y a small fort.[55]

[Footnote 55: Vide Cooke's Views.]

From hence the view to the west is very wide, including nearly the route
of the two preceding days. Towards the east it is less extensive, but
more striking. The town of Ville Franche, and the beautiful little basin
which forms its port, appear as completely under the feet, as if you
could leap over them to the opposite side of the water; and the headland
between that town and Monaco, up and down which the road to Savona is
seen meandering, is more boldly defined and on a larger scale than that
of Lulworth Cove, and though strongly resembling it possesses greater
beauty and variety.

One of Buonaparte's projects was to render the Corniche, as this giddy
track is expressively called, practicable for carriages; but the
Sardinian government, instead of completing, have defaced (as we heard,
out of jealousy) the part which he had begun: this is, I think, rather
too absurd for belief. It is at the same time probable enough, that the
undertaking has been abandoned for want of adequate funds. We were
lighted homewards by myriads of fire-flies, a circumstance which
produces on a person unaccustomed to the sight, a more novel and
brilliant effect than any other accompaniment of an Italian climate.

June 2.--Our original idea had been to have proceeded to Genoa either by
a felucca or the Corniche, but learning that the latter route was
impracticable, excepting on mules, and that the variable nature of the
wind on this coast rendered feluccas a dangerous and uncertain mode of
performing the journey, we preferred the road into Italy by the Col di
Tende.

To Escarene twelve miles: the first four skirt along the beautiful
valley at whose mouth Nice stands, following, and sometimes crossing,
the course of the river Poglion; the rest gradually winds up into the
heart of the mountains, through deep ravines and woods of gigantic
olives, which in this district become picturesque forest-trees. We
breakfasted at Escarene, a quiet pretty village, possessing tolerable
accommodation. To Sospello fifteen miles of good road, the first seven
or eight of which ascend the lofty wall of mountain which closes up the
entrance of the valley, and appears at a distance like a score of
corkscrews laid in a Vandyke figure. Up the whole of this we walked,
mounting, by an easy but tedious circuit of good road, a long series of
crags, and courses of torrents, and sometimes looking almost
perpendic