The hilly ground south of the broad valley of the Arno is of little interest, and for a considerable distance a broad strip of land, a level plain of cornfields and meadow, intervenes between the sea and the foot of the hills. Here and there long lines of pine woods seem almost to border the former; the rounded spurs of the latter are thickly wooded, but are capped here and there by grey villages, seemingly surrounded by old walls, and are backed by the bolder outlines of the more distant Apennines. For many a long mile this kind of scenery will continue, this flat, marshy, dyke-intersected plain, almost without a dwelling upon it, though village after village is seen perched like epaulettes on the low shoulders of the hills. It is easy to understand why they are placed in this apparently inconvenient position, for we are at the beginning of the Tuscan Maremma, a district scourged by malaria during the summer months, and none too healthy, if one may judge by the looks of the peasants, during any time of the year. But one cannot fail to observe that towards the northern extremity houses have become fairly common on this plain, and many of them are new, so that the efforts which have been made to improve the district by draining seem to have met with success. For some time the seaward views are very fine; comparatively near to the coast a hilly island rises steeply from the water and is crowned with a low round tower. Behind this lies Elba, a long, bold, hilly ridge, and far away, on a clear day, the great mountain mass of Corsica looms blue in the distance. Elba has its interests for the geologist, its beauties for the lover of scenery. It has quarries of granite and serpentine, but its fame rests on its iron mines, which have been noted from very early times and from which fine groups of crystals of hematite are still obtained. So famed was it in the days of the Roman Empire as to call forth from Virgil the well-known line, "Insula inexhaustis chalybum generosa metallis." When these, its masters, had long passed away, it belonged in turn to Pisa, to Genoa, to Lucca, and, after others, to the Grand Duke Cosimo of Florence. Then it became Neapolitan, and at last French. As everyone knows, it was assigned to Napoleon after his abdication, and from May, 1814, to February, 1815, he enjoyed the title of King of Elba. Then, while discontent was deepening in France, and ambassadors were disputing round the Congress-table at Vienna, he suddenly gave the slip to the vessels which were watching the coast and landed in France to march in triumph to Paris, to be defeated at Waterloo, and to die at St. Helena.