The more modern town of San Fiorenzo was one of the first places which gave its adherence to the Bank of Genoa, in consequence of which the city enjoyed many rights and privileges. The Bank sent over a Castellano and a Podestà yearly, who conducted affairs along with four consuls. In later wars, the Castle of San Fiorenzo was frequently of importance. The fresh-caught fish with which our table was here supplied, were excellent. Scarcely had we despatched them when we resumed our journey. The road now for some distance leaves the shore, and ascends a range of hills which sometimes shut out the view of the sea. This coast country continues mountainous and barren into the province of Balagna, and as far as Isola Rossa. The Plutonic forces have scattered large fragments of rock on every side. They cover the declivities in gigantic blocks or shattered into debris; slate, limestone, granite, are everywhere visible. The olive and the chestnut are no longer so abundant; but the wild olive-shrub (oleastro) covers the hills, with the arbutus, rosemary, myrtle, and erica. All this shrubbery had suffered from the sun; the reddish brown tinge of the twigs, the gray of the olive-bushes, and the weather-worn stones, gave the region, as far as the eye reached, a melancholy tone. The glimmering of the heated air is the only motion in this desert stillness; not a bird sings, only the grasshopper chirps. Sometimes you see a flock of black goats lying under an olive-tree, or scouring over the rocks, seized with the panic-terror. From time to time we passed little lonely wayside taverns, where the mules of the _diligenza_ were changed, or we stopped where a spring filled a stone trough, at which man and beast were equally glad to slake their thirst. I saw in some places little fields of grain—barley and rye. The grain had been already cut down, and was being threshed upon the field. The arrangement for this is very simple. In the middle of the field is a little round threshing-floor, built of stone, and upon this the Corsican throws down his sheaves, and has them trodden out by oxen, which drag a heavy stone behind them. I observed that, contrary to the scriptural injunction, the ox was always muzzled. Innumerable threshing-floors of this description were scattered over the fields, yet no village was in sight. Near the threshing-floors stood little barns, four square erections of stone, with flat roofs. The circular threshing-floors, and these little gray houses, dotting the fields far and wide, had a most singular appearance; they seemed the dwellings of gnomes. The Corsican laughs when you tell him how the husbandman of the north swings the flail with his own arms; such galley-slave toil he would submit to at no price. During the whole journey I saw no wheeled vehicle but our own. Now and again a Corsican met us on horseback; his double-barrel slung behind him, and his parasol over his head.