For a botanist, there are ferns and flowers innumerable along the roads; and for a conchologist, there are plenty of pretty shells on the long range of sands.
The town itself has remarkably few smells for Corsica, and strangers can walk about without being followed and mobbed by juvenile savages.
The Place du Marché, out of the principal street, and looking upon the open quay, is a pretty square. In the centre of it, gazing out upon the blue sea and the bluer hills, rises a large marble statue of the first Napoleon, surrounded by little fan palms and other shrubs, and by light fountain jets. The statue is not worth much, but its position and surroundings are well chosen; and the Ajaccio fountains, unlike those of Trafalgar Square, play constantly, not occasionally.
Place Buonaparte, a little further on, in the Cours Grandval, is very fine. It is just beyond the street and the town, and is a wide open space facing the sea, and in front of the tree-lined Boulevard.
A large and imposing group stands in its midst. Napoleon on horseback is the central figure; on each side of him stand two of his brothers, guarding, as it were, the four corners of the dais on which he is stationed. The figures are in bronze, and well-executed; and the group is most striking, seen from the Boulevard, standing out vividly, as it does, against the perfect blue of sea and sky.
Behind the group are some remarkably hideous but useful drinking fountains; an oasis for the thirsty traveller in the midst of the white, dusty, unshadowed Place.
The cathedral (for Ajaccio is an ancient bishopric) is but a poor building. It is small, ornamented with a few pillars of grey Corsican marble, with local black marble round the principal altar, and another of a peculiar but not pretty tint, dappled yellow, decorating some of the side altars.
Two of these, both dedicated to the Virgin, were illuminated in a singular way. A slit was made in the roof, through which the light of a lamp streamed down upon the picture, shining upon the head of the Madonna, and gilding the sky behind her.
The images of the saints were peculiarly grotesque and out of taste in their adornments, and one wondered how any one, with the smallest sense of the ludicrous, could have allowed such absurdities to mar a religious spot.
A brightly coloured Madonna, with a very yellow face, placed upon a small pedestal, wore a huge wreath of white artificial flowers surmounting and almost concealing her most uninviting countenance, whilst another hung on her outstretched wrist, and innumerable glass beads and gaudy brass rings decked throat, and dress, and well-displayed fingers.