But if Ajaccio itself is not picturesque, the scenery which it commands, and in the heart of which it lies, is of the most magnificent.  The bay of Ajaccio resembles a vast Italian lake—­a Lago Maggiore, with greater space between the mountains and the shore.  From the snow-peaks of the interior, huge granite crystals clothed in white, to the southern extremity of the bay, peak succeeds peak and ridge rises behind ridge in a line of wonderful variety and beauty.  The atmospheric changes of light and shadow, cloud and colour, on this upland country, are as subtle and as various as those which lend their beauty to the scenery of the lakes, while the sea below is blue and rarely troubled.  One could never get tired with looking at this view.  Morning and evening add new charms to its sublimity and beauty.  In the early morning Monte d’Oro sparkles like a Monte Rosa with its fresh snow, and the whole inferior range puts on the crystal blueness of dawn among the Alps.  In the evening, violet and purple tints and the golden glow of Italian sunset lend a different lustre to the fairyland.  In fact, the beauties of Switzerland and Italy are curiously blended in this landscape.

In soil and vegetation the country round Ajaccio differs much from the Cornice.  There are very few olive-trees, nor is the cultivated ground backed up so immediately by stony mountains; but between the seashore and the hills there is plenty of space for pasture-land, and orchards of apricot and peach-trees, and orange gardens.  This undulating champaign, green with meadows and watered with clear streams, is very refreshing to the eyes of Northern people, who may have wearied of the bareness and greyness of Nice or Mentone.  It is traversed by excellent roads, recently constructed on a plan of the French Government, which intersect the country in all directions, and offer an infinite variety of rides or drives to visitors.  The broken granite of which these roads are made is very pleasant for riding over.  Most of the hills through which they strike, after starting from Ajaccio, are clothed with a thick brushwood of box, ilex, lentisk, arbutus, and laurustinus, which stretches down irregularly into vineyards, olive-gardens, and meadows.  It is, indeed, the native growth of the island; for wherever a piece of ground is left untilled, the macchi grow up, and the scent of their multitudinous aromatic blossoms is so strong that it may be smelt miles out at sea.  Napoleon, at S. Helena, referred to this fragrance when he said that he should know Corsica blindfold by the smell of its soil.  Occasional woods of holm oak make darker patches on the landscape, and a few pines fringe the side of enclosure walls or towers.  The prickly pear runs riot in and out among the hedges and upon the walls, diversifying the colours of the landscape with its strange grey-green masses and unwieldy fans.  In spring, when peach and almond trees are in blossom, and when the roadside is starred with asphodels, this country is most beautiful