BOOK VII.—WANDERINGS IN CORSICA.
CHAPTER I.
TO CORTE THROUGH BALAGNA.
I gave up the thought of a journey which I had at one time intended to make along the coast from Calvi to Sagone, where the large gulfs of Porto and Sagone, and those of Galeria and Girolata run into the country. The region is for the most part uncultivated, and the roads are frightful.
I travelled through the glorious valley of Balagna by the Diligenza which runs between Calvi and Corte. As I have already mentioned, this large, beautiful, and well-cultivated district receives the name of the Garden of Corsica. Lofty mountains enclose it, snow-capped summits like Mount Tolo, and the mighty Grosso—heights of the finest forms, and that would enchant the landscape painter. Great numbers of villages are seen upon the slopes, San Reparato, Muro, Belgodere, Costa, Speloncata, Feliceto, Nessa, Occhiatana—all formerly seats of noble families and Caporali, and full of memories of old times. The Malaspinas once ruled here, the Tuscan margraves of Massa and the Lunigian marches, a race of powerful seigniors, whom Dante celebrates in the Divine Comedy. When he finds Currado Malaspina in purgatory, we have the following verses:—
"Oh, never have I seen thy land, I said;
But where throughout all Europe may be found
The spot to which thy glory hath not spread?
The fame that o'er this house such lustre throws
Makes both its nobles and the land renowned:
E'en he who ne'er was there, their greatness knows."
The Malaspinas built the village of Speloncato. Subsequently to the year 1019, five counts of this house had come to Corsica—Guglielmo, Ugo, Rinaldo, Isuardo, and Alberto Rufo. The family is spread in numerous branches over the Italian countries.
In later times the democratic constitution of the Terra del Commune deprived the barons of their power in Balagna. The Corsican popular assemblies (veduta) were frequently held here, in the Field of Campiolo. At one of these vedutas, the brave Renuccio della Rocca displayed a degree of heroic fortitude which deserves our admiration. Filippini narrates the incident. Renuccio was in the act of addressing the assembly, when his son, a youth of fourteen, who chanced to be riding over the field, was hurled by his startled horse upon the point of the lance carried by a squire who rode behind him. The dying youth was brought to his father. But Renuccio, with unaltered mien, continued in his speech to rouse his countrymen to insurrection against Genoa. This Spartan self-command, the heroism of Gaffori, the heroism of Leoni of Balagna before the tower of Nonza, always remind me of the manly firmness of Xenophon. The news that his son Gryllus had fallen in battle, came to Xenophon when he was engaged in offering sacrifice. The father, overcome at first by the sudden intelligence, took the sacrificial wreath from his head; but when he was told that his son had fallen bravely fighting, he immediately replaced it, and calmly continued his act of worship. Indeed, these stout-hearted Corsicans seem more Spartan than the Spartans themselves.
I found in Balagna a great many fields of grain already cut—a beautiful sight in Corsican regions. Everywhere, especially in the vicinity of the villages, are the most luxuriant and magnificent groves of chestnut, walnut, and almond trees, gardens of oranges and citrons, and wood on wood of olives. The excellent road keeps close by the foot of the mountains, and from all points the traveller enjoys the finest views towards the sea or into the hills. The largest villages of Balagna are Muro and Belgodere; the latter of which owes its name to its beautiful situation. Belgodere might be a sanctuary of Pallas, it lies embosomed in such luxuriant groves of her favourite tree.
It is said that there is no district throughout the whole of Italy where the olive attains such a size as it does in the Balagna. The thickness of its stem, its abundance of branches, and the quantity of fruit it produces, are equally astonishing. It is mighty as a beech, and in the heat of noon you rest cool under its shelter. The olive is a tree that one cannot but love. It has not the imposing magnificence of the oak or the plane; its bole, its grayish green, long, narrow leaves, remind us of our own homely willow; but it is laden with riches—with the very fat of the earth, and it is associated with all the poetry of human culture. Sitting under a gray olive by the sea-strand, we are transported to the sacred, sunny East, where our fancy has been at home ever since we turned over the leaves of the picture-Bible, and heard a mother's stories of the Mount of Olives at Jerusalem. How often have we imagined to ourselves those olive-groves! Then, again, in the whispering of its branches, we hear the wisdom of Minerva, and the poetry of the Hellenes, and are borne away to the land of Homer, of Pindar, of Æschylus, to the Muses and gods of Olympus. The olive is thus doubly dear to us as at once a Christian and a Hellenic tree; its branch is more precious than that of the laurel, it is the beautiful symbol of prosperity and peace, and a man's first prayer to the immortal gods should be: Send into my life the green olive-branch. They send us all kinds of them, the laurel-branch, the myrtle-branch; and they send also the cypress-bough; with humility be the award received.
There are various species of olives in the Balagna—the Sabine (Sabinacci), the Saracen (Saraceni), and the Genoese (Genovesi);—named according to their descent, like noble families of Signori. The third family is the most common. It is ascribed to the Genoese, who, during the government of Agostino Doria, compelled the Corsicans to plant olives in great numbers. This is therefore at least one beautiful and peaceful memorial of Genoese rule in Corsica. When the olive was first introduced into Corsica, I am unable to say. One of the complaints in the epigram of Seneca is, that the gift of Pallas does not exist on the island. Yet it appears to me hardly credible that the olive was not cultivated on the island before Seneca's time. The Corsican olives have at present the reputation of resisting better than all others the changes of the weather; the great Humboldt awards them this praise. They require little attention. The oldest branches are cut off to strengthen the tree, the soil about its roots is loosened, and manure is laid round the trunk. The olives are collected when they fall off. Twenty pounds of olives produce five pounds of clear oil. This is put into large jars, in which it stands till the month of May. The olive-tree yields abundantly every three years.
The birds come and carry away the olive kernels to the four winds of heaven, scattering them over the face of the country. The island thus becomes covered with wild olive-bushes, which flourish lustily on mountain and in valley, waiting to be improved. In the year 1820, an attempt was made to count them, and their number was said to be twelve millions. The richest olive-districts at the present time in Corsica are Balagna, Nebbio, and the country round Bonifazio.
