There is no public water-supply for the houses in any Corsican town. Most of the water required for washing and cooking has to be carried from wells, streams, or springs. In that part of Bonifacio which is built on the summit of the rock there are one public and thirty-nine private cisterns, in which rain-water from the roofs is stored. Down by the sea there is one, and only one, spring of water fit to drink. The people who have no private cisterns are obliged to descend every day to the low town to get water for use in their houses. Some men get their living by carrying water to the high town in barrels on the backs of mules. They sell the water at a penny a barrel. Now people must eat, though they need not wash. Hence water is chiefly used for cooking. Washing is reserved as a special duty, to be performed only on high days and holidays. Such a thing as a good bath is unknown, and there is probably not a single bathroom in the whole place. This is the case, not merely in Bonifacio, but throughout the length and breadth of the island. The difficulty of getting water is so great that the people decline to waste it by pouring it over their bodies. When they wish to wash their clothes, they carry them to the nearest stream, and there, in full view of every passer-by, they cleanse the family linen. Floors are never scrubbed, window-panes are never cleaned. Both houses and people are nearly as dirty as if soap had never been invented. Wherever you travel throughout the land you will see peasant-women and young girls carrying water in big pails. Some of these pails weigh, when full of water, from 50 to 60 pounds. They are balanced on the head. The women trip along merrily, never stumbling on the mountain-paths nor tripping over the holes in the streets. Except in Bonifacio, it is always the women who carry the water, never the men. They seldom hurry over their task. At the fountain or the spring they meet their neighbours and have a good gossip, and the Corsican woman is fond of gossip, even if she is not fond of carrying heavy pails of water. There are few industries in Corsica, except those of tilling fields and tending vines and orchards, so that the existence of one in any place is worth mentioning. At Bonifacio there is a factory for the manufacture of corks. The cork-oak is a common tree in the island, and its bark is of great value. It is exported either in strips, or else as corks for bottles. The cork-factory at Bonifacio is the most important in the island, and one of the first four belonging to France. It makes as many as 24,000,000 corks in a year. CHAPTER V CALVI