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The view of Monaco, as one looks down on it from the mountain road which leads to Turbia, is unquestionably the most picturesque among all the views of the Riviera.
At last the mountain rises bare above us with only a red rock jutting here and there from its ashen-coloured front. We reach the top, and right in our road rises a vast fragment of Roman masonry, the tower of Turbia, while, thousands of feet beneath, Monaco glows "like a gem" in its setting of dark blue sea.
"From the heights on which La Turbia stands, with its dilapidated walls, we see the beautiful city of Monaco, on a tongue of land extending into the sea." The great gambling establishment of Monte Carlo did not invade this beautiful spot until many years later, in 1856.
As one drifts away from the shore the circle of the Maritime Alps rises like the framework of some perfect picture, the broken outline of the mountains to the left contrasting with the cloud-capt heights above Turbia, snow-peaks peeping over the further slopes between them, delicate lights and shadows falling among the broken country of the foreground, Cannes itself stretching its bright line of white along the shore.
She fell into ecstasies at sight of the African cacti, the century plants, and the fig-trees of Barbary, covering the low walls whence they looked down into the water; at the fragrance of the evergreens that surrounded the beautiful palace with its balustrades, dedicated to all the worst passions of the human race; with the sharp rocky outline of Turbia; with an almost invisible speck on the horizon which they said was Corsica; with everything, which, whether mirage or reality, lifted her out of herself, and plunged her into that state of excited happiness and indescribable sense of bodily comfort, which exterior impressions so easily produce upon the young.
On the northeast, the mountains rise into magnificent steeps whose names would say nothing to the reader, except that of Turbia, which he will recall as the classic Tropaea of Augustus, who marked there the bounds between Italy and Gaul.
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.
We are on the track of "The Daisy," and the verse of Tennyson's gay little poem comes back to us: What Roman strength Turbia showed In ruin, by the mountain road; How like a gem, beneath, the city Of little Monaco basking glowed.
I think they prefer you in their racial parlance after you have shown some knowledge of it, and two kind women of whom I asked my way in Monte Carlo, one day when I was trying for the station of the funicular to Turbia, grew more volubly kind when I asked it in such Tuscan as I could command.
She fell into ecstasies at sight of the African cacti, the century plants, and the fig-trees of Barbary, covering the low walls whence they looked down into the water; at the fragrance of the evergreens that surrounded the beautiful palace with its balustrades, dedicated to all the worst passions of the human race; with the sharp rocky outline of Turbia; with an almost invisible speck on the horizon which they said was Corsica; with everything, which, whether mirage or reality, lifted her out of herself, and plunged her into that state of excited happiness and indescribable sense of bodily comfort, which exterior impressions so easily produce upon the young.
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