It is traversed by a rugged mountain range, called the Serra, the highest summits of which, Monte Alticcione and Monte Stello, reach an altitude of more than 5000 feet. Rich and beautiful valleys run down on both sides to the sea.

I had heard a great deal of the beauty of the valleys of this region, of their fertility in wine and oranges, and of the gentle manners of their inhabitants, so that I began my wanderings in it with true pleasure. A cheerful and festive impression is produced at the very first by the olive-groves that line the excellent road along the shore, through the canton San Martino. Chapels appearing through the green foliage; the cupolas of family tombs; solitary cottages on the strand; here and there a forsaken tower, in the rents of which the wild fig-tree clings, while the cactus grows profusely at its base,-make the country picturesque. The coast of Corsica is set round and round with these towers, which the Pisans and Genoese built to ward off the piratical attacks of the Saracens. They are round or square, built of brown granite, and stand isolated. Their height is from thirty to fifty feet. A company of watchers lay within, and alarmed the surrounding country when the Corsairs approached. All these towers are now forsaken, and gradually falling to ruin. They impart a strangely romantic character to the Corsican shores.

It was pleasant to wander through this region in the radiant morning; the eye embraced the prospect seawards, with the fine forms of the islands of Elba, Capraja, and Monte Cisto, and was again relieved by the mountains and valleys descending close to the shore. The heights here enclose, like sides of an amphitheatre, little, blooming, shady dales, watered by noisy brooks. Scattered round, in a rude circle, stand the black villages, with their tall church-towers and old cloisters. On the meadows are herdsmen with their herds, and where the valley opens to the sea, always a tower and a solitary hamlet by the shore, with a boat or two in its little haven.

Every morning at sunrise, troops of women and girls may be seen coming from Cape Corso to Bastia, with produce for the market. They have a pretty blue or brown dress for the town, and a clean handkerchief wound as mandile round the hair. These forms moving along the shore through the bright morning, with their neat baskets, full of laughing, golden fruit, enliven the way very agreeably; and perhaps it would be difficult to find anything more graceful than one of those slender, handsome girls pacing towards you, light-footed and elastic as a Hebe, with her basket of grapes on her head. They are all in lively talk with their neighbours as they pass, and all give you the same beautiful, light-hearted Evviva. Nothing better certainly can one mortal wish another than that he should live.

But now forward, for the sun is in Leo, and in two hours he will be fierce. And behind the Tower of Miomo, towards the second pieve of Brando, the road ceases, and we must climb like the goat, for there are few districts in Cape Corso supplied with anything but footpaths. From the shore, at the lonely little Marina di Basina, I began to ascend the hills, on which lie the three communes that form the pieve of Brando. The way was rough and steep, but cheered by gushing brooks and luxuriant gardens. The slopes are quite covered with these, and they are full of grapes, oranges, and olives-fruits in which Brando specially abounds. The fig-tree bends low its laden branches, and holds its ripe fruit steadily to the parched mouth, unlike the tree of Tantalus.

On a declivity towards the sea, is the beautiful stalactite cavern of Brando, not long since discovered. It lies in the gardens of a retired officer. An emigrant of Modena had given me a letter for this gentleman, and I called on him at his mansion. The grounds are magnificent. The Colonel has transformed the whole shore into a garden, which hangs above the sea, dreamy and cool with silent olives, myrtles, and laurels; there are cypresses and pines, too, isolated or in groups, flowers everywhere, ivy on the walls, vine-trellises heavy with grapes, oranges tree on tree, a little summer-house hiding among the greenery, a cool grotto deep under ground, loneliness, repose, a glimpse of emerald sky, and the sea with its hermit islands, a glimpse into your own happy human heart;-it were hard to tell when it might be best to live here, when you are still young, or when you have grown old.

