At Present, The Work
Has The Appearance Of A Ruinous Watch-Tower, With Gothic
Battlements; And As Such Stands Undistinguished By Those Who
Travel By Sea From Hence To Genoa, And Other Ports Of Italy.
I
think I have now described all the antiquities in the
neighbourhood of Nice, except some catacombs or caverns,
Dug in a
rock at St. Hospice, which Busching, in his geography, has
described as a strong town and seaport, though in fact, there is
not the least vestige either of town or village. It is a point of
land almost opposite to the tower of Turbia, with the mountains
of which it forms a bay, where there is a great and curious
fishery of the tunny fish, farmed of the king of Sardinia. Upon
this point there is a watch-tower still kept in repair, to give
notice to the people in the neighbourhood, in case any Barbary
corsairs should appear on the coast. The catacombs were in all
probability dug, in former times, as places of retreat for the
inhabitants upon sudden descents of the Saracens, who greatly
infested these seas for several successive centuries. Many
curious persons have entered them and proceeded a considerable
way by torch-light, without arriving at the further extremity;
and the tradition of the country is, that they reach as far as
the ancient city of Cemenelion; but this is an idle supposition,
almost as ridiculous as that which ascribes them to the labour
and ingenuity of the fairies:
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 266 of 535
Words from 71447 to 71697
of 143308
