Primary tabs
Transcription
[page 65]
127
(7).
raiders which latter would hardly think the possible booty worth the risk of having huge boulders rolled down onto them.
Practically no level land exists for agriculture and to over- come this xx difficulty the hill and mountain sides have been carefully terraced, stone walls being employed to hold up the soil and prevent it being washed away. This gives the whole country side a corrugated appearance. Apart from everyday necessities in the way of vegetables and fruit, olives appear to be the only article grown to any extent. From the appearance of these olives which are small and blackish I should imagine that they would be used mainly for oil making and not for table use.
The roads throughout the Riviera are excellent and the grading is a master piece of engineering. La Corniche the famous scenic road is all that it is depicted, whilst the numerous mountain roads are also rich in rugged mountain scenery and panoramic views of villages in the valleys and occasional glimpses of the towns on the coast line. For nervous people these motor car trips over the mountain roads are not to be recommended. The Italian and French (mainly the former) drivers are marvels at handling their cars but they cannot be persuaded to go at a moderate speed and are never satisfied unless their car is "all out" which for these high powered cars means about 50 miles per hour on the flat. I don't mind it on straight roads but when they take these hair- pin bends on the mountain roads on two wheels I am not so keen about it. One day we had xx a driver whose idea of taking a sharp turn in the road was to rush at it, throw his wheel round, at the same time applying his foot break so that instead of following the arc of the front wheels, the rear wheels locked and skidded over sideways whereupon he loosed his break and carried on. This may be alright at the Olympic Games but when the road is hewn out of the side of a mountain which rises sheer up on one side and leaves a drop of a couple of thousand feet on the other