We left the province of Balagna at the village of Novella. At this point the road bends into the mountainous interior, and for hours the Diligenza rolls on through narrow valleys, and between barren rocky hills, not a hamlet in sight, till we reach Ponte alla Leccia in the valley of the Golo, where the principal highways of Corsica, from Calvi, from Ajaccio, and from Bastia, meet. You now drive along the Golo, through a pleasant valley. To the right lies the pastoral district of Niolo, the present canton of Calacuccia—a remarkable region, encircled by lofty mountains, in which lie the two lakes of Neno and Ereno. The district forms a natural stronghold, for it opens only at four points, towards Vico, Venaco, Calvi, and Corte. A steep road, called the Scala di Santa Regina, leads to Corte. In Niolo live the strongest men in Corsica, patriarchal shepherds, who have faithfully preserved the customs of their forefathers.
There are many remarkable places on the road to Corte, as for example, Soveria, the home of the brave family of the Cervoni. It was Thomas Cervoni who rescued Pasquale Paoli at the cloister of Alando, when he was besieged there by the furious Matra. The reader will remember that Cervoni, who was at feud with Paoli, had his weapons put into his hands by his own mother, who, threatening to curse him if he refused to obey her, drove him from the house to rescue his foe. Cervoni hastened to the besieged convent, and Matra was slain. It is no ordinary pleasure to wander through a country like this island of Corsica, where there is not a city or village, a mountain or valley, which is not associated with some deed of heroism.
Cervoni's son was the talented general, who, as officer at Toulon, won his first laurels along with Napoleon. He distinguished himself at Lodi; in the year 1799, he was commandant of Rome. It was he who announced to Pope Pius VI. that his power was at an end, and that he must leave Rome. Cervoni made his name terrible in that city, as is evinced by an incident related by Valery. He once in the Tuileries stepped up to Pope Pius VII. at the head of the Generals, and complimented him. His fine voice and beautiful Italian pronunciation astonished the Pope, and he said a great many flattering things to Cervoni. The latter hereupon remarked: "Santo padre, sono quasi Italiano." "Oh!" "Sono Corso." "Oh! oh!" "Sono Cervoni!" "Oh! oh! oh!" and at the mention of the dreadful name the Pope receded horror-stricken to the fireplace. In the year 1809, a cannon-ball carried away the head of Marshal Cervoni at Regensburg.
Near Soveria stands Alando, famous as connected with the name of Sambucuccio, the ancient legislator and Lycurgus of the Corsicans, and founder of their democratic constitution. The scarcely distinguishable ruins of his castle are shown upon a rock. In 1466, four hundred years later than Sambucuccio, one of his descendants was vicegerent of the Corsican nation. Some of the Caporali resided in this quarter, in the neighbouring Omessa. Originating as tribunes of the people, and intended in the democratic system of Sambucuccio to defend the rights of the communes, they succumbed in the course of time to a malady that never fails to undermine and destroy the wisest human arrangements—ambition and the love of self-aggrandizement, and became like the seigniors, the most oppressive petty tyrants. In Filippini's time, we find that historian still complaining that the Caporali were the most dreadful scourges of Corsica.
Chestnuts thrive around Alando, but the region is poor. Black sheep and goats find their nourishment on the mountain heaths. Their wool is here made into the Corsican pelone.
After crossing the Alluraja, a lofty range of hills between the rivers Golo and Tavignano, we descend, on an admirable road, towards Corte.
CHAPTER II.
THE CITY OF CORTE.
The arrondissement of Corte, the central district of the island, embraces fifteen cantons and 113 communes, and contains a population of 55,000. The town itself has about 5000 inhabitants.
Corte is an inland city with a situation not less imposing than those of the Corsican seaports. The panorama of brown hills in the midst of which it lies, the citadel on an inaccessible and rugged crag, give the town an air of iron defiance. Mountains rise on every side in the most varied forms. To the north the heights are low, and mostly dome-shaped, covered with copsewood, or fields of grain. The summer has clad these hills in a dark brown, and the region thus wears an aspect of the utmost sternness. They are the last spurs of the ranges that form the watershed between the Golo and Tavignano, and separate two valleys, the pastoral dale of Niolo, and the valley of the Tavignano. At the opening of the latter, where the Tavignano is joined by the Restonica, lies Corte. Three high and craggy hills command the entrance to this valley. Both rivers have forced a channel for themselves through deep ravines, and rush into one another over fragments of shattered cliffs. There is a stone bridge over each.
The little city has only one main street, which is newly built, and is called the Corso; an alley of elms gives it a singularly rural appearance. And here too I was astonished at the lonely seclusion, the idyllic stillness, that so peculiarly characterize the Corsican towns. You really believe yourself in the farthest nook of the world, and cut off from all connection with its ongoings.
The city is venerable from its associations with events in Corsican history. In the time of Paoli it was the centre of his democratic government, and in ancient times the residence of Moorish kings; it was important in every period as the central point of the island, and as possessing a fortress which frequently decided the course and issue of a campaign.
The citadel has a singular appearance. It is the Acropolis of Corsica. It stands on a black, steep, and rugged crag, which rises over the river Tavignano. Walls, towers, the old town—which the citadel encloses—all look black, ruinous, and desolate. They have been battered in a thousand sieges. This castle of Corte has been assaulted and defended oftener than Belgrade. The brave Vincentello d'Istria laid the foundations of the present structure, in the beginning of the fifteenth century. The loop-hole is still shown from which the Genoese suspended Gaffori's son, to deter his father from continuing his cannonade of the fortress. Enacting itself on and around this grim, giddy height, how wild must have been that heroic scene! The action of Gaffori is one of the noblest traits to be found in the range of Corsican history, which, as I have already said, for every instance of magnanimity in Greeks and Romans, can produce another no way inferior. The spirit that has animated this Corsican people, has proved itself no less heroic than that which we admire in Brutus and Timoleon; but the acts of national and individual heroism which this spirit produced, have lain buried in the obscurity of the period and the locality.
