streets. The exterior of the village or town is the wall that encloses the place, and the houses thus form the wall, and look outward only through eyelet holes. Turrets flank the angles. The chapel of S. Sebastian is romanesque. Here also the Lascaris had a palace. Castellar stands 1,200 feet above the sea. We can hardly realise till how late a period the pirates of the Mediterranean were a scourge to this coast, and forced the natives to build every village and town in a place not easily accessible, and form of it a fortress.
For many centuries first the Saracens, then the Turks and Moors of Tunis and Algiers, ravaged this coast. Not so much for gold and silver—for of this the poor fishermen, shepherds, and tillers of the soil had none, but to capture slaves. The women were handsome and the men able-bodied.
"There are still men living at Mentone," says Dr. Bennet, "who in the early part of this century (i.e. 19th) were seized on the coast by Moors, and subsequently lived for years as slaves at Algiers and Tunis." Indeed, piracy reigned supreme on the Mediterranean until the year 1816, when Lord Exmouth bombarded Algiers; but it was not finally stamped out till the conquest of Algiers by the French in 1830. When Lord Exmouth bombarded Algiers, there were thousands of Christian slaves, mostly captured on the Riviera, serving in the Algerine galleys. It was against the sudden descent of these pirates that the watch towers were erected along the coast, which may be seen at intervals as far as Genoa.
At Castellar, on the Place de la Mairie, is given on January 2Oth, every year, an open-air ball which winds up the series of festivities, religious and secular, accorded in honour of the patronal saint, S. Sebastian.
