se,
and higher still a zone of clear pale green bordered with gold. At the
same moment the Red Rocks were flooded with rose light which extended in
a lovely flush up the high gray peaks behind far in the sky, lingering
there when all the lower splendor was gone, and the sea and shore veiled
in dusky twilight gray.

[Illustration: A MEDITERRANEAN BOAT]

"It is almost as beautiful at sunrise," said Mrs. Clary; "and then, too,
you can see the Fairy Island."

"What is that?" I asked.

"Never mind what it is in reality," answered Mrs. Clary. "I consider it
enchanted--the Fortunate Land, whose shores and mountain-peaks can be
seen only between dawn and sunrise, when they loom up distinctly, soon
fading away, however, mysteriously into the increasing daylight, and
becoming entirely invisible when the sun appears."

"I saw it this morning," said Miss Graves, soberly. "It is only
Corsica."

"Brigands and vendetta," said Inness.

"Napoleon," said all the rest of us.

"My idea of it is much the best," said Mrs. Clary; "it is Fairy-land,
the lost Isles of the Blest."

After that each morning at breakfast the question always was, who had
seen Corsica. And a vast amount of ingenious evasion was displayed in
the answers. However, I did see it once. It rose from the water on the
southeastern horizon, its line of purple mountain-peaks and low shore so
distinctly visible that it seemed as if one could take the little boat
with the crimson sail and be over there in an hour, although it was
ninety miles away; but while I gazed it faded slowly, melted, as it
were, into the gold of the awakening day.

The weeks passed, and we rode, drove, walked, and climbed hither and
thither, looking at the carouba-trees, the stiff pyramidal cypresses,
the euphorbias in woody bushes five feet high, the great planes, the
grotesque naked figs, the aloes and oleanders growing wild, and the
fantastic shapes of the cacti. We searched for ferns, finding the rusty
ceterach, the little trichomanes, and _Adiantum nigrum_, but especially
the exquisite maiden-hair of the delicate variety called _Capillus
veneris_, which fringed every watercourse and bank and rock where there
is the least moisture with its lovely green fretwork. There is a phrase
current in Mentone and applied to this fern, as well as to the violets
which grow wild in rich profusion, starring the ground with their blue;
unthinking people say of them that they are "so common they become
w