FRANCE.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XXII, Issue 6, 17 January 1863, Page 3

FRANCE.

[PBOM OUB OWN COBBESPONDENT.] Aix-lbs-bains, October 18. Those who imagine that the Emperor Napoleon, in making the acquisition of Savoy, has put; France in possession only of a valuable strategic frontier, the loftiest of European mountains, hurdygurdists, and white mice, would do well to enlarge the circle of their impressions on the subject by a ramble of a few weeks through a region whose scenery — putting Mont Blanc and its immediate neighbourhood out of the comparison — is only lea 3 magnificent than that of Switzerland. Snow-capped mountains, precipitous cliffs, gracefully undulating hills, small romantic valleys, lakes as blue as that of Geneva, silvery mountain streams and foamy cascades, picturesque villages, not always very clean, hoary old towns, and lfgendary ruins, make up the ensemble of a district everyway, worthy to attract the tourist, yet comparatively little known beyond the limit of its own rocky ramparts. Nor do the features alreqdy enumerated constitute the only claims' of Savoy to the attention, of its neighbours, for it possesses, among its other natural gifts, some of the most valuable thermal springs in existence; those of Aix, whose renown dates from old Roman times, being the most efficacious yet discovered in rheumatism, gout, and various disorders of the osseous, cutaneous, and nervous systems. The situation of these baths, on the shore of the beautiful Lake of Bourget, in a most lovely valley, encircled by magnificent mountain ranges, is both picturesque in the highost degree, and so sheltered as to have won for this favoured wateriug-placo the appellation of " the IS ice of Savoy." The Bg, orange, pomegranate, oleander, and jujube flourish here, all the year I'ound, in the open air ; the gardens are blooming with roses, jessamines, carnations, mignonnctte, and scores of other flowers, from April till December ; and so late does the summer often prolong itself into the autumn, that the baths of Aix may be advantageously taken three months after its French and German rivals Lave closed their establishments for the winter.

Aix i 3 converted, during the summer, into one great boarding-house ; its thriving, kindly, but somewhat sleepy population of 4,116 inhabitants, according to the last census, being more than doubled, during the warmest months, by the crowd of invalids and pieasure-eeekers who flock to it, every year, in increasing numbers. A few of the hotels are handsome and well appointed, in the stylo of those of larger cities; several of them are very comfortable, with tolerable rooms, good cuisine, and excellent service j all are high in their charges, as is usually the case in localities which depend for their yearly profits mainly on the stranger-harvest of the three hottest months.

