I had heard a great deal of the beauty of the valleys of this region, of their fertility in wine and oranges, and of the gentle manners of their inhabitants, so that I began my wanderings in it with true pleasure. A cheerful and festive impression is produced at the very first by the olive-groves that line the excellent road along the shore, through the canton San Martino. Chapels appearing through the green foliage; the cupolas of family tombs; solitary cottages on the strand; here and there a forsaken tower, in the rents of which the wild fig-tree clings, while the cactus grows profusely at its base,--make the country picturesque. The coast of Corsica is set round and round with these towers, which the Pisans and Genoese built to ward off the piratical attacks of the Saracens. They are round or square, built of brown granite, and stand isolated. Their height is from thirty to fifty feet. A company of watchers lay within, and alarmed the surrounding country when the Corsairs approached. All these towers are now forsaken, and gradually falling to ruin. They impart a strangely romantic character to the Corsican shores. It was pleasant to wander through this region in the radiant morning; the eye embraced the prospect seawards, with the fine forms of the islands of Elba, Capraja, and Monte Cisto, and was again relieved by the mountains and valleys descending close to the shore. The heights here enclose, like sides of an amphitheatre, little, blooming, shady dales, watered by noisy brooks. Scattered round, in a rude circle, stand the black villages, with their tall church-towers and old cloisters. On the meadows are herdsmen with their herds, and where the valley opens to the sea, always a tower and a solitary hamlet by the shore, with a boat or two in its little haven. Every morning at sunrise, troops of women and girls may be seen coming from Cape Corso to Bastia, with produce for the market. They have a pretty blue or brown dress for the town, and a clean handkerchief wound as mandile round the hair. These forms moving along the shore through the bright morning, with their neat baskets, full of laughing, golden fruit, enliven the way very agreeably; and perhaps it would be difficult to find anything more graceful than one of those slender, handsome girls pacing towards you, light-footed and elastic as a Hebe, with her basket of grapes on her head. They are all in lively talk with their neighbours as they pass, and all give you the same beautiful, light-hearted _Evviva_. Nothing better certainly can one mortal wish another than that he should _live_.