elds. On Christmas Day I met a number of
Corfiote women walking about the esplanade arrayed in light-colored
dresses, with large aprons of white lace or white muslin, and upon their
heads white veils with bunches of artificial flowers; in addition, they
wore so many necklaces, pins, clasps, buckles, rings, lockets,
bracelets, pendants, and other adornments of silver and silver-gilt that
they clanked as they walked. This was a gala costume of some sort. We
did not see it again.

The island of Corfu is about forty miles long. Its breadth in the widest
part is twenty miles. The English, who have a genius for road-making
which is almost equal to that of the Romans, have left excellent
highways behind them; it is easy, therefore, to cross the island from
end to end. In arranging such an expedition, that exhaustive dialogue
about buying a carriage, which (to one's bewilderment) occupies by far
the most important place in all the Manuals of Conversation for the
Traveller, might at last be of some service.

"Have you a carriage?" it begins (in six languages).

"Yes; I have berlins, vis-a-vis, gigs, calashes, and cabriolets." (What
vehicles are these?)

"Are the axle-trees, the nave, the spokes, the tires, the felloes, and
the splinter-bars in good condition?" it goes on in its painstaking
polyglot. Possibly one might be called upon to purchase splinter-bars in
a remote island of the Ionian Sea.

Seated, then, in a berlin, or perhaps in a calash, one goes out at least
to visit the olive groves, if not to cross the island. These groves are
not the ranks of severely pruned, almost maimed, trees which greet the
traveller in parts of southern Europe--groves without shade, without
luxuriance; viewed from a distance, their gray-green foliage forms a
characteristic part of the landscape, but at close quarters they have
but one expression--namely, how many coins are to be squeezed out of
each poor tree, whose every bud appears to have been counted. At Corfu
one strolls through miles of wood whose foliage is magnificent; it is
possible to lounge in the shade, for there is shade, and to draw a free
breath. No doubt the Corfiotes keep guard over their leafy domain; but
the occasional visitor, at least, is not harassed by warnings to
trespassers set up everywhere, by children following him with suspicious
eyes, by patrols, dogs, stone walls, and sometimes by stones of another
kind which do not stay in the walls, but come flying through