An elderly gentleman, who was looking out of the villa, heard me ask the gardener for the Colonel, and beckoned me to come to him. His garden had already shown me what kind of a man he was, and the little room into which I now entered told his character more and more plainly. The walls were covered with symbolic paintings; the different professions were fraternizing in a group, in which a husbandman, a soldier, a priest, and a scholar, were shaking hands; the five races were doing the same in another picture, where a European, an Asiatic, a Moor, an Australian, and a Redskin, sat sociably drinking round a table, encircled by a gay profusion of curling vine-wreaths. I immediately perceived that I was in the beautiful land of Icaria, and that I had happened on no other personage than the excellent uncle of Goethe's Wanderjahre. And so it was. He was the uncle-a bachelor, a humanistic socialist, who, as country gentleman and land-owner, diffused widely around him the beneficial influences of his own great though noiseless activity.

He came towards me with a cheerful, quiet smile, the Journal des Débats in his hand, pleased apparently with what he had been reading in it.

"I have read in your garden and in your room, signore, the Contrat Social of Rousseau, and some of the Republic of Plato. You show me that you are the countryman of the great Pasquale."

We talked long on a great variety of subjects-on civilisation and on barbarism, and how impotent theory was proving itself. But these are old affairs, that every reflecting man has thought of and talked about.

Much musing on this interview, I went down to the grotto after taking leave of the singular man, who had realized for me so unexpectedly the creation of the poet. After all, this is a strange island. Yesterday a bandit who has murdered ten men out of capriccio, and is being led to the scaffold; to-day a practical philosopher, and philanthropic advocate of universal brotherhood-both equally genuine Corsicans, their history and character the result of the history of their nation. As I passed under the fair trees of the garden, however, I said to myself that it was not difficult to be a philanthropist in paradise. I believe that the wonderful power of early Christianity arose from the circumstance that its teachers were poor, probably unfortunate men.

There is a Corsican tradition that St. Paul landed on Cape Corso-the Promontorium Sacrum, as it was called in ancient times-and there preached the gospel. It is certain that Cape Corso was the district of the island into which Christianity was first introduced. The little region, therefore, has long been sacred to the cause of philanthropy and human progress.

The daughter of one of the gardeners led me to the grotto. It is neither very high nor very deep, and consists of a series of chambers, easily traversed. Lamps hung from the roof. The girl lighted them, and left me alone. And now a pale twilight illuminated this beautiful crypt, of such bizarre stalactite formations as only a Gothic architect could imagine-in pointed arches, pillar-capitals, domed niches, and rosettes. The grottos of Corsica are her oldest Gothic churches, for Nature built them in a mood of the most playful fantasy. As the lamps glimmered, and shone on, and shone through, the clear yellow stalactite, the cave was completely like the crypt of some cathedral. Left in this twilight, I had the following little fantasy in stalactite-

A wondrous maiden sat wrapped in a white veil on a throne of the clearest alabaster. She never moved. She wore on her head a lotos-flower, and on her breast a carbuncle. The eye could not cease to gaze on the veiled maiden, for she stirred a longing in the bosom. Before her kneeled many little gnomes; the poor fellows were all of dropstone, all stalactites, and they wore little yellow crowns of the fairest alabaster. They never moved; but they all held their hands stretched out towards the white maiden, as if they wished to lift her veil, and bitter drops were falling from their eyes. It seemed to me as if I knew some of them, and as if I must call them by their names. "This is the goddess Isis," said the toad sneeringly; she was sitting on a stone, and, I think, threw a spell on them all with her eyes. "He who does not know the right word, and cannot raise the veil of the beautiful maiden, must weep himself to stone like these. Stranger, wilt thou say the word?"

I was just falling asleep-for I was very tired, and the grotto was so dim and cool, and the drops tinkled so slowly and mournfully from the roof-when the gardener's daughter entered, and said: "It is time!" "Time! to raise the veil of Isis?-O ye eternal gods!" "Yes, Signore, to come out to the garden and the bright sun." I thought she said well, and I immediately followed her.

"Do you see this firelock, Signore? We found it in the grotto, quite coated with the dropstone, and beside it were human bones; likely they were the bones and gun of a bandit; the poor wretch had crept into this cave, and died in it like a wounded deer." Nothing was now left of the piece but the rusty barrel. It may have sped the avenging bullet into more than one heart. Now I hold it in my hand like some fossil of horrid history, and it opens its mouth and tells me stories of the Vendetta.

* * *

Chapter 10 SOUTHERN PART OF CAPE CORSO.

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