After three days’ sailing, the ship reached Les Sanguinaires (The Bloody Islands), and the magnificent panorama of the Gulf of Ajaccio was unrolled before our travellers’ eyes.  It is compared, with justice, to the Bay of Naples, and just as the schooner was entering the harbour a burning maquis, which covered the Punta di Girato, brought back memories of Vesuvius and heightened the resemblance.  To make it quite complete, Naples should be seen after one of Attila’s armies had devastated its suburbs—­for round Ajaccio everything looks dead and deserted.  Instead of the handsome buildings observable on every side from Castellamare to Cape Misena, nothing is to be seen in the neighbourhood of the Gulf of Ajaccio but gloomy maquis with bare mountains rising behind them.  Not a villa, not a dwelling of any kind—­only here and there, on the heights about the town, a few isolated white structures stand out against a background of green.  These are mortuary chapels or family tombs.  Everything in this landscape is gravely and sadly beautiful.

The appearance of the town, at that period especially, deepened the impression caused by the loneliness of its surroundings.  There was no stir in the streets, where only a few listless idlers—­always the same—­were to be seen; no women at all, except an odd peasant come in to sell her produce; no loud talk, laughter, and singing, as in the Italian towns.  Sometimes, under the shade of a tree on the public promenade, a dozen armed peasants will play at cards or watch each other play; they never shout or wrangle; if they get hot over the game, pistol shots ring out, and this always before the utterance of any threat.  The Corsican is grave and silent by nature.  In the evening, a few persons come out to enjoy the cool air, but the promenaders on the Corso are nearly all of them foreigners; the islanders stay in front of their own doors; each one seems on the watch, like a falcon over its nest.

CHAPTER IV

When Miss Lydia had visited the house in which Napoleon was born, and had procured, by means more or less moral, a fragment of the wall-paper belonging to it, she, within two days of her landing in Corsica, began to feel that profound melancholy which must overcome every foreigner in a country whose unsociable inhabitants appear to condemn him or her to a condition of utter isolation.  She was already regretting her headstrong caprice; but to go back at once would have been to risk her reputation as an intrepid traveller, so she made up her mind to be patient, and kill time as best she could.  With this noble resolution, she brought out her crayons and colours, sketched views of the gulf, and did the portrait of a sunburnt peasant, who sold melons, like any market-gardener on the Continent, but who wore a long white beard, and looked the fiercest rascal that had ever been seen.  As all that was not enough to amuse her, she determined to turn the