The name of Gaffori is Corte's fairest ornament, and his little house, still standing pierced with balls, the most splendid monument the city can show. This house preserves another heroic association, connected with Gaffori's brave and high-souled wife. The Genoese, whose constant policy it was to use the families of dreaded Corsicans as hostages, and to oppose natural affection to love of country, on one occasion took advantage of Gaffori's absence from home to attack his house, in order to secure the person of his wife. But she instantly barricaded the door and window, and, with a few friends who had hurried to her assistance, defended herself, musket in hand, for days against the Genoese, who showered a storm of bullets upon the house. The little garrison was reduced to the utmost extremity, and her friends counselled her to capitulate; Gaffori's wife, however, conveyed a cask of powder into a cellar, and seizing a match, swore that she would blow up the house the moment they ceased to fire upon the besiegers. Her friends, who knew her desperate courage, continued their resistance, and at length Gaffori himself appeared with a band of Corsicans, and rescued his wife. After the murder of Gaffori, this woman took his son, the boy who had once been bound to the walls of the castle, and made him swear to hate the Genoese and avenge his father. Hamilcar did the same with his son Hannibal in ancient times.
In this house of Gaffori's, Carlo Bonaparte lived with his wife Letitia in 1778; it was a house worthy to give origin to a Napoleon.
Many memories of Paoli are connected with a house which bears the name of the Palazzo de Corte, and was the seat of Paoli's government, and his residence. Here is the room in which he worked, a mean-looking little place enough, as beseemed the legislator of the Corsicans. They tell that the great man, who was not safe from the balls of the assassin, kept the windows of this room always barricaded; and in fact, the window-shutters are still to be seen lined with cork, as they were in his time. The National Assembly had decreed him a guard of twenty-four men, acting in this like the ancient democracies of Greece; he had another body-guard always in the room beside him, consisting of six Corsican dogs. I cannot help being reminded here of his contemporary and admirer Frederick the Great, and how he too, in his cabinet, was always surrounded by dogs; but these were kept for amusement or ornament merely—the pretty Biche, and the graceful Alcmene, and other greyhounds. The scene is characteristically different. If Paoli were painted in the company of his dogs, as Frederick the Great has so often been represented surrounded by his, it would make rather a wild picture: the Corsican hero in his mean-looking cabinet, writing by the fireplace, wrapped in a coarse woollen gown, behind a barricaded window, grim, shaggy wolf-hounds crouched upon the floor—there we have a Corsican historical genre painting.
In another room, formerly the hall where the Council of Nine sat, are preserved some very interesting relics; the rods, to wit, which were to have supported the canopy of Paoli's throne. Paoli and a throne? Impossible! Had the great democrat a hankering after kingly emblems? So it is affirmed; the story is as follows:—One day workmen were seen erecting a throne in the National Palace. It was of crimson damask, hung with gold fringes, and supported, above the Corsican arms, a golden crown, so placed that when Paoli seated himself, it stood over his head. To suit the throne, there were nine smaller crimson chairs, for the members of the Council of Nine. When the councillors had assembled in the hall, the door of Paoli's room opened, and Paoli, as it is said, in a magnificent robe of state, his head covered, and his sword by his side, entered, and moved towards the throne. A murmur of astonishment and displeasure instantly arose among the councillors, followed by a deep silence. Paoli stopped, was disconcerted, and he never took his seat upon the throne.
I have found so many confirmations of this story, that it seems to me almost presumption to doubt it. If it is true, it is a remarkable trait in the character of the great man, and at least a proof that human weakness everywhere asserts its sway, and that no mortal is safe from the moment when he may be overcome by vanity and outside show. Paoli and a throne—there can hardly be a greater contradiction. Liberty and the Corsican people were the noble man's loftiest throne, and no potentate ever occupied one more glorious than that plain arm-chair on which Paoli sat, the legislator and deliverer of a people.
His enemies have accused him of aiming at regal authority, but they wrong him in this, and Paoli's history gives the lie to the charge. Did he wish, perhaps, by means of regal emblems, to secure from foreign countries and from his own people a greater degree of respect for the state over which he presided, and which still bore the time-honoured appellation of the Kingdom of Corsica? We have no other instances of his indulging in kingly pomp. He, and all the other members of the government, went about in the common dress of the country; their clothes were of the Corsican wool, they lived like the simplest commoners. The heads of the state were distinguishable from the people only by their superior intelligence, and it was merely to give the French, in matters of exterior as well as in those of more importance, the impression of a regular and formal government, that he ordered the members of the Supreme Council to wear a distinct dress, a green coat, gold-laced—green and gold being the Corsican colours. He and they put on this official dress for the first time, when French officers came first to Corte. The country's rulers were to appear in a manner becoming their dignity. This was, however, a concession to French etiquette which we cannot but lament, because in making it Paoli ceased to maintain himself superior to appearances, and abolished the beautiful democratic equality which had previously expressed itself even in dress, by some pieces of gold lace. The Corsicans were entitled to wear their woollen blouse with greater pride than the French their glittering uniforms. Trifling and subordinate as these matters may in themselves appear, they nevertheless furnish material for thought. For time makes unessential differences essential, and of extrinsic makes intrinsic. There is in time an invisible influence for evil, which gradually stains all that is pure, dwarfs all that is great, debases all that is noble. In this world of ours, it is so and not otherwise; exalted virtue is a phenomenon confined to the period of struggle towards a great aim. In Corsica it has often made me sad to think, that all those heroic exertions of its people, all those battles for freedom, have proved fruitless; and that now, in the land of Sampiero, of Gaffori, and of Paoli, "the vain nation" bears rule. Yet it would have been an experience still more sad, had the state of Paoli sickened of itself, and yielded to human selfishness. For my part, I do not believe that it would have escaped this universal fate. For true freedom exists only in Utopia. Mankind appears to be capable of it only in the highest, most sacred moments.
On one occasion Paoli received in this Palazzo Nazionale a very splendid embassy. A ship of Tunis had stranded on the coast of Balagna, and Paoli had not only restored to the shipwrecked strangers all the property of which the peasantry of the region had deprived them, but hospitably entertained them, and sent them home to the Bey of Tunis under the conduct of two officers, and well supplied with every necessary for their journey. The Bey thereupon sent an embassy to Paoli to thank him, and convey to him the assurance that he would remain eternally his and his country's friend, and that no Corsican would ever sustain injury within the bounds of his territories. The ambassador from Tunis kneeled down before Paoli, and, putting his hand to his forehead, said in Italian, Il Bey ti saluta, e ti vuol bene—the Bey greets thee, and wishes thee well. He brought him as presents, a beautiful, splendidly caparisoned horse, two ostriches, a tiger, a sabre set with diamonds; and after residing some days in Corte, returned again to Africa.
