Page:The lives of celebrated travellers (Volume 2).djvu/48

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of Naples is entitled to this honour. Be this as it may, from the sea to the village of Lowhareah, a distance of about half a mile, the interjacent mountain, from the level of the sea to the height of twenty or thirty feet, according to the disposition of the strata, is hollowed out, while enormous pillars are left standing at regular distances to support the superincumbent mass, through which small shafts or apertures were bored at intervals for the admission of fresh air. However, that the reader may perceive the justness of the doctor's illustration, I will continue the description in his own words, and then subjoin the passage of Virgil referred to: "Moreover, as this mountain is shaded all over with trees, as the arches here described (the openings to the quarry) lie open to the sea, having a large cliff on each side, with the island Ægimurus placed over-*against them; as there are likewise some fountains perpetually draining from the rocks, and seats very convenient for the weary labourer to rest upon: from such a concurrence of circumstances, so exactly corresponding to the cave which Virgil places somewhere in this gulf, we have little room to doubt of the following description being literally true, notwithstanding some commentators may have thought it fictitious, or applicable to another place."

  Est in secessu longo locus. Insula portum
  Efficit objectu laterum, quibus omnis ab alto
  Frangitur, inque sinus scindit sese unda reductos.
  Hinc atque hinc vastæ rupes, geminique minantur
  In Cœlum scopuli: quorum sub vertice late
  Æquora tuta silent. Tum sylvis scœna coruscis
  Desuper, horrentique atrum nemus imminet umbra.
  Fronte sub adversa scopulis pendentibus antrum:
  Intus aquæ dulces; vivoque sedilia saxo;
  Nympharum domus. Hic fessas non vincula naves
  Ulla tenent: unco non adligat anchora morsa.

From Cape Bon, the Promontorium Mercurii of the ancients, which projects into the sea a little to the north of Aquilaria, the inhabitants assured our