In his romance of "Raphael," M. de Lamurtine thus describes the little suuny town, with its grey, brown-roofed houses :—": — " Filled with the steam, the murmur, and the odour of its streams of hot and sulphureous water, it is seated, street above street", on the lap of a broad, Bteep hillside, covered with vineyards, orchards, and cornfields. A long avenue of secular poplars, reminding one of the interminable alleys that lead to the Turkish burial-places, connects the town with the lake. On either hand, this road is flanked by meadows, furrowed by streams that descend from the mountains, and shaded by gigantic walnut trees, from whose boughs innumerable vines hang their garlands of leaves and grapes. In the distance, between the trees of the valley, the blue lake shows itself fitfully, sparkling or darkling in unison with tho clouds and the weather." The poet might have added that the town also boasts an aveuue of over a mile in length, overhung by magnificent ohesnut trees ; and an infinity of charming walks, and still more charming drives, each terminating in some site famous for the beauty of its view, or the interest of its souvenirs. There is the hill of T/esseroe, on the other side of the valley, with its crowning woods and gardens, whence you look down upon the long line of the lake, blue as a turquoise, or streaked with rosy and violet lines, as the whim of clouds and sunshine may decide ; with a glorious view of the entrance of the Chambery valley, crossed by the towering peaks of the Mont Cenis, the white-topped summits of the Gresivaudau, and a dozen other lofty crests, surmounting the double line of hills, themselves attaining the tolerably respectable height of from two to three thousand feet ; the peak just opposite Aix, called "The Cat's Tooth," boasting an elevation of nearly six thousand feet, with a splendid view from its summit for climbers. Looking down from Tresserae, or from Bellevue, we ccc the line of the railway running along the shore of the lake under our feet; to the left, the broad valley beyond its southern end, with its fields, dotted with oaks and willows, and bristling with poplars ; before us, on the opposite shore, are handsome chateaux, owned by old Savoyard nobles ; villages perched in hollows swept over by cloud-drifts ; a little white church, with a squat brown spire ; still higher up, on a projecting knoll, and higher than all, the winding path along the rocky side of tho Cat's Mountain, which antiquarians declare to have given passage to the army of Hannibal, with its 32,000 foot soldiers, 8,000 horaes, and 30 elephants, when, having ascended the Rhone as far as Viennp, he crossed the country of the AUobrogea, passing by Chevalu and the Cat's Mountain to Chambery, the Lenimcum of those days. Farther on, to the right, is the little port of Puer, at the extremity of a promontory, whence boating parties start for a cruise on the lake, and visits to the ancient Castle of Bonpout, and the yet more ancient site of the Abbey of Hautecombe, founded in 1125, by Duke Amadeus 111., since which period the sombre pile has served as the burial-place of the Princes of the house of Savoy, throwing the shadow of its vast cloisters upon the bluo expanse of water below it. Formerly, geologists tell us, the fair lake of whose beauty and piscatorial weulth, the people of Aix arc equally proud, formerly extended south of its present bed, filling the valley as far is Chambery. A massive iron ring found, a few years ago, among the mountains, at a considerable height above the present water line ot the lake, and which bears the name among the peasants, of the ring of "The Deluge," is believed by them to have served, in ancient times, for the fastening of ships. The geological features of the country would even appear to prove that, at a still earlier time, the entire valley of Chambery was occupied by the lake in question ; the Rhone and the Isere being thus in communication. However this may have been, the people of Aix are perfectly content with their lake, in its present l educed dimensions. And well they may be. For the region is devoutly Catholic ; and would no more think of staying its appetite on meat upon fastdays, than of slicing the moon into sandwiches. Yet the lake of Annecy, which though not quite so big as that of Aix, is nearly as beautiful, does not possess a single species whose prime coincides with the forty days' fast of the Lenten season ; whereas the lake of Bourget, which Aix regards m it* own especial poneition,

contains no fewer than twenty-two spicks of fish, all good, and some of them renowned ai!>o;i£ gastronomers of all age?, and offers »n abundance of finny food throughout the year. Farther up the valley are many charming sites. The village of St. Simon, with its rival waters ; that of St. Innocent, where flourishes •« unique breed of rabbits, with very long, thick, woolly fur, which is carded, spun in a sort of worsted, and knitted up into socks, sleeves, cravats, and squnres for weak chests ; a sort of " fleecy hosiery," infinitely softer and warmer than any other tissue of its kind, and said to bo highly efficacious ngoinst rheumatism and consumption. A little farther off is tho beautiful cascade of Gresy, where the beautiful and accomplished Madame de Broe, sister of Marshal Ney, tho companion and intimato friend of Queen Hortense, when visiting this romantic spot, in 1813, in company with the latter, slipped off the little bridge into the deepest hollow of, the fall and was drowned under the eyes of her friend and mistress, and despite the agonized exertions which were made to rescue her.