Close to Corte lies the old convent of the Franciscans—a ruin of considerable size. In Paoli's time, the Corsican parliament assembled in the church of this convent; and from its pulpit not a few noble patriots have lifted their earnest voices. Many and not vain sacrifices were made to liberty in this church, and her name was not heard as an empty phrase. Those who called upon it, also died for it. In the year 1793, a general assembly of the Corsicans had met on the open ground before the convent; the time was stormy, for the grayhaired Paoli stood impeached of high treason by the National Convention of France. Pozzo di Borgo, that unrelenting enemy of Napoleon—like him, a citizen of Ajaccio—climbed upon a tree, and delivered a powerful and fiery speech in defence of Paoli, whose accusers, the furious clubbists, Arena and the Bonapartes, were here declared infamous.
At the present day, wandering about in the streets of the little city, which are silent as the grave, and beneath whose shady elms here and there, poor-looking Corsicans idle in dreamy listlessness, one can hardly believe that scarcely a hundred years ago such an obscure, secluded nook was the seat of the most enlightened political wisdom of the age.
Paoli founded a university in Corte; and he here called the first Corsican printing-press and the first Corsican newspaper into existence. From this university knowledge and enlightenment were to spread like a flood of light over the mountains, and into all the valleys of Corsica, dispelling the mediæval barbarism of her inhabitants. I have already, in the History of the Corsicans, mentioned this university, and spoken of its high merits as a patriotic institution. Many of Corsica's ablest men have been its pupils—talented advocates, who form in this island the majority of the literary class. Carlo Bonaparte, Napoleon's father, studied at this university. The young institution fell, however, when the country lost its freedom. Paoli on his deathbed set apart a legacy for its restoration, and with the help of this capital a sort of college was re-established in the year 1836. There are at present a director and seven professors for the sciences connected with it, but its condition is not very flourishing. An institution of this academic kind is also perhaps less suited to the wants of Corsica than good commercial schools.
I found among the Corsicans many learned and highly cultivated men, and here in Corte I became acquainted with a gentleman, the extent of whose reading in the literature of the Romanic languages astounded me. He is the son of one of the brave captains who, after the battle of Ponte Nuovo, remained in arms till the last moment, and whom I have mentioned by name. His memory is so retentive, that he knows by heart the best passages of all the great Italian, French, and Latin authors, and that it is a slight matter for him to repeat whole pages of Tasso or Ariosto, and long extracts from Voltaire or Macchiavelli, or from Livy, Horace, Boileau, or Rousseau. Talking with him of literature on one occasion, I asked him if he had ever read any works of Goethe. "No," said our well-read friend, "Pope is the only English author with whom I am acquainted."
Some gentlemen, whose agreeable acquaintance I made at the table d'hôte of my inn, among them an artist, the only Corsican painter with whom I became acquainted on the island, took me to the marble quarries in the vicinity of Corte. A quarry of this kind was discovered not long ago in the rocks above the Restonica. The stone is of a bluish colour, with reddish-white veins, and is available for architecture and ornaments. We found the workmen occupied in getting a large block, of which a pillar was to be made, down the hill. It was laid on rollers, and shoved by means of the Archimedean screw to the edge of the incline, at the foot of which the blocks are dressed. The large and beautiful stone slid rapidly down, enveloping itself in a cloud of dust, and as it forced its way onwards, rung clear as a bell. At the foot of the hill on which this rich quarry lies, the Restonica turns a mill that cuts the marble into plates. Seven days are required to cut a block into thirty of these. In Corte, therefore, Seneca's assertion is now disproved—non pretiosus lapis hic cæditur—here no costly stone is hewn. Speaking generally, however, the philosopher's words are still applicable, for Corsica's treasures of beautiful stone have remained dead capital.
CHAPTER III.
AMONG THE GOAT-HERDS OF MONTE ROTONDO.
————"tomo un puño de bellotas en la mano, y mirandolas atentamente sotto la voz a semejantes razones: Dichosa edad y siglos dichosos aquellos a quien los antiguos pusieron nombre de dorados."—Don Quixote.
I had formed the resolution of ascending the highest mountain in Corsica, Monte Rotondo, which lies about half a day's journey to the south-west of Corte, and may almost be considered as the middle point of the island. Although the excursion was described to me as most fatiguing, still I hoped to find a clear day and sufficient remuneration for my trouble. But what I most of all wished was, some insight into the still entirely primitive life of the herdsmen.
I hired a guide and a mule, and, provided with a little bread and some calabashes of wine, early on the morning of the 28th of July I rode into the hills. The road, a shepherd's track, never leaves the valley of the wild Restonica, from its confluence with the Tavignano, close by the town, up to the very summit of Monte Rotondo, where it has its source. The bed of this beautiful mountain-stream, is, during most of its course, a ravine of gloomy and impressive character. In the vicinity of Corte, it expands into a valley of considerable breadth, in which chestnut and walnut trees thrive. As you ascend, it grows narrower and narrower; the walls of rock on each side rise in black, gigantic masses, shadowed with dark-green, natural wood, of old pines and larches.
My sure-footed mule clambered safely up the narrowest paths along the very edge of abysses; and a glance downwards into these, where the Restonica foamed milk-white far below, had something in it both of terror and of beauty. A magnificent forest of pines and larches received me as the sun got higher. Very picturesque are these giant trees—the pine with its broad, green roof, and the larch, like the cedar of Lebanon, gnarled, soaring, and rich in branches. Tall erica, box, and wild myrtles, covered with a snow of blossoms, clustered in profusion round their mighty stems. And the fragrance of all those medicinal herbs, in which the mountains of Corsica are so rich, made the air of the woods balsamic and refreshing.
My guide kept on before me at a rapid pace. I sometimes almost shuddered, when I saw myself alone with him in this wilderness of woods and rocks, and he threw a backward glance on me. He was an ill-favoured fellow, and had a villanous eye. I learned afterwards that there was blood on his hands—that he was a murderer. A year previously he had stabbed a Lucchese dead, with a single thrust, on the market-place of Corte.
Riding for hours through these romantic mountain-solitudes you hear nothing but the rushing of the streams, the screaming of falcons, and now and then the clear whistle of a goat-herd calling to his goats.
The herdsmen live in caverns or in huts, on the declivities of Monte Rotondo, to the topmost ridge of which their flocks clamber. The highest community of shepherds is to be found at an altitude of 5000 feet above the level of the sea.
