this time of year there are many patches of snow scattered over the Albanian mountains. We were much struck on our arrival at Corfu with the total difference in the style of architecture, as compared with that of Italy; which, as Corfu is rather an Italian than a Greek city, we did not expect. Instead of large rooms, and lofty ceilings, we found small chambers, in which I can do little more than stand upright. And in the principal streets the footpaths run under arcades, which are so low, that in many places I cannot conveniently walk under them. The windows are large in proportion to the scale of the building, and the spaces between them, both horizontally and vertically, very small. In short, the whole disposition is mean and paltry, and the materials are in no respects better. It is not only the houses which strike one as novelties at Corfu. Here we first see the Greek dress in common use, and the full garments and rich colours give an air of consequence, which however is perhaps, as much the effect of novelty as of any thing else. It excites however, a feeling something like surprise, when first we see men so dressed employed in field labour, and yet on a nearer approach, we perceive that it is as ragged and shabby as that of the lower classes with us. The Greeks of the islands generally wear a sort of night-cap on the head, and have abundance of hair, which is often brown towards the points, and very unlike the fine black hair of the Italians. They wear a waistcoat with sleeves, and over this another waistcoat without sleeves, of a different colour, and both more or less embroidered; a red or blue sash, and very full petticoats, reaching a little below the knee, and stitched up at the bottom, except two holes for the legs to pass through. The stockings are frequently white with red seams. The dress of the Albanian peasants is much the same in form, but it is of coarser materials, and of undyed wool, except blue and red threads, which are fastened in at places, to serve as embroidery. The officers here have a very good library, and I found what I did not expect, a copy of Stuart’s Athens, including the fourth volume. The chief produce of Corfu is oil. The Venetian government gave a reward for each tree that was planted, and assigned a punishment for cutting one down. The oil is said to be very good, and it ought to be cheaper here than in the Neapolitan territory, where land pays taxes to the amount of 27 per cent. on the produce, while here it only pays 3; however, if less go to the government, more probably goes to the landlord. The mountains seem to consist principally of limestone, and from the specimens I saw of the rock and its fossil contents, I should conclude it analogous to our chalk, but much harder. The lower hills are sandstone lying on the limestone, and a siliceous angular breccia occurs, whose position I could not ascertain; there is also a coarse gritty limestone, and a slaty clay, with thin beds of sulphur.