The road continues to descend towards Ajaccio. At length we descried the magnificent gulf. It was about five o'clock in the afternoon when we gained the neighbourhood of the city. The richer cultivation of the heights, vineyards, and olive-orchards, and the fertile plain of Campoloro, announced the vicinity of the capital of Corsica. It showed itself as a row of white houses stretching into the gulf, at the foot of a range of hills, and surrounded by villas. Through the avenue of elms, which leads along the gulf into the town, I now, with joyous emotion, entered the little native city of the man who convulsed the world. FOOTNOTE: [L] An allusion to the blue flower in the _Henrich von Ofterdingen_ of Novalis—_Tr._ BOOK VIII.—WANDERINGS IN CORSICA. CHAPTER I. AJACCIO. Ajaccio lies at the northern end of one of the most magnificent gulfs in the world. The lines of its two opposite coasts are of unequal length. The northern is the shorter; it runs out in a westerly direction to the Punta della Parata, off which lie the Isole Sanguinarie, or Bloody Islands. The southern side of the gulf stretches from north to south in a long and very irregular line to Cape Muro, on rounding which you enter the Bay of Valinco. No villages are seen on the northern shore; on the southern but few, with here and there a solitary tower or a lighthouse. Lofty hills rise over the northern end of the beautiful gulf; at their base lies the valley of the Gravone, ending towards the sea in the fertile plain of Campo di Loro. The situation of Ajaccio has an astonishing resemblance to that of Naples. It is said that Ajaccio is one of the oldest cities in Corsica. According to the fable of some chroniclers, it derives its name from the Telamonian Ajax; according to others, it was founded by Agazzo, the son of the Trojan prince Corso, who wandered with Æneas into the western Mediterranean, carried off Sica, the niece of Dido, and thus gave the island the name of Corsica. Ptolemy places the ancient city of Urcinium on the Gulf of Ajaccio, supposed to be the Adjacium of the earliest period of the Middle Ages, a town which is always mentioned along with the oldest in the island—with Aleria, Mariana, Nebium, and Sagona, cities which now no longer exist.