The ledge
had nowhere a notch in it to grip the boot-sole, and was moreover
slippery with the green ooze of a mountain spring. It has haunted my
dreams since then; I would not essay it again for my weight in money;
but I crossed it that day, so to speak, with my hands in my pockets.
The most curious (you might call it the most uncanny) part of the
whole adventure, was that from time to time we came out of these
breathless scrambles plump upon a patch of cultivated ground and a
hill-farm with its steading; the explanation being that these farms
stand each at the head of its own ravine, and, inaccessible one to
another, have communication with the world only by the tracks which
lead down their ravines. Here, three thousand feet and more above
the sea--upon which we looked down between cliff and woodland as
through a funnel, and upon the roofs and whitewashed walls of
fishing-villages on the edge of the blue--lived slow, sedate folks,
who called their dogs off us and stared upon us as portents and gave
us goat's-milk and bread, refusing the coins we proffered.
The inhabitants of this Cape (I have since learned) are a race apart
in Corsica; slow, peaceable, without politics and almost (as we
should say) without patriotism.
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