men and women, its history written on its face. On the high land above
the old port stands the citadel, just as the Genoese merchant-adventurers
planned it five hundred years ago. Beneath the citadel, and clustered
round the port, is the little old Genoese town, no bigger than a village,
which served for two hundred and fifty years as capital to an island in
constant war, against which it had always to defend itself.

It would seem that some hundred years ago, just before the island became
nominally a French possession, Bastia, for some reason or another, took
it into its municipal head to grow, and it ran as it were all down the
hill to that which is now the new harbour. It built two broad streets of
tall Genoese houses, of which one somehow missed fire, and became a slum,
while the other, with its great houses but half inhabited, is to-day the
Boulevard du Palais, where fashionable Bastia promenades itself--when
it is too windy, as it almost always is, to walk on the Place St.
Nicholas--where all the shops are, and where the modern European
necessities of daily life are not to be bought for love or money.

There are, however, two excellent knife-shops in the Boulevard du Palais,
where every description of stiletto may be purchased, where, indeed, the
enterprising may buy a knife which will not only go shrewdly into a foe,
but come right out on the other side--in front, that is to say, for no
true Corsican is so foolish as to stab anywhere but in the back--and,
protruding thus, will display some pleasing legend, such as "Vendetta,"
or "I serve my master," or "Viva Corsica," roughly engraved on the long
blade. There is a macaroni warehouse. There are two of those mysterious
Mediterranean provision warehouses, with some ancient dried sausages
hanging in the window, and either doorpost flanked by a tub of sardines,
highly, and yet, it would seem, insufficiently, cured. There is a tiny
book-shop displaying a choice of religious pamphlets and a fly-blown