From Taravo stretches far to the north a magnificent plain—the Fiumorbo or the Canton Prunelli. Watered by rivers and bordered by numerous ponds and by the sea, it resembles, when beheld from a distance, a boundless, luxuriant garden lying by the sea-shore. But scarcely a rood of arable land is visible; the fern covers an immeasurable extent of flat country. It is very depressing to travel through so beautiful a plain, and see no sign of life or cultivation. One cannot understand how the French should have overlooked the colonization of these parts. Here the prosperity of colonies would be more certain than in the life and money devouring sands of Africa. There is room here for two populous towns of at least 50,000 inhabitants each. Colonies of industrious peasants and citizens would soon convert the whole plain into a garden. Good drainage would soon cause the morasses to disappear, and make the air wholesome. There is not a finer strip of land in all Corsica, and none whose soil would be more productive. The climate is milder and sunnier than that of southern Tuscany; it might grow the sugar-cane, and grain would certainly yield a hundred-fold. Only through colonization and industry, which create demand and increase competition, could those Corsican mountaineers be induced to leave their black mountain villages for the plains, and cultivate the soil. Nature here, with the most lavish hand, offers everything which can give birth to a great industrial life; the hills are literally treasure-chambers of precious stones; the forests yield pine, larch, and oak; there is no lack of medicinal springs also, which might be conveyed to any part of the country. There is abundant pasture for the most populous herds; and the unbroken succession of mountain, plain, and the Italian sea, which swarms with fish, leaves nothing to be desired. To the coast, as it appears at the present day, the description which Homer gives of the Cyclops Isle is strikingly appropriate; its soil is represented by him as in the highest degree adapted for the cultivation which it does not receive:— "For stretch'd beside the hoary ocean lie Green meadows moist, where vines would never fail; Light is the land, and they might yearly reap The tallest crops, so unctuous is the glebe; Safe is its haven also, where no need Of cable is, or anchor, or to lash The halser fast ashore: but, pushing in His bark, the mariner might there abide, Till rising gales should tempt him forth again." As I gaze on these glorious plains, I cannot but admire the discernment of the old Romans who planted the only colonies they had in Corsica just on this spot. CHAPTER II. SULLA'S COLONY.