at a very low price. For which reason, the choice
pieces are concealed by the fishermen, and sent privately to Piedmont
or Genoa. But, the chief fisheries on this coast are of the sardines,
anchovies, and tunny. These are taken in small quantities all the year;
but spring and summer is the season when they mostly abound. In June
and July, a fleet of about fifty fishing-boats puts to sea every
evening about eight o'clock, and catches anchovies in immense
quantities. One small boat sometimes takes in one night twenty-five
rup, amounting to six hundred weight; but it must be observed, that the
pound here, as well as in other parts of Italy, consists but of twelve
ounces. Anchovies, besides their making a considerable article in the
commerce of Nice, are a great resource in all families. The noblesse
and burgeois sup on sallad and anchovies, which are eaten on all their
meagre days. The fishermen and mariners all along this coast have
scarce any other food but dry bread, with a few pickled anchovies; and
when the fish is eaten, they rub their crusts with the brine. Nothing
can be more delicious than fresh anchovies fried in oil: I prefer them
to the smelts of the Thames. I need not mention, that the sardines and
anchovies are caught in nets; salted, barrelled, and exported into all
the different kingdoms and states of Europe. The sardines, however, are
largest and fattest in the month of September. A company of adventurers
have farmed the tunny-fishery of the king, for six years; a monopoly,
for which they pay about three thousand pounds sterling. They are at a
very considerable expence for nets, boats, and attendance. Their nets
are disposed in a very curious manner across the small bay of St.
Hospice, in this neighbourhood, where the fish chiefly resort. They are
never removed, except in the winter, and when they want repair: but
there are avenues for the fish to enter, and pass, from one inclosure
to another. There is a man in a boat, who constantly keeps watch. When
he perceives they are fairly entered, he has a method for shutting all
the passes, and confining the fish to one apartment of the net, which
is lifted up into the boat, until the prisoners are taken and secured.
The tunny-fish generally runs from fifty to one hundred weight; but
some of them are much larger. They are immediately gutted, boiled, and
cut in slices. The guts and head afford oil: the slices are partly
dried, to be eaten occasionally with oil and vinegar, or barrelled up
in oil, to be exported. It is counted a delicacy in Italy and Piedmont,
and tastes not unlike sturgeon. The famous pickle of the ancients,
called garum, was made of the gills and blood of the tunny, or thynnus.
There is a much more considerable fishery of it in Sardinia, where it
is said to employ four hundred persons; but this belongs to the duc de
St. Pierre. In the neighbourhood of Villa Franca, there are people
always employed in fishing for coral and sponge, which grow adhering to
the rocks under water. Their methods do not favour much of ingenuity.
For the coral, they lower down a swab, composed of what is called
spunyarn on board our ships of war, hanging in distinct threads, and
sunk by means of a great weight, which, striking against the coral in
its descent, disengages it from the rocks; and some of the pieces being
intangled among the threads of the swab, are brought up with it above
water. The sponge is got by means of a cross-stick, fitted with hooks,
which being lowered down, fastens upon it, and tears it from the rocks.
In some parts of the Adriatic and Archipelago, these substances are
gathered by divers, who can remain five minutes below water. But I will
not detain you one minute longer; though I must observe, that there is
plenty of fine samphire growing along all these rocks, neglected and
unknown.--Adieu.