There is also the pretty thermal establishment of Marlioz, at a short distance, with its ornamental grounds, full of rustic arbours, gay flowers, and shady groves, and its highly sulphureous spring, trickling out through artificial rookwork, for those who wish to drink it, and pulverized by being driven in fine jets, with great force, agaiii3t a metal plate, for the benefit of ailing lungs and windpipes, whose Ownerß, sitting at tables, or lounging on sofas, pass an hour or two daily in the large, pleasant room, called " The inhala- 1 Hon parlour" (the atmosphere of which is thus kept charged with sulphuric acid in the form of a vapour, imperceptible to the eye, but very perceptible to the nostrils), reading, writing, embroidering, or chatting. ! From Aix, excursions of more ambitious character, to fche various nearer peaks thnfc overlook Mont Blanc, and the Lake of Geneva, to Turin, to Switzerland, are often made by tbe bathers in the intervals of resposc that form a part of the thermal cure. Less adven- j turous bothers content themselves with shorter excur- j sions, and visit Annecy, where Rousseau lived, and Eugene Sue died ; the old church of Jtfijaus, with its immemorial miraculous Virgin, worshipped and believed in by tho peasants, as fully as by their forefathers, whose power in heaven is proved by the legends of its power on earth, as shown in cures, in- j terpositions, and prodigees of all kinds, and whose hoavy walls stand in a plain full of tiny lakelets, called abysses, and, like the old church and its oldworld statue, the theme of legendary tale ; Geneva, with its great lake ; Aiguehellette, with its little one ; ,Chambery, with its historical associations reaching far beyond our era, its fading glorie3 as a capital city, its public buildings, botanical gardens, and the venerable convent of Sainte Marie, now used as a cavalry barracks, with its grotto chapel, of which, saysFoderJ, "in former days the still-born children that were brought hitherto to be baptised, recovered life to receive baptism, and died again directly afterwards." Many of the loftiest of the Savoisiuu peaks, within easy distance of Aix, and, in some cases, of tolerably onsy access, offer vast and magnificent panoramas, similar in character, and scarcely inferior in splendour, to the better known summits of Switzerland and Mont Blanc, which they command. From the Cat's Tooth, close to Aix, tho Tournette behind Annecy, the Devil's Rock near Montiers, and many others, the eye takes in a circle of thirty or forty leagues, containing the silvery dome of Mont Blanc, with its needles and glaciers, the peaks of the Bernese Oberland, the chain of Monte Rosa with its glaciers, tbe chains of tho Jura, Tarantaise, Maurienne, Isere, and Dauphin c", the lakes of Geneva and Lucerne, Lyons, Macon, and many other towns, with the Alps of Savoy, and lakes, woods, valleys, and plains innumerable.

The town of Aix possesses many Roman remains ;an arch, a temple, a bathing-plane, with its circular seats, hypocausr, and flues; a marble sun-dial, and various fragments of inscriptions and statues. It has also its old chateau, belonging to the Duke of Aix-Sommariva, with a very fine gotliio staircase ; a casino ; the rustic chaleb of the theatre of the Princess do Soims, of European notoriety ; a fow shops ; and an extensive assortment of carriages and donkeys. It also possesses very curious and extensive grottoes, whence issues the principal spring, at a temperature considerably more than half way to boiling point, and in such a volume that this place exults in the running to waste, every day of it 3 existence, of one million, three hundred thousand gallons of its incomparable hot water !

The thermal establishment, begun under Piedmonfese auspices, and now being completed, at great outlay, under Imperial ones, will be the most complete in the world. Its long galleries of douches and baths of every category; its great piscines,or swimming tanks, where you may learn to rival the fishes in water at any temperature you may prefer ; its various apparatus for inhalations of the steam, and local treatments of every kind, are most imposing ; and the array of employes, from the autocratic physicians who take your cure under their wing, to the overseers, ticket sellers, douchers, and bather* of both sexes, and the porters, who receive you after your bath — a mummy, encased from head to foot in flannel and wraps — from the hands of youv tormentors, seat you in a chair, with curtains, and trot you off to your bedroom, where they pitch you deltly into your bed, to be tucked up and left to perspire at your leisure, by your valet or maid, offers a spectacle equally amusing. When the season is at its height, the Btreets, from six, p.m., to nine, a.m., are literally alive with these funny chairs, carried at a rapid trot by two porters, and affording, if any traitorous chink have been left between their curtains, glimpses of red, shiny, parboiled faces, highly provocative of smiles. When your skin, after tbe bathing, douching, and champooing you have undergone, has done its duty, to the best of its ability, for about twenty minutes, your servant, armed witli hot towels, and nightdresses at a similar

temperature, unrolls your wraps, rubs you dry, and leaves you to luxuriate in your change of wraps during another half-hour, after which, your system having had time to cool itself down to the ordinary pitch of human temperature, you are at liberty to quit your bed, and array yourself in your usual garments. Where the treatment consists of baths only, your inflictions are usually undergone in the hotel or lodgings in which you are sojourning ; bathrooms forming part of them all. In which case you dispense with porters, the galleries and corridors being enlivened by the rapid sorties, and still more rapid retreats of the shapeless blocks of flannel on their way from bed to bath, or vice versa.

Enormous covered pigs of zinc, for carrying the water from the establishment to the houses, form an important item in the furniture of every dwelling in the place ; as is the queer wicker frame, with a pan of burning charcoal hung insidp, round which sheets aud towels for drying the bathers, and the loose flannel wraps in which the latter are enveloped on quitting the douche, are heated while the process of bathing is going on.

