make friends in
this time-honoured way with the whole village cost me less than two
francs. And I had to use my "Corsican" freely to satisfy in some small
measure their curiosity about the world beyond _le maquis_, and beyond
the sea. They asked me how it was that I, a stranger and an Englishman,
spoke Corsican. To this I replied that it was spoken, though doubtless
in a corrupt form, in the neighbouring mainland, Italy. And on hearing
this they chattered volubly, being greatly excited on the difficult
point as to how Italians had learnt it. It is a small world, and most of
us are alike. Did not the lad from Pondicherry, the French settlement in
Hindustan, to whom I spoke in French, ask me how it was I spoke
"Pondicherry?"

Corsica certainly has a character of its own; it resembles no other
island that I know. It is fertile, and might be more fertile yet if its
native inhabitants chose to work. But the Corsican is haughty and
indolent, he does not care to work in his forests or to do a hand's turn
off his own family property. Even in that he grows no cereal crops to
speak of; it is easier to sit and watch the olive ripen and the
vineyards colour their fruit. They rear horses and cattle, asses and
mules, and sometimes hunt in the hills for pigs or goats, or the wild
black sheep. And even yet they hunt each other, for not even French law
and French police can eradicate revenge from the Corsican heart. They
are a curious subtle people, not at all like the French or the Italians.
And, to speak the truth, they have some more unamiable characteristics
than these, which lead them to hereditary blood feuds. It is said, I
know not with what accuracy, that most of the _mouchards_, or spies, and
the _agents provocateurs_ of the French police, are Corsican by birth.
But certainly Corsica has produced more than these, since it was the
birthplace of Paoli and of Napoleon.

ON THE MATTERHORN

Owing to my having read very little Alpine literature, I have seen but
few attempts to analyse the mental experiences of the novice who, for
the first time, ascends any of the higher peaks. And having read nothing
upon the subject I was naturally curious, while I was at Zermatt this
last summer, as to what these experiences were. I may own frankly that
the desire to find out had a great deal to do with my trying
mountaineering. A writer, and especially a writer of fiction, has, I
think, one plain duty always before him. He ought to kn