This is a place where one may well be a child among children. The sense of remoteness and seclusion one has here, on the shore and in the woods, soothes and strengthens. The little town lies still as a dream. The little flat-roofed houses with their green jalousies, the two snow-white towers of the little church—everything has a miniature look, and an air of privacy and retirement. In the sea stand the three red cliffs; an ancient tower keeps watch over them, and tells in the silent evening old stories of the Saracens; swifts and blue wild pigeons circle round it. I ascended these rocks in the evening; they are connected with the land by a dike. A grotto difficult of access, and open to the sea, penetrates on one side the rugged cliff. Not far off a new mole is being built; French workmen were occupied in elevating huge cubical masses of cemented stone by machinery, and then launching them into the waves. The evening landscape is very beautiful, from the Red Islands. To the right, the sea and the whole peninsula of Cape Corso veiled in haze; to the left, running out into the gulf, a red tongue of land; in the foreground the little city, fishing-skiffs, and one or two sailing-vessels in the harbour. In the background three glorious hills—Monte di Santa Angiola, Santa Susanna, and the rugged Monte Feliceto; on their slopes olive-groves and numerous black villages. Here and there glow the fires of the goat-herds. Nowhere can people lead a more patriarchal and peaceable life than do the inhabitants of Isola Rossa. The land yields its produce, and the sea too. They have enough. In the evening they sit and gossip on the mole, or they angle in the still water, or wander in the olive-groves and orange-gardens. Through the day the fisherman prepares his nets, and the handicraftsman sits plying his work under the mulberry-tree before his door. Here should be no lack of song and guitar. I had made myself at home in a little coffeehouse. The young hostess could sing beautifully; at my wish a little company assembled in the evening, and I had twanging of guitars and charming Corsican songs to my heart's content. The children who followed me sang me songs too, the Marseillaise, the Girondist's March, and Bertram's Parting, the last with new words in honour of the President of France, the refrain always closing with _Vive Louis Napoléon!_ Little Camillo could sing the Marseillaise best.