After an early breakfast we left Bocognano, and proceeded on our way to Ghisoni before nine o'clock.
For two or three hours we followed the Corte route, mounting up the Foce Pass, where before we had descended in the diligence. But two months had made a vast difference in the nature of the views. Where all had been bleak and bare before, pale feathery beeches now hung over gorge and ravine, shading the hot ascent, and chestnuts in full leaf bent above many a foaming cascade as it rushed down the hill-side.
Snow mountains still surrounded us on either side, but rich groves of trees filled up the valley beneath, and clothed the opposite slope with a warm mantle, out of which rose the white conical peak of Monte D'Oro at a great height into the burning blue sky.
The forest of Vizzavona was far more beautiful than at our first visit. There were no naked trunks or bare branches now: both beeches and pines were in full luxuriance, and everywhere was richest foliage and most grateful shade, showing only occasional peeps of the grand snowy ranges through the avenue breaks. Descending again, we baited, for our mid-day rest, under a frying sun but a frosty atmosphere, on an exposed plateau just beyond the forest, beside a lonely and deserted cantonnier's house, where the ground was bare, but where snow, on grandest hills, hemmed us in on every side.
After washing down our bread and raisins with a draught from the delicious mountain spring that ran before us, we descended the hill a little farther, to investigate a little pine wood just above the road-way.
It was fringed by gigantic Mediterranean heath trees, and the ground was carpeted by cyclamen and fir cones, out of which the lizards darted at our approach in hundreds, some only an inch or two long, and evidently mere babes of their tribe.
Almost at the same moment, my companion and I started two large snakes.
Mine was black, and about four feet long; hers green, and somewhat shorter. The black fellow sprang almost from under my feet on the narrow pathway, and wriggled away rapidly, swimming across a dyke just beside it, and then hastening into concealment up the side of the opposite bank.
The other one started out in the same way just before my companion, but took refuge in the hollow of a neighbouring tree-trunk, putting out his pretty green head and bright green eyes every other minute cautiously, to see if the coast were clear, but always retiring when he observed us watching.
I have no doubt that wood, and every wood and forest in Corsica, is more or less full of such snakes; but their timidity makes them little formidable, unless one should happen to place a bare hand or foot by accident upon them.