The islands lie to the south-west of the town, and probably owe their title to their dangerous position.
St. Nicodemus appears, for some reason (certainly not, one would think, from the natural timidity and vacillation of his character, so foreign to theirs), to be a favourite amongst the Corsicans; for here again, just outside the town, upon the sea-shore itself, we found a little tabernacle, about six feet high, erected to his memory. It was open in front, with a wire covering, and contained two figures, one apparently representing a dead person, being supported on the knees of the other, probably intended for our Lord and the Saint.
For two or three miles outside Ajaccio, the road, on the land side, was bordered without intermission with a succession of little green enclosures, each containing a small square building placed in the centre. These are the tombs of all the principal families of Ajaccio. They differ in size and in shape, but all have an iron cross upon the roof, and almost all are ugly.
This was not the case everywhere. At Sartene I saw some pretty and picturesque tombs; but none here.
As we left the tombs behind us, steep hills began to rise from the road, some green with maquis, and some clothed in grey rocks, where however the asphodel and the universal cystus clung with a loving tenacity here and there.
The prickly pear, too, which loves the very edge of the sea, and abounds near Bastia and Ajaccio, grew in thick rough hedges along the roadside, covered with its little reddish pear-like fruit, which was beginning to ripen. This fruit is much eaten by the poorer Corsicans, who say it is very pleasant. It is ripe about July; and as nearly every hill and sandy wayside near the coast is more or less covered with the uncouth-looking tropical plant, its fruit must be a great boon to the very poor, and to the passing wayfarer.
We reached the Iles Sanguinaires in a little more than an hour and a half; and, drawing up, the driver immediately turned the horses across the road, and flung himself, face downwards, upon the grass in the sun to sleep, whilst we wandered on to the promontory before us.
It is a high conical hill, joined to the mainland and road by only a narrow strip of land, and looks, at a little distance, like another island. On its summit is a Genoese round watch-tower, very little ruined. The entrance (if ever there was one to this tower) is now choked up by sand and soil and pebbles; and the one square window is about eight feet from the ground, so we could not peep inside; but the window showed us the massive proportions, more than a yard thick, which, in company with so many others in the island, have stood on their stormy eminence facing two seas, and defying the attacks of winds and foul weathers as well as foes. The hill was almost covered with a beautiful, mauve-coloured, low-growing flower, something like an English stock, and of a star shape, with a white centre. Between the shrubs, too, and upon the grass and flowers, lay scattered hundreds of lovely echinæ, three or four inches in diameter, with spikes an inch long of a rich purple, crimson, or brown. They were all broken in half, and tenantless; but not otherwise injured by the violence of the wind which blew them up to this grassy height.
The islands, three principal ones, and some lesser, lay scattered out to sea beyond the hill; the nearest perhaps not more than a quarter of a mile off; and, between them and the mainland, ran a fierce current.
They were very picturesque, as they lay, one behind the other, each with its warning lighthouse perched on its rocky summit. The largest was several miles in length, and had soft green patches mingling with the cold grey of its granite walls. But, even to-day, under a cloudless blue sky and calm still atmosphere, the white surf beat against the steep sides; and, as the sun sank lower towards the horizon, a blood-red hue crept over the rough, jagged island heads, which suggested another and more literal meaning for their appellation of the Bloody Islands.