Scattered thickly over the valley were the houses of the proprietors; and a village nestled in every available mountain cranny, and on many a hill top.
Speloncato especially, a village on the summit of a very high conical hill, is most picturesque, and followed us all the way to Belgodere, the road winding round it.
The sun had a magical effect, not only in lifting the thick curtain that hung before nature's fine panorama, but in drying the broad level road. The roads throughout Corsica, with very few exceptions, are first rate. They are kept smooth and in good repair, and are often soft as park drives. Many of them were constructed by the First Napoleon, and are perhaps his best legacy to his native land.
In an hour the water course had almost dried up, and the steep ascent became less dragging to the tired horses.
A lovely snow mountain rose suddenly up from the very road-side, and a cold wind blew between the crevices of the hills upon us.
Belgodere is a large, picturesquely placed village of twelve hundred inhabitants, rising up the side of a sugar loaf hill, backed by ranges of mountains, and looking over lower hills in front to the Mediterranean below.
The tiny village inn was more unpretentious than any we had yet seen. The doorway was about equal to that of a labourer's cottage in England, and the little broken wooden staircase up which we went was dark and dirty. The bedrooms, however, were a pleasing disappointment. There were only two in the house, prepared for the reception of guests; but they were spotlessly clean, and, as we afterwards found, very comfortable.
The man and his wife, as usual accompanied by all the family, (in this case only consisting of an octogenarian father, one or two small children, and four cats,) escorted us to our rooms, and apologized for the fact that we could not have the third room, as it was occupied by "les vers." This explanation rather tickling my curiosity, and being anxious to know whether "les vers" could, by any possibility, desert their room for ours, which I felt undesirable, I presently peeped into the third apartment, and found it a mass of sleepy silk-worms, hard at work absorbing cabbage leaves. In this part of the country, a great many silk-worms are kept, and they are more lucrative than occasional guests. This was not the only occasion on which we found them filling one of the best bedrooms, to our exclusion.
After depositing our wraps, we went out, and were conjured to mount the "Rocher" on the very top of the hill; where, as our landlady informed us, all "les Anglais" went to see the view of the Balagne.
The opinion of society, as expressed in the inn, being too much for us, we accordingly climbed over stony ruts, and up a steep stone staircase to the Rocher, in a tearing wind, and escorted by twenty or thirty excited children. There we found the view, as we had expected, precisely the same as that we had seen on our drive hither.