24 TRAVELS IN THE EIGHTIES. 



two disappeared into the wood, and were not seen 



again. 



One of the chief attractions of the landscape round 

 Perdaliana is its intense solitude. From the mountain 

 summits not a single human habitation is visible, and 

 the only sign of life is the distant smoke of the char- 

 coal-burners' fires, who threaten soon to annihilate 

 the ancient forests altogether, with which at one time 

 there is no doubt the whole island was covered. The 

 mountains are cut and seamed with watercourses 

 and covered with cistus, myrtle, erica, globularia, 

 and arbutus, forming the maquia of Sardinia, and 

 the maquis of Corsica, and called by the Sards tufera, 

 leone, ilichi, murmuru, and murdegu. Most of the 

 deeper gulleys and all the valleys are filled with 

 dense woods of evergreen oak. 



Our next move was to the guard-house of Mr. 

 Wood's lead and silver mine of Oreddu, half-a-dozen 

 miles from the hamlet of Yillanova Strasaile, on the 

 road from Lanusei to Nouro, and situated on the 

 Flumendosa Eiver, under the shelter of a steep hill, 

 wooded to the summit and visible from an immense 

 distance. Here it was even colder at night than 

 at Perdaliana, the rising sun revealing both dogs 

 and horses covered with hoar-frost. 



The first day's work consisted in beating the wooded 

 gorge of Astilasso, high up under the snows of Gen- 

 nargentu, which was stated not to have been disturbed 

 for five months ; then a wooded valley farther west, 

 called Seugarguri, where Bernardo, who was posted 



