Picturesque views abound in the hills of Sisco, and the country becomes more and more beautiful as we advance northwards. I passed through a great number of villages--Crosciano, Pietra, Corbara, Cagnano--on the slopes of Monte Alticcione, but I found some of them utterly poverty-stricken; even their wine was exhausted. As I had refused breakfast in the house of my late entertainer, in order not to send the good people into the kitchen by sunrise, and as it was now mid-day, I began to feel unpleasantly hungry. There were neither figs nor walnuts by the wayside, and I determined that, happen what might, I would satisfy my craving in the next paese. In three houses they had nothing--not wine, not bread--all their stores were expended. In the fourth, I heard the sound of a guitar. I entered. Two gray-haired men in ragged _blouses_ were sitting, the one on the bed, the other on a stool. He who sat on the bed held his _cetera_, or cithern, in his arm, and played, while he seemed lost in thought. Perhaps he was dreaming of his vanished youth. He rose, and opening a wooden chest, brought out a half-loaf carefully wrapped in a cloth, and handed me the bread that I might cut some of it for myself. Then he sat down again on the bed, played his cithern, and sang a _vocero_, or dirge. As he sang, I ate the bread of the bitterest poverty, and it seemed to me as if I had found the old harper of _Wilhelm Meister_, and that he sung to me the song-- "Who ne'er his bread with tears did eat, Who ne'er the weary midnight hours Weeping upon his bed hath sate, He knows you not, ye heavenly powers!" Heaven knows how Goethe has got to Corsica, but this is the second of his characters I have fallen in with on this wild cape. Having here had my hunger stilled, and something more, I wandered onwards. As I descended into the vale of Luri, the region around me, I found, had become a paradise. Luri is the loveliest valley in Cape Corso, and also the largest, though it is only ten kilometres long, and five broad.[G] Inland it is terminated by beautiful hills, on the highest of which stands a black tower. This is the tower of Seneca, so called because, according to the popular tradition, it was here that Seneca spent his eight years of Corsican exile. Towards the sea, the valley slopes gently down to the marina of Luri. A copious stream waters the whole dale, and is led in canals through the gardens. Here lie the communes which form the pieve of Luri, rich, and comfortable-looking, with their tall churches, cloisters, and towers, in the midst of a vegetation of tropical luxuriance. I have seen many a beautiful valley in Italy, but I remember none that wore a look so laughing and winsome as that fair vale of Luri. It is full of vineyards, covered with oranges and lemons, rich in fruit-trees of every kind, in melons, and all sorts of garden produce, and the higher you ascend, the denser become the groves of chestnuts, walnuts, figs, almonds, and olives.