Identifier: mentonecairocorf00wool (find matches)
Title: Mentone, Cairo and Corfu
Year: 1896 (1890s)
Authors: Woolson, Constance Fenimore, 1840-1894
Subjects:
Publisher: New York : Harper & Brothers
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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r tree, whose every bud appears to have beencounted. At Corfu one strolls through miles of woodwhose foliage is magnificent; it is possible to lounge inthe shade, for there is shade, and to draw a free breath.No doubt the Corfiotes keep guard over their leafydomain; but the occasional visitor, at least, is notharassed by warnings to trespassers set up everywhere,by children following him with suspicious eyes, bypatrols, dogs, stone walls, and sometimes by stones ofanother kind which do not stay in the walls, but comeflying through the air to teach him to keep his distance.It is difficult, probably, for people from the New Worldto look upon a forest as something sacred, guarded,private; we have taken our pleasure in the woodsall our lives whenever we have felt so inclined; we donot intend to do any harm there, but we do wish to befree. In the olive groves of Corfu the wish can begratified. Their aisles are wonderful in every respect:in the size of the trees (some of them are sixty feet
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329 high), in the picturesque shapes of the gnarled trunks,in the extent of the long vistas where the light has thecolor which some of us know at home—that silvery-green under the great live-oaks at the South, whentheir branches are veiled in the long moss. But Athens was before us ; we must leave the groves;we must leave Nausicaas shore. We did so at last inthe wake of a departing storm. For several days thewind had been tempestuous. The signal, which is dis-played from the Citadel, had become a riddle; it is anarrangement of flags by day and of lanterns by night,and no two of us ever deciphered it alike. If the orderwas thus and so, it meant that something belonging tothe Austrian-Lloyd company was in sight; if so andthus, it meant the Florio line; if neither of these, thenit might possibly be our boat—that is, the Greek coast-ing steamer which we had decided to take because wehad been told that it was the best. I have never fath-omed the mystery as to why our informant told us

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