After three hours' ride I reached the first of these singular stations—the Rota del Dragone. Descending from the edge of the ravine towards the water, I saw a black, sooty cave before me, running, like a vault, into the cliff, below enormous blocks of granite—a few paces from its entrance the furious Restonica, chafing itself to madness among huge fragments of rock; all around, crag above crag, and dense forest. A wall of uncemented stones formed an enclosure round the entrance of the grotto. A fire was burning in the cave, round which cowered the shepherd family. A miserable-looking woman seemed to be engaged in mending some article of dress; beside her a fever-sick boy lay wrapped in a brown blanket of goat's wool, from which his pale face and glittering eyes looked out inquiringly.
The herdsman had come out of his cave, and hospitably invited me to alight, and refresh myself with new milk and cheese. I willingly accepted his invitation, and proceeded to inspect the interior of this singular cavernous abode. The grotto, I found, ran a considerable way into the mountain, affording room for a flock of two hundred goats and sheep, which the herdsman every evening brings in to milk. It was so exactly the cave of Polyphemus, that it almost seemed Homer must have taken his description from it. Every item of the description was here, even the rows of dishes full of milk, and more than a hundred flat round cheeses arranged on fresh leaves. Only Polyphemus himself was wanting; for mine host, however robber-like and wild he might look in his shaggy habiliments, was hospitality itself.
"Do the bandits ever pay you a visit?" I asked the Troglodyte. "Sometimes they do," said the man; "when they're hungry. You see the stone here on which I sit?—two years ago a couple of bandit-hunters concealed themselves in my cave; they were after Serafin. But Serafin stole in upon them through the night, and with two stabs he made them both cold upon this stone; then he went his way again into the hills."
My guide hinted that it was time to go. I thanked the herdsman for his refreshment, and rode off, not without a shudder.
The path, which now took us through the Restonica to the other bank, became constantly steeper and more difficult. At last, after a ride of two hours, I reached, thoroughly damp with mist, and during a magnificent thunderstorm, the last of the pasturing-stations on the lower heights of Rotondo. Its name is Co di Mozzo.
I had heard a great deal about the shielings of Monte Rotondo; and the pictures of them my imagination drew were original enough, slightly idyllic perhaps—little huts in the green pine-forest, or on flowery Alpine slopes, with all proper pastoral adjuncts. But now, as I rode up in the midst of thunder and lightning, and through a drizzling rain, I saw nothing but a wild waste of titanic fragments of stone—a confusion of vast granite blocks clothing the sides of a huge, gray, desolate cone. A light smoke was rising from among the stones. The gray of the watery clouds, the pale lightnings, the roll of the thunder, the rushing of the Restonica, and the deep melancholy of the gray hills, were irresistibly saddening.
Some storm-battered larches stood on the steepest edge of a naked ravine, through which the Restonica foamed and tumbled from block to block. All around, nothing but the dreariest cliffs; and one grand glimpse into the mist-filled valley out of which I had ascended. My eye sought long for the huts towards which the guide was pointing. At length I detected them among the rocks, and advancing, I soon had before me this most singular of pastoral communities. It consisted of four dwellings, erected in the most primitive manner conceivable, probably with less architectural skill than the termites or the beavers expend on their houses.
Each of these huts consists of four stone walls, built without mortar. They are about three feet in height, and support a sloping roof of sooty stems of trees and boards, on which heavy stones are laid to keep them in their places. An aperture in the front wall serves as door and principal chimney; but the smoke issues through the roof and the walls wherever it finds a chink. An enclosure of stones surrounds a narrow space before the hut, and within this space, dishes of various kinds stand; also, in one corner of it rises the palo—a rude stake with projecting pegs, on which hang pots and kettles, clothes, and strips of goat's flesh.
Some shaggy dogs sprang out as I rode up, and forthwith the men, women, and children crept from their huts, and curiously eyed the stranger. They looked picturesque enough in the midst of the stony waste; the pelone, their shaggy, brown mantle flung about them, the red baretto on their heads, and their bronzed features looking out from their dark bushy beards.
I called to them: "Friends, bestow your hospitality on a stranger who has come over the sea to visit the herdsmen of Co di Mozzo!"
In friendly tones they returned: "Evviva!" and "Benvenuto!"
"Come into my hut," said one, "and dry yourself at the fire; it is warm in there." I immediately twisted myself through the door, curious to see the interior of such a habitation. I found myself in a dark chamber, about fourteen feet in length and ten in breadth—wholly without furniture, not a stool, not a table, nothing but the black naked ground, the black, naked stone walls, and such a smoke of pine-wood as, I thought, it must be impossible to live in. Close by the wall a huge log was burning, and a kettle hung above it.
Angelo, my host, spread a blanket which I had brought with me on the floor, and gave me the place of honour, as near the fire as possible. Soon the whole family had cowered about it—Angelo's wife, three little girls, my host, myself, and my guide. The hut was full. Meanwhile, Angelo threw some pieces of goat's flesh into the kettle, and Santa his wife brought cheese and milk. Our table equipage was as original and pastoral as you choose; it consisted simply of a board laid upon the ground, on which Santa placed a wooden bowl of milk, a cheese, and some bread. "Eat," said she, "and think that you are with poor herd-people; you shall have trouts for supper, for my son has gone a-fishing."
"Fetch the broccio," said the shepherd; "it is the best we have, and you will like it." I was curious to see what the broccio was; I had heard it praised in Corte as the greatest dainty of the island, and the flower of all the hill-products. Santa brought a sort of round covered basket, set it before me, and opened it. Within lay the broccio, white as snow. It is a kind of sweet, curdled, goats' milk; and eaten with rum and sugar, it certainly is a dainty. The poor herdsmen sell a broccio-cake in the city for one or two francs.
With our wooden spoons we wrought away valiantly at the broccio—only the wife and children did not share. Crouching thus on the ground at the fire, in the narrow, smoke-filled hut, wild and curious faces all about me, the wooden spoon in my hand, I began humorously to celebrate the life of the shepherds among the hills, who are contented with what their flocks yield them, and know not the wretchedness of mine and thine, nor the golden cares of palaces.
But the honest pastore shook his head, and said: "Vita povera, vita miserabile!"—a poor life, a miserable life!
