A TRAMP ACKOSS CORSICA. 148 



standoffishness. I satisfied my conscience however by persuading the 

 two youngest girls to accept a franc apiece, which was doubtless very 

 immoral of me. A few yards from this cottage I saw, but did not get 

 near to, a fine Papilio Iwspiton that flew cahnly across the road in 

 front of me and sailed away over the maquis that was here some ten 

 or twelve feet deep, and quite impossible to swim through. While 

 looking for another on the slopes running down to the sea, I picked 

 up a couple of Puntia var. bellidice and a Colias eduaa, and then further 

 on a few Gonepteryx cleopatra ^ s ovipositing on barberry bushes, and 

 some (? s, far harder to net, as they rushed up and down over the 

 maquis, burying themselves deep in great white heather bushes that 

 were twelve feet high, disappearing just when I was surest that I had 

 correctly stalked one, and reappearing just out of reach of my net the 

 moment I had made up my mind to give it up and make a move in 

 the direction of supper and bed. At Sta. Lucia we received a hearty 

 reception and some excellent wild boar steaks — our host had been out 

 gunning the day before. I might mention here that the cost of an 

 excellent dinner of six or seven courses, with wine, coffee, liqueur, and 

 cigar, is only two francs in the Corsican villages. From Sta. Lucia to 

 Porto Vecchio is only ten miles by the high road, but by way of the 

 seaside and the crosscuts and short cuts, we made a long day's walk of 

 it (short cuts are wonderful things), lunching on wild boar from Sta. 

 Lucia by the seaside after a pleasant swim. After luncheon I was 

 fortunate enough to take five Papilio hospiton flying over the maquis 

 close to the seashore in a place where wild carrot was abundant ; this 

 beautiful swallowtail however settles on the gaudy agave and other 

 flowers, and I have not found any female hovering over the foodplant, 

 though they are never very far away from it. On my last visit to 

 Corsica I had found P. hospiton very hard to catch, as it was flying on 

 a hilltop in a regular gale of wind, this time I found that its flight is 

 very similar to that of P. niachaoi, and is quite as easy if not easier to 

 net. We were well rained upon for an hour before reaching Porto 

 Vecchio, so were very glad to let the kind-hearted landlady of the tiny 

 little tavern, which calls itself the "Hotel de France," mother us to 

 her heart's content and to our body's recomforting. The next day we 

 tramped on after seeing all that the old village, once an important 

 town, has to show. After following the road for about ten miles with 

 nothing more interesting than Pietis brassicae, Paran/e var. tii/elius, 

 P. er/eria, and Cdastrina ari/iolus — most of them hens — to animate the 

 landscape and flirt with the rock-roses, we struck ofi' to the sea for a 

 bathe, knowing by the map that we were now near a place where we 

 could feed. We bathed, and tried to take a short cut across the maquis 

 back to the road, and found ourselves landed up to the middle in fresh- 

 water marshes ; after half an hour of this, we luckily happened upon 

 a goatherdess, a maiden of about eighteen years of age, fair as an early 

 summer dawn, and wearing the happiest smile it has ever been my lot 

 to see. She knew no word of French, but in reply to my Italian, she 

 spread out on the myrtles the skirts she had been washing, and bare- 

 legged ran by our side through the maquis that scoured our well-clothed 

 lower limbs, and which seemed to her a very Turkish carpet. Thanks 

 to our fair guide we soon struck the high road and got to a house, the 

 house. I ventured into the bar, nobody there, hunted up the kitchen, 

 nobody there, went upstairs, found on one side of the landing of the 