Aix possesses a staff of very good physicians, at whose head is Baron Despine, M. D., who has passed his life in the administration of the waters. His father and grand-father, successively physicians to the Royal family of Piedmont, have preceded the Baron in tho Inspectorship of the Thermal Establishment, which owes much of its superiority and prosperity to their exertions. Queen Hortense founded here a thermal hospital, which, ia now, under the patronage of the Emperor, attached to the principal establishment.

Most of the bathing ia over by nine o'clock. Everybody breakfasts at ten ; the drinking of the water is done on a very moderate scale at Aix, three tumblers a day, "drunk hot," at the drinking- fount of the establishment, being the usual modicum. Walks, drives, newspapers, novels, a good deal of chatting, and a little flirtation, enable the invalids and their friends, the latter being by far the most numerous to get through the day until the dinner bells ring ; a process which goes on, from one end of Aix to the other, punctually, at half-past five. By nine o'clock, such is the force of example, all Aix has betaken itself to its slumbers.

As booh as the cram of the visitors is over, say in September, all Aix does up its washing. The thousands of dozens of sheets, towels, tablecloths, curtains, bed-quilts, (fee., that hare been accumulating through the summer, are first soaked in enormous vats, then jumped upon for half a day by relays of servants, and placed on fires of charcoal during the night. Next day, they are finighed by washerwomen, hired for the occasion ; bong out to bleach and dry in every garden

and on every bush, and then ironed by the regulai ironer*, who go from houss to hou«e till tho agony is over, and the piles of clean linen are laid by in the presses of och house, ready for the nest season. The poorer people do their washing in the innumerable streams, hot and coM, of this aqueous region, and white the process is going on, one might almost think that Aix and its environs had been overtaken by a sudden snow storm. When the washing is faiih over, the work of pickling, drying mushrooms and peppers, and other details ■of housekeeping preparation, employ for a few days the energies of Aix.

After this comes the vintnge; the whole region being covered with vines, in vineyards, up trees, in long festoons from tree to tree, over hedges, walls, and palings : and all these vines being laden with grapes, the entire population goes out to gather them. The men, with arms as red as butchers, stained from head to foot with the juice of the grapep, are not particularly charming in a picturesque point of view. But the peasant girls, often handsome, carrying home on their heads the finest of the grapes, carefully laid in light baskets, enveloped in vine leaves, and covered with snowy napkins to keep off the flies, make a very pretty feature in the landscape, with the reddening foliage, tho purple haze of the bills, the blue shimmer of the lake, and the glorious glow of autumn sunshine.

When the vintage is over, Aix begins to repose. The richer landladies come out in " silk attire," witli gay caps, and make visits, receive their friends, and enjoy themselves during the remaining fine weather. Many of the families here are very rich : spend the winter at Turin or at Lyons, and live in handsome style on the profits of the season. During the winter — short at Aix — mattresses are re-made, furniture and rooms cleaned and repaired, the houses scrubbed and set in order, and everything made ready for the next year's campaign. Aix, like the rest of Savoy, is neither French nor Italian in appearance and character. The people are Eiinple, kindly, and rather slow ; the houses, plainly built and substantial, are generally without ornament, though occasionally sporting coloured lines, or imitations of sculpture, round the windows and doors, or under the eaves of the projecting roofs. The houses of the richer inhabitants are sometimes in the fashion of a Swiss Chalet, sometimes in the style of the Italian villas. The cottages are nearly as rude, dingy, and unhealthy as those of France; thatched, wanting in windows, and surrounded by puddles, manure heaps, ducks, and an occasional donkey. Each show an array of extraordinary looking baskets, in shape like flatfish dog-kennels, hung out from windows and lofts on poles in which the cheeses of the region are placed to dry ; and nearly all, at this season, are half covered with the golden ears of maize, also hung up to complete tho process of ripening against the walls. The ugly patois of the region is more French than Italian, and the lie of the country being towards France, it would seem that it belonged rather to the latter than to Italy. But the trebling of the taxes imposed by their new rulers, and their offensive way of interfering with everybody, and making reglements for every detail of social life, have rapidly counteracted the momentary enthusiasm for the annexation which was so skilfully got up by the clergy. If the Savoyards were called upon to vote again upon the matter, it is probable that their voice would be in favour of a union with Italy, which country, however, seems not over much to regret their loss, although fully counting on the "chapter of accident" to give them back Nice and Lower Savoy, which are thoroughly Italian, and beloved of Italy.