And so it really is: these men lead a wretched life. For four months of the year—May, June, July, and August—they burrow in these cabins, destitute of everything that makes life human. In their world occur no changes but those of the elements—the storm, the clouds, the thunder-shower, the hail, the heat; in the evening, a robber-story by the fire, a melancholy song, a lamento to the pipe, a hunting-adventure with the muffro or the fox; high above them and around them the giant pyramids of the hoary Rotondo, and the starry magnificence of the sky; in their breast, perhaps, despite the vita povera, an uncomplaining, serene, pious, honest human heart.
With the dawn of day these poor people rise from the hard ground—on which they have been sleeping in their clothes, and without other covering—and drive their herds to the pastures; there they consume their scanty meal, of cheese, bread, and milk. The old people, who remain at home, lie in the hut by the fire, occupied with some simple household work. In the evening, the flocks return and are milked; light falls, and it is time to go to sleep again.
The snow and rains of September drive the herdsmen from their mountain cabins. They descend with their flocks to the coast and the paese, where they have usually more habitable dwellings, in which frequently the wives and children stay all summer. My hostess Santa was the only female in the pastoral community of Co di Mozzo, which consists of six families. "Why," I asked her, "did you come up from the paese to this gloomy hut?" "Look you," put in Angelo, "she came up to refresh herself." I was on the point of laughing outright, for the smoke in the hovel was bringing tears to my eyes, and the atmosphere was infernal. So, after all, I was to view the wretched heap of stones as a summer villa, to which the family had retired to refresh itself! "Yes," said Angelo, as he caught my sceptical look; "below, it is warm; and up here, we have the mountain wind, and the clear stream, fresh and cold as ice. We live as the merciful God grants." I began to have respect for Angelo and his philosophy. His speech was serious and laconic; and he was taciturn, as it becomes a philosopher to be.
Angelo was owner of sixty head of goats, and fifty sheep. The quantity of milk drawn from these is inconsiderable. In summer it is barely sufficient to support the family. The broccio and the cheese, sold below, furnish bread, and the coarsest clothing. Winter is a hard time, for the milk goes to feed the kids and lambs. Many a shepherd, however, has a flock of some hundreds. When the sons and daughters have to be portioned, it is a fortunate thing if the luck of the patriarchs can be had, so that the flocks multiply. The dowry of a shepherd's girl consists in twelve goats if she is poor; if she is wealthy it ranges higher, according to her parents' means.
The weather had cleared up. I stepped out of the cabin, and drew long breaths of the fresh air. The shepherds sat here and there on the stones, smoking their little wooden pipes. They are in the habit of choosing the oldest, or the most respected of their number, to preside in the community, and arbitrate in all disputes. This circumstance, which I discovered accidentally, surprised me; for it allowed me, in this little democracy of shepherds, a glance into the primitive condition of human society, and the beginnings of political life. It seems six men cannot live together without regulating their society, and developing laws. I greeted the little stumpy podestà most reverently; and as I contemplated him in silence, I thought him more venerable than Dejoces, the first and wisest of all the kings of the Medes.
Near the cabins I remarked smaller covered huts of stone, of a round or of an oblong form. These were the storehouses. Angelo opened a little door in his, and creeping in, beckoned me to follow; I contented myself with peeping in. I saw the flat cheeses lying on green twigs, and white balls of goats'-milk butter in little baskets.
I sat down on a stone, and commenced sketching the cabins. The whole community came round me, and looked on with expressions of the liveliest delight. Every one now wanted to have his portrait taken, in order that it might afterwards be "printed" in Paris, as they said. They would have it that I was from Paris; and I could not make it intelligible to them, that besides Paris, there was another country called Germania. "Germania, then," said my host, "is your paese; and this paese has kings, and it belongs to Paris." There the matter had to rest.
The afternoon sun shone warmly, and tempted me into the hills. I took the children with me—Antonio, a boy of thirteen, shaggy as a bear; Paola Maria, and Fiordalisa. Fiordalisa means Lily-flower. Let the reader picture to himself this Lily-flower of Monte Rotondo: she has seen twelve summers; her dress is considerably tattered, her dark hair hangs wild about her brown face, her eyes are clear and keen as a falcon's, her teeth are white as ivory, and she climbs the rocks barefoot with the agility of a chamois. We botanized along the Restonica. I espied some beautiful red pinks on a ledge that I could hardly have reached, and I pointed to them. "Aspettate! wait!" cried the Lily-flower; and she was off like lightning up the cliff, and presently she was down again with a handful of the pinks. The children now emulated each other in climbing and dancing on the perilous crags like so many elves; fear seemed a thing quite unknown to these little mountain-sprites. As we were crossing the Restonica on our return home, Lily-flower sprang into the stream, and took the wild fancy of splashing me with water, which she did most unsparingly. I found the red foxglove growing in great abundance in these hills—my little elves brought it me in armfuls; and when we got home, we encircled the smoking hut with a garland of the poisonous beauties—a decoration that it had probably never before met with. This was to be a holiday token on the cabin that a guest was there, since with good men it is always festival when their house shelters a guest.
Lily-flower's delight in the garland was unbounded. "To-morrow," she said, "when you are up on the hill, you will find a blue flower—the most beautiful flower in all Corsica."
"If you say it, Fiordalisa, then it must be true, and to-morrow I shall find the blue wonder-flower."[L]
Evening came on in the great, silent wilderness. Weary with my day's fatigues, I sat down before the cabins, and contemplated the changeful play of the clouds. Mists ascended from the ravines, and, attracted or repelled by the mountains, rolled themselves together in the valleys, or dispersed, and were lost among the clouds trailing slowly from above along the hill-tops. The flocks and herds were coming in. I saw with pleasure the long lines of the graceful black goats, and the black sheep, to which the poor shepherds owe their subsistence. Each herdsman drove, or drew them by a peculiar clear call, into an enclosure beside his cabin, and there milked them. This operation is managed with astonishing rapidity: the herdsman sits in the centre of the herd, and catches one goat after another by the hind legs. He calls every animal by its name; he knows each exactly. The mark of ownership is generally on the ear. Forty head of goats, belonging to my host, yielded only a single moderate pailful of milk.
The herds remain within the enclosure during the night. The shaggy dogs protect them, not from the wolf, which is not found in Corsica, but from the fox, which is remarkably bold and powerful among the hills, and attacks the lambs. My host's Rosso and Mustaccio were two magnificent dogs.
