15 JANUARY 1927, Page 12

• [A LETTER FROM CORSICA.] [To the Editor of the

SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Last summer I came across a book entitled Concerning Corsica, by Madame Rene Juta. This was responsible for my two visits to this island, this ".heavily-loaded island " are the author's words—laden with beauty of forest, mountain flowers and scents.

It seems almost as if the author's predictions are to be realized, for more hotels are being built, and greater conveniences are being offered to tourists, who increase in their thousands each. year. Corsica is now snow-capped, but by March the snows will have melted and the high passes will be free, yet even now the climate is more gentle than any on the northern Mediterranean coasts. This summer I hope to resume a regular round of trout fishing, for Corsica is a trout paradise.

Ajaccio, the capital, is reached by sea in eight hours, or by hydroplane in two hours, from the Antibes Station, near Nice.. It is amazingly sheltered from the winter winds ; Ajaecio gardens are quiet windless delights. But, alas ! there is no hotel here.

There arc yet gaps left in the ideal holiday-resort pro- gramme, for which some of us are thankful—games and their facilities are not yet catered for in Corsica—winter sports have not yet disturbed the black-clad moun- tain shepherds, nor has the charcoal burner surrendered one acre of his fragrant " maquis " to make a golfer's paradise. Corsica is still unconscious, offering her beauty, her rural shades, her snows, her white bays and green rivers, her unsophisticated pleasures—for a small sum. I shall take my car this year, shipping it at Nice, landing probably at Bastia, where the docking and landing are more com- petently arranged ; but this is an entire luxury, for the P.L.M. railways run their comfortable touring cars everywhere, and one's ambitions to reach the highest mountains may be realized in these comfortable leviathans. I feel, in writing of Corsica, that I am giving to your readers fresh scope for their holiday imaginations and appetites. I could fill far more than the space you can give to Corsica : indeed, a volume would be insufficient.—I am, Sir, &c.,

YOUR CORSICAN CORRESPONDENT,