which is still called Turbia, a corruption of
Trophaea; [This was formerly a considerable town called Villa Martis,
and pretends to the honour of having given birth to Aulus Helvius, who
succeeded Commodus as emperor of Rome, by the name of Pertinax which he
acquired from his obstinate refusal of that dignity, when it was forced
upon him by the senate. You know this man, though of very low birth,
possessed many excellent qualities, and was basely murdered by the
praetorian guards, at the instigation of Didius Tulianus. For my part,
I could never read without emotion, that celebrated eulogium of the
senate who exclaimed after his death, Pertinace, imperante, securi
viximus neminem timuimus, patre pio, patre senatus, patre omnium,
honorum, We lived secure and were afraid of nothing under the
Government of Pertinax, our affectionate Father, Father of the Senate,
Father to all the children of Virtue.] or converted into tomb-stones,
or carried off to be preserved in one or two churches of Nice. 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: they consist of narrow
subterranean pa