wholesome bread, of which the peasants are very fond. Chestnuts may be reckoned a sort of grain in Corsica; for they answer all the purposes of it. The Corsicans eat them when roasted by way of bread. They even have them ground into flour, and of that they make very good cakes.
There is a vast quantity of honey produced in Corsica; for the island has from the earliest times been remarkable for its swarms of bees. When it was subject to the Romans, a tribute was imposed upon it of no less than two hundred thousand pounds of wax yearly[1]. Indeed the laurel, the almond tree, and the myrtle, in the flowers of which, the bees find so much sweetness, are very common here; and the hills are all covered with wild thyme, and other fragrant herbs. Yet its honey hath always been accounted bitter, by reason of the boxwood and yew, as Diodorus[2] and Pliny[3] observe; which make Virgil's Lycidas wish
Sic tua Cyrnaeas fugiant examina taxos.
So may thy bees refuse
The baneful juices of Cyrnaean yews.
