Above Pino extends the canton of Rogliano, with Ersa and Centuri--a district of remarkable fertility in wine, oil, and lemons, and rivalling Luri in cultivation. The five pievi of the entire Cape--Brando, Martino, Luri, Rogliano, and Nonza--contain twenty-one communes, and about 19,000 inhabitants; almost as many, therefore, as the island of Elba. Going northwards, from Rogliano over Ersa, you reach the extreme northern point of Corsica, opposite to which, with a lighthouse on it, lies the little island of Girolata. CHAPTER IV. THE TOWER OF SENECA. "Melius latebam procul ab invidiæ malis Remotus inter Corsici rupes maris." _Roman Tragedy of Octavia._ The Tower of Seneca can be seen at sea, and from a distance of many miles. It stands on a gigantic, quite naked mass of granite, which rises isolated from the mountain-ridge, and bears on its summit the black weather-beaten pile. The ruin consists of a single round tower--lonely and melancholy it stands there, hung with hovering mists, all around bleak heath-covered hills, the sea on both sides deep below. If, as imaginative tradition affirms, the banished stoic spent eight years of exile here, throning among the clouds, in the silent rocky wilds--then he had found a place not ill adapted for a philosopher disposed to make wise reflections on the world and fate; and to contemplate with wonder and reverence the workings of the eternal elements of nature. The genius of Solitude is the wise man's best instructor; in still night hours he may have given Seneca insight into the world's transitoriness, and shown him the vanity of great Rome, when the exile was inclined to bewail his lot. After Seneca returned from his banishment to Rome, he sometimes, perhaps, among the abominations of the court of Nero, longed for the solitary days of Corsica. There is an old Roman tragedy called _Octavia_, the subject of which is the tragic fate of Nero's first empress.[H] In this tragedy Seneca appears as the moralizing figure, and on one occasion delivers himself as follows:--