With many turns the great road climbs round the face of the mountain, and soon leaving Bastia behind, takes a southern trend, and suddenly commands from a height a matchless view of the Lake of Biguglia and the little hillside village where a Corsican parliament once sat, which was once, indeed, the capital of this war-torn island. For every village can boast of a battle, and the rocky earth has run with the blood of almost every European nation, as well as that of Turk and Moor. Beyond the lake, and stretching away into a blue haze where sea and land melt into one, lies the great salt marsh where the first Greek colony was located, where the ruins of Mariana remain to this day.
Soon the road mounts above the level of the semi-tropical vegetation, and passes along the face of bare and stony heights, where the pines are small and the macquis no higher than a man's head.
Denise, tired with so long a drive at a snail's pace, jumped from the carriage.
“I will walk up this hill,” she cried to the driver, who had never turned in his seat or spoken a word to them.
“Then keep close to the carriage,” he answered.
“Why?”
But he only indicated the macquis with his whip, and made no further answer. Mademoiselle Brun said nothing, but presently, when the driver paused to rest the horses, she descended from the carriage and walked with Denise.
It was nearly midday when they at last reached the summit of the pass. The heavy clouds, which had been long hanging over the mountains that border the great plain of Biguglia, had rolled northward before a hot and oppressive breeze, and the sun was now hidden. The carriage descended at a rapid trot, and once the man got down and silently examined his brakes. The road was a sort of cornice cut on the bare mountain side, and a stumble or the slipping of a brake-block would inevitably send the carriage rolling into the valley below.
Denise sat upright, and looked quickly, with eager movements of the head, from side to side. Soon they reached the region of the upper pines, which are small, and presently passed a piece of virgin forest—of those great pines which have no like in Europe.
“Look!” said Denise, gazing up at the great trees with a sort of gasp of excitement.