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.
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