From the days of Julius Caesar, Portus Ictius, or the
harbour of Boulogne, was the port from which the Roman troops sailed to
Britain, and the harbour to which they steered on their return. On top
of Caligula's tower there was a lighthouse for the guidance of vessels
at sea. The very fact that King Niall made use of this harbour when he
raided Armorica in the twenty-seventh year of his reign, makes it
likely that he sailed into the same harbour when first invading that
country in the ninth year of his reign. The sons of the soldiers who
took part in the second raid were still alive; and the memories of both
expeditions were still fresh in the minds of the brave Irish Scots when
St. Patrick wrote his "Confession."

The records of both expeditions were undoubtedly read at the annual
Feast of Tara, when the Kings, nobles and learned were accustomed to
meet annually and examine the National records (Keating, pp. 337--388).

The triumphant march of devastation made by the Irish Monarch in the
ninth year of his reign, when he led his troops "from the walls of
Antoninus to the shores of Kent"; the successful raid into Armorica
which commenced with the capture of the Roman encampment at Haute
Ville, Boulogne, and ended in the plundering of the surrounding
country, must have been the burden of many a warlike song whenever the
Irish minstrels chanted the glorious triumphs of King Niall's
invincible troops. It is, therefore, but natural to suppose every man,
woman, and child in Ireland had often heard the name of Bonaven, where
the soldiers of King Niall stormed the encampment, and where the
ever-conquering Monarch expired.

St. Patrick, who, according to the "Scholiast," the Fifth and
Tripartite Lives, and Heating's "History" (p. 312), was captured in
Armorica, and who, according to Hersart de la Villemarque and Dr.
Lanigan, was taken captive at Boulogne, was well aware that every
Irishman would know the town to which he was referring when he declared
in his "Confession" that his father, Calphurnius, and consequently he
himself, hailed from the suburban district of Bonaven Taberniae, or
Bononia, where the Roman encampment stood.

HISTORY OF THE TOWN BONAVEN, OR BONONIA.

THE ancient records of Bononia, or Boulogne-sur-Mer, date back to about
half a century before Christ--to the time when Julius Caesar,
anticipating Napoleon the Great, stood on the north-eastern cliffs of
that town gazing through the Channel mist on the d