CHAP. I.--Vescovato and the Corsican Historians, 246 II.--Rousseau and the Corsicans, 256 III.--The Moresca--Armed Dance of the Corsicans, 259 IV.--Joachim Murat, 264 V.--Venzolasca--Casabianca--The Old Cloisters, 275 VI.--Hospitality and Family Life in Oreto--The Corsican Antigone, 277 VII.--A Ride through the District of Orezza to Morosaglia, 288 VIII.--Pasquale Paoli, 293 IX.--Paoli's Birthplace, 305 X.--Clemens Paoli, 314 XI.--The Old Hermit, 317 XII.--The Battle-field of Ponte Nuovo, 321 WANDERINGS IN CORSICA. BOOK I.--HISTORY. CHAP. I.--EARLIEST ACCOUNTS. The oldest notices of Corsica we have, are to be found in the Greek and Roman historians and geographers. They do not furnish us with any precise information as to what races originally colonized the island, whether Phœnicians, Etruscans, or Ligurians. All these ancient races had been occupants of Corsica before the Carthaginians, the Phocæan Greeks, and the Romans planted their colonies upon it. The position of the islands of Corsica and Sardinia, in the great western basin of the Mediterranean, made them points of convergence for the commerce and colonization of the surrounding nations of the two continents. To the north, at the distance of a day's journey, lies Gaul; three days' journey westwards, Spain; Etruria is close at hand upon the east; and Africa is but a few days' voyage to the south. The continental nations necessarily, therefore, came into contact in these islands, and one after the other left their stamp upon them. This was particularly the case in Sardinia, a country entitled to be considered one of the most remarkable in Europe, from the variety and complexity of the national characteristics, and from the multifarious traces left upon it by so many different races, in buildings, sculptures, coins, language, and customs, which, deposited, so to speak, in successive strata, have gradually determined the present ethnographic conformation of the island. Both Corsica and Sardinia lie upon the boundary-line which separates the western basin of the Mediterranean into a Spanish and an Italian half; and as soon as the influences of Oriental and Greek colonization had been eradicated politically, if not physically, these two nations began to exercise their determining power upon the islands. In Sardinia, the Spanish element predominated; in Corsica, the Italian. This is very evident at the present day from the languages. In later times, a third determining element, but a purely political