ll continue
fresh and unfaded the best part of a month.

Amidst the plantations in the neighbourhood of Nice, appear a vast
number of white bastides, or country-houses, which make a dazzling
shew. Some few of these are good villas, belonging to the noblesse of
this county; and even some of the bourgeois are provided with pretty
lodgeable cassines; but in general, they are the habitations of the
peasants, and contain nothing but misery and vermin. They are all built
square; and, being whitened with lime or plaister, contribute greatly
to the richness of the view. The hills are shaded to the tops with
olive-trees, which are always green; and those hills are over-topped by
more distant mountains, covered with snow. When I turn myself towards
the sea, the view is bounded by the horizon; yet in a clear morning,
one can perceive the high lands of Corsica. On the right hand, it is
terminated by Antibes, and the mountain of Esterelles, which I
described in my last. As for the weather, you will conclude, from what
I have said of the oranges, flowers, etc. that it must be wonderfully
mild and serene: but of the climate, I shall speak hereafter. Let me
only observe, en passant, that the houses in general have no chimnies,
but in their kitchens; and that many people, even of condition, at
Nice, have no fire in their chambers, during the whole winter. When the
weather happens to be a little more sharp than usual, they warm their
apartments with a brasiere or pan of charcoal.

Though Nice itself retains few marks of antient splendor, there are
considerable monuments of antiquity in its neighbourhood. About two
short miles from the town, upon the summit of a pretty high hill, we
find the ruins of the antient city Cemenelion, now called Cimia, which
was once the metropolis of the Maritime Alps, and the scat of a Roman
president. With respect to situation, nothing could be more agreeable
or salubrious. It stood upon the gentle ascent and summit of a hill,
fronting the Mediterranean; from the shore of which, it is distant
about half a league; and, on the other side, it overlooked a bottom, or
narrow vale, through which the Paglion (antiently called Paulo) runs
towards the walls of Nice. It was inhabited by a people, whom Ptolomy
and Pliny call the Vedantij: but these were undoubtedly mixed with a
Roman colony, as appears by the monuments which still remain; I mean
the ruins of an amphitheatre, a temple of Apollo, baths, aqueducts,
sepu