inspires. As we approach the
mountains, the macchi become taller, feathering man-high above the
road, and stretching far away upon the hills. Gigantic masses of
granite, shaped like buttresses and bastions, seem to guard the
approaches to these hills; while, looking backward over the green
plain, the sea lies smiling in a haze of blue among the rocky horns
and misty headlands of the coast. There is a stateliness about the
abrupt inclination of these granite slopes, rising from their frowning
portals by sharp _aretes_ to the snows piled on their summits,
which contrasts in a strange way with the softness and beauty of
the mingling sea and plain beneath. In no landscape are more various
qualities combined; in none are they so harmonised as to produce so
strong a sense of majestic freedom and severe power. Suppose that we
are on the road to Corte, and have now reached Bocognano, the first
considerable village since we left Ajaccio. Bocognano might be chosen
as typical of Corsican hill-villages, with its narrow street, and
tall tower-like houses of five or six stories high, faced with
rough granite, and pierced with the smallest windows and very narrow
doorways. These buildings have a mournful and desolate appearance.
There is none of the grandeur of antiquity about them; no sculptured
arms or castellated turrets, or balconies or spacious staircases,
such as are common in the poorest towns of Italy. The signs of warlike
occupation which they offer, and their sinister aspect of vigilance,
are thoroughly prosaic. They seem to suggest a state of society in
which feud and violence were systematised into routine. There is no
relief to the savage austerity of their forbidding aspect; no signs
of wealth or household comfort; no trace of art, no liveliness and
gracefulness of architecture. Perched upon their coigns of vantage,
these villages seem always menacing, as if Saracen pirates, or Genoese
marauders, or bandits bent on vengeance, were still for ever on the
watch. Forests of immensely old chestnut-trees surround Bocognano on
every side, so that you step from the village streets into the shade
of woods that seem to have remained untouched for centuries. The
country-people support themselves almost entirely upon the fruit of
these chestnuts; and there is a large department of Corsica called
Castagniccia, from the prevalence of these trees and the sustenance
which the inhabitants derive from them. Close by the village brawls
a