Corsica was at one time in the hands of the Carthaginians, but between two and three hundred years before the birth of Christ it passed under the control of Rome, at that time the mistress of the world. The Romans had their chief settlement at Aleria, near that Lake of Diana of which we have already spoken. The Corsicans did not tamely submit to the Roman invaders. They never, in fact, tamely submitted to anyone. They fought with courage and cunning. Like true mountaineers, they were hardy and fearless. They captured one of the Roman generals, and sent him home with a treaty of peace which they had forced him to sign. They rebelled over and over again, and it took the Romans nearly a hundred years before they obtained a peaceful occupation. Even then the islanders had not been completely conquered, and it was only in the lands by the sea that the Romans could really call themselves masters. The next invaders came from the north of Europe--Goths and Vandals, those wild and wandering tribes that broke the power of Rome. They were followed about A.D. 720 by the Moors, who, having conquered Spain and passed the Pyrenees, turned their attention to this isle of the sea. About A.D. 1000, a number of lords leagued themselves together and set up a capital at Corté, in the centre of the island. They treated the people with great cruelty, and their subjects rose in rebellion and largely destroyed their power. It would take too long to tell here how, towards the end of the eleventh century, the Pisans conquered the island from the Moors, and how, about the middle of the fourteenth century, it passed finally to the Genoese. In 1768 Genoa sold the island to France; from 1793 to 1796 it belonged to England; it then passed once more under the control of France, and with them it has remained to this day, slowly but surely becoming more civilized and peaceful. But though the story is too long to tell in detail, yet a few incidents may be related merely to illustrate the quarrelsome, restless, and withal independent character of the people. One feudal lord treated his retainers with great severity. Amongst them was a very daring man, whose heart burned at the injuries he had received. He came to his master and offered him a beautiful horse as a present. He proposed to the signor that he should come and see the animal put through its paces. The lord never dreamt that his vassal would dare to attack him, and left his friends and retainers behind. When they were in a lonely place, the vassal suddenly whirled a lasso over his head, caught his master round the neck, put spurs to his horse, and galloped away as fast as he could, thus dragging his prisoner after him and strangling him. When the man returned home, he was treated with great respect by his neighbours, for they looked upon him as a brave man, who had fought not only his own battles, but theirs also.