My sure-footed mule clambered safely up the narrowest paths along the very edge of abysses; and a glance downwards into these, where the Restonica foamed milk-white far below, had something in it both of terror and of beauty. A magnificent forest of pines and larches received me as the sun got higher. Very picturesque are these giant trees—the pine with its broad, green roof, and the larch, like the cedar of Lebanon, gnarled, soaring, and rich in branches. Tall erica, box, and wild myrtles, covered with a snow of blossoms, clustered in profusion round their mighty stems. And the fragrance of all those medicinal herbs, in which the mountains of Corsica are so rich, made the air of the woods balsamic and refreshing. My guide kept on before me at a rapid pace. I sometimes almost shuddered, when I saw myself alone with him in this wilderness of woods and rocks, and he threw a backward glance on me. He was an ill-favoured fellow, and had a villanous eye. I learned afterwards that there was blood on his hands—that he was a murderer. A year previously he had stabbed a Lucchese dead, with a single thrust, on the market-place of Corte. Riding for hours through these romantic mountain-solitudes you hear nothing but the rushing of the streams, the screaming of falcons, and now and then the clear whistle of a goat-herd calling to his goats. The herdsmen live in caverns or in huts, on the declivities of Monte Rotondo, to the topmost ridge of which their flocks clamber. The highest community of shepherds is to be found at an altitude of 5000 feet above the level of the sea. After three hours' ride I reached the first of these singular stations—the Rota del Dragone. Descending from the edge of the ravine towards the water, I saw a black, sooty cave before me, running, like a vault, into the cliff, below enormous blocks of granite—a few paces from its entrance the furious Restonica, chafing itself to madness among huge fragments of rock; all around, crag above crag, and dense forest. A wall of uncemented stones formed an enclosure round the entrance of the grotto. A fire was burning in the cave, round which cowered the shepherd family. A miserable-looking woman seemed to be engaged in mending some article of dress; beside her a fever-sick boy lay wrapped in a brown blanket of goat's wool, from which his pale face and glittering eyes looked out inquiringly.