Meantime the eldest son had returned with a number of beautiful trouts, and Angelo busied himself with supper. I noticed that it was always the man who cooked, and not his wife. Was this in honour of his guest? For the position of woman in general in Corsica is low and menial. As I was thinking of this, it occurred to me that in Homer the men perform all similar operations—put the meat on the spit, roast it, and bring it to the table; so that I had living and acting before me, the man of the epic and primitive epoch of culture. In Corsica are to be found the men of Homer and the men of Plutarch.
We had a bread-soup, cheese and milk, and, in honour of the guest, roasted goat's flesh. For this classic goat-herd took the flesh from the palo, and, after the fashion of ancient times, stuck it on a spit, and, kneeling, held it over the glowing fire. Carefully, from time to time, a piece of bread was pressed upon the dripping fat, that the precious juice of the sweet loin-pieces might not be lost. He cooked the trouts in a broth of goat's flesh; and when they were ready, he set them before me, and ladled me forth from the mighty ladle as much as heart could desire. I saw it in the children's eyes, that this was no ordinary meal; and it would have refreshed me still more admirably, had they been allowed to share it.
It was night in the cabin. I was puzzled to imagine how our sleeping was to be arranged within the narrow limits. But that was soon managed. My blanket was spread for me on the ground, and I stretched myself on it, beside the innermost wall; I was at a loss, however, for something on which to rest my head. I looked at Angelo. "Divine and wise Angelo," I said, "give ear. I have never, I swear to you, been a Sybarite, yet am I accustomed to pillows. Could not your hospitality provide me with some such convenience?" Angelo pondered; then he handed me his zaïno or shepherd's bag of goatskin, and spoke the winged words—"Now sleep, and felicissima notte!"
Gradually the others laid themselves down, wife and children, on the naked earth, leaning their heads on the wall. Angelo lay nearest the threshold; beside him the youngest child Maria; then Santa his wife, Lily-flower, Paola Maria, and myself. So we all lay peaceably together, our feet turned towards the fire. It was not long till they were all asleep, and I lay contemplating with satisfaction this happily slumbering family of Gymnosophists, and mused on the words of the wise Sancho, when he praised the inventor of sleep, "the mantle that covers all human care, the food that appeases hunger, the water that extinguishes thirst, the fire that warms the cold, the cold that alleviates the heat—in short, the universal money for which all things may be bought, the beam and scale that equalizes king and shepherd." The fire shed a red glow over the singular group. I lamented that I was not a painter. But the intolerable heat and smoke of the pitch-pine would not let me sleep. I rose from time to time and stepped over the sleepers into the free air. I may say this was stepping from hell into heaven—for I walked straight into a cloud that had descended on the hill, and enveloped the cabins.
The night was chill and moist; but the clouds passed off, and the infinite sky threw its myriad lights on the mists, on the craggy heights, and the dark larches. I sat long beside the rushing Restonica, whose tumultuous din broke the impressive silence of the still, pure night. The spirit of solitude had never come so near me as it did that night among the black crags, at the brink of a headlong brook, far up among the clouds and mists, face to face with primitive nature, lost in a foreign island girt with many a mile of sea. In such moments, the feeling of loneliness becomes oppressive, and the sudden thought alarms the soul, that the human being is but an insignificant atom; and that perhaps this spiritual atom may in an instant lose and forget its connexion with all related to it, and remain lonely in void space. But the soul is not thus to be overcome; it spreads its wings for the distant home, there regains its serenity, and loneliness has fled. I listen to sounds that seem to be borne to me from the hills; they sound sometimes like wild laughter—it is the mad Restonica that is so unquiet. These stones are the dumb witnesses to ancient, dreadful birth-pangs, offspring of the fieriest embraces of Uranus and Gaea.
The cold air drove me again to the fire. Overcome with fatigue, I at last fell asleep, when I was suddenly awakened by the clear voice of Santa, who cried several times, Spettacoli divini! spettacoli divini! She was putting the children to rights; they had flung themselves about into all sorts of comic positions. Divine spectacles they were certainly. Lily-flower lay rolled up like a snake half over her mother; Paola had thrown her arm about my neck. The child had perhaps heard an owl in her sleep, or seen the vampire in a dream, that comes to suck the heart's-blood.
I spent the rest of the night sitting looking into the fire, and amused myself with imaginary representations of the heretics whom the Holy Catholic Church has burned to the honour of God. Now this is quite an endless amusement.
CHAPTER IV.
THE MOUNTAIN-TOP.
The day was dawning. I went out and refreshed myself in the waves of the sleepless Restonica, which sprang young and fresh from rock to rock, and hastened down into the valley. The young stream has a beautiful life. After a merry career of twelve hours through ever-green woods, it dies in the waters of the Tavignano. The Restonica gained my affections. I know the whole story of its life; for I have accompanied it in a single day, from its first leap to the end of its course; and many a glorious draught did it afford me. Its water is as clear, as fresh, and as light as ether; and is renowned far and wide throughout the land of Corsica. I never drank better water; it was more grateful than the noblest wine. There is such a keen quality in this incomparable stream, that it cleans iron to the purity of a mirror in the shortest time, and preserves it from rust; Boswell mentions that the Corsicans of Paoli's time laid their rusty gun-barrels in the Restonica to clean them. It makes all the stones and gravel that it washes milk-white; and its channel and banks glitter with such stones down to its confluence with the Tavignano.
On asking my guide to ascend with me now to the summit of Rotondo, he confessed that he did not know the road. Angelo, therefore, became my guide. We began the ascent between three and four o'clock in the morning. It was less dangerous but infinitely more fatiguing than I had supposed.
A number of ridges that rise one above the other, have to be surmounted before we reach Trigione, from which the ascent of the highest peak commences. These successive heights form a mighty scala—a stair piled by the hand of Nature—of colossal steps of primeval reddish granite; huge Titans, storming heaven with rocks in their giant hands, might be fit to stride them. Block lies here over block, vast and formless as chaos, and towering upwards and upwards in such endless masses of monotonous gray, that the heart almost quails, and the foot refuses to go farther. The rains of autumn have, in many places, given the granite such a remarkable smoothness, that it presents large surfaces with all the polish of a mirror. The water was running in a thousand little channels, in exhaustless abundance. Tree vegetation, however, here ceases, and only alder-bushes mark where the young Restonica is collecting its waters.
In two hours we had climbed Trigione, and the white snow-covered summit lay before us. Its steep and jagged cliffs form an incomplete circle (hence the name Rotondo—round), partly hollowed out, like a crater; and where this huge wild amphitheatre of rocks opens, lies a little dark lake, the Lago di Monte Rotondo, encircled by gentle green slopes; an ice-cold draught in a giant beaker of granite. Snow-fields rise from the lake to the summit—a strange sight, and producing a peculiar impression, in the hottest dog-days, under a southern sky and the 42d degree of latitude. They were covered with a crust of ice, and perceptibly cooled the air near them. But though I was in the region of eternal snow, I found the temperature pleasantly cool and bracing, and by no means uncomfortably low.
The summit appeared to the eye near enough, yet it took us two full hours' climbing, often on our hands and feet, over the shattered fragments of rock, before we reached it. The most difficult part of it was the ascent over a strip of snow, on which we could not keep our footing. We succeeded, however, by dint of hammering steps in the icy crust with sharp stones, in making cautious progress. At length, much exhausted, we reached the extreme peak, a torn and rugged obelisk of gray rock ending in a slender pinnacle, clinging to which one manages to support himself on the giddy and somewhat perilous height.
From this highest point of Corsica, then, 9000 feet (exactly 2764 metres) above the sea level, I saw the greater part of the island, and the sea far below washing its coast on both sides—a sight of inexpressible grandeur, once to have enjoyed which may justly be to any man a life-long source of pleasant thought. The horizon which the eye can take in from Rotondo is much grander and more beautiful than that afforded by Mont Blanc. The view ranges far over the island itself into the glittering distances of the sea, over the Tuscan islands to the mainland of Italy, which in clear weather shows the white Alps of the northern lakes, and the entire bend of the coast from Nice to Rome. On the other side rise the mountains of Toulon, and the wondrous panorama thus includes within its magic circle, mountains, seas, islands, the Alps, the Apennines, and Sardinia. I was not so fortunate as to have the prospect presented to me in its entire magnificence, for the clouds that rolled themselves unceasingly up from the ravines, and the exhalations, deprived me of part of the distance. To the north I saw the peninsula of Cape Corso stretching itself into the sea like a dagger; to the east the level coast country descending in easy lines, the islands of the Tuscan sea, and Tuscany itself; to the west the Gulfs of Prato, Sagone, Ajaccio, and Valinco. Ajaccio showed itself very distinctly on its tongue of land in the beautiful bay—a row of little white houses, that looked like swans swimming in the sea. The sea itself seemed an ocean of light.
Southwards the broad-breasted Monte d'Oro shuts out the view of the island. A great many peaks, little lower than Rotondo, and, like it, crowned with glittering snow, were visible on every hand, as the finely-formed Cinto, and Cape Bianco towards the north—the highest summits of the district of Niolo.
From such a comprehensive point of view the island itself shows like an enormous skeleton of rocks. Monte Rotondo does not lie within the main mountain-chain which traverses the island from north to south—it belongs to a subsidiary range running towards the east; nevertheless from its summit the spectator commands the entire gigantic net-work of cells that forms the mountain-system of the island. He sees the main chain close before him, and from this backbone the ribs running out on each side in parallel ranges, with valleys between, which are inhabited and cultivated. Each of these valleys is traversed by a stream, while from the principal range run also the three largest rivers of the island—towards the east coast, the Golo and Tavignano; towards the west, the Liamone.
Glancing from the summit of Rotondo on the scene in the immediate vicinity, the eye is startled and affrighted at these vast and desolate wastes of rock, and the giant ruins of shattered crag and cliff lying around. Huge blocks are tumbled about here in a wild chaos, like monuments of the struggle of the spirits of the elements with the light of heaven. Frightfully steep walls of rock form a net-work of dreary valleys. In the centre of most of them lies a little motionless lake, blue, gray, or deep black, according as it receives light from the sky or shadow from the cliffs. I counted several such lakes not far off, Rinoso, Mello, Nielluccio, Pozzolo, from which brooks run to the Restonica, and Oriente, the principal fountain-head of the Restonica itself. Farther to the north-west I had before me the famous pastoral highlands of Niolo, the most elevated basin of the island, with its black lake Nino, from which the Tavignano flows.
These diminutive lakes are all of great depth, and swarming with trout.
As you stand on the summit you hear a continual sound of rushing waters; part of them are forcing their way under ground. This rigid, blasted wilderness, we perceive, overflows with living fountains, which descend to bless the valleys, and there make culture and human society possible; far down on the lower declivities of these mountains the eye catches here and there a paese and green gardens, and patches of yellow field.
Clouds began to gather round the peak; we had to descend. Returning, we took the difficult route by the Lago di Pozzolo. In this direction rises, black and jagged, the colossal Frate, the mightiest granite pyramid of Rotondo. Chaotic debris covers its huge base, which sinks into the dreary glen of the Pozzolo. That blue wonder-flower, which Fiordalisa had said I should find, was growing in the crevices of the rocks. Angelo had plucked one, and cried to me: Ecco, ecco la fiore?—see, see the flower! I took it from his hand; it was our Forget-me-not. On the summit of Rotondo itself, I saw camomile, the amaranth, and the ranunculus, growing in abundance, and our own violets graced the very edge of the snow-fields.
It was with great difficulty that we succeeded in scrambling over the stones of Frate, and a strip of snow threatened at last to block up the way altogether. The goat-herd proposed making a détour to avoid it, but as a North-Prussian I was not inclined so readily to succumb, and could not resist the temptation of a capital slide. I accordingly placed myself on Angelo's pelone, and made the descent. I had thus the pleasure of a little sledging-trip beneath the summer glow of an Italian sun, and under the 45th degree of latitude.
We breakfasted at the foot of another cone, and, refreshed with some bread, and a draught from a neighbouring brook, pursued our way downwards. I looked round in vain for the wild animals that haunt the rocks of Monte Rotondo—the Muffro namely, or wild sheep—and the bandits. Although Angelo assured me there were plenty of them in the clefts and ravines that we passed, I could discover none. The only wild creature I saw on these heights was the pretty mountain-finch of Monte Rotondo—a bird with gray body, and red, white, and black wings.
The Corsican wild sheep, the Muffro or Mufflone, is one of the most remarkable products of the island. It is a beautiful, strong-limbed animal, with spiral horns, and silky hair of a brownish-black. