[Illustration: BETWEEN OLMETA AND BIGORNO.]
The island may be divided, as to climate and vegetation, into three zones, corresponding with the degrees of elevation of its surface. The _first_, ranging to about 1,700 feet above the level of the Mediterranean, and embracing the deeper valleys of the island, as well as the sea-coast, has the characteristics conformable to its latitude; that is to say, similar to those of the parallel shores of Italy and Spain. Properly speaking, there is no winter; they have but two seasons, spring and summer. The thermometer seldom falls more than a degree or two below the freezing point, and then only for a few hours. The nights are, however, cold at all seasons.
When we were at Ajaccio, towards the end of October, the heat was oppressive; my thermometer at noon stood at 80° in the shade, in an airy room closed by Venetian blinds. In January, we were told, the sun becomes again powerful, and then for eight months succeeds a torrid heat. The sky is generally cloudless, the thermometer rises from 70 to 80 and even 90 degrees in the shade, and scarcely any rain falls after the month of April; nor indeed always then, so that there are often long and excessive droughts.
The indigenous vegetation is generally of a class suited to resist the droughts, having hard, coriaceous leaves. Such is the shrubbery described in a former chapter, which, exempt from severe frosts on the one hand, and thriving in an arid soil and parching heat on the other, clothes half the surface of the island with perpetual verdure. There have been seasons when even these shrubs were so burnt up that the slightest accident might have caused a wide-spread conflagration. When we travelled, the leaves of the rock-roses, which here grow to the height of four or five feet, were hanging on the bushes scorched and withered by the summer heat, somewhat marring the beauty of the evergreen thickets.
Most of the fruit-trees suited to flourish in such a climate have been already noticed in passing. We saw also almonds, pomegranates, and standard peaches and apricots. To the list of shrubs which most struck us, I may also add the brilliant flowering oleander, and the tamarisk. Corsica is said to be famous for its orchids, verbenas, and cotyledinous and caryophyllaceous plants; but I only speak of what I saw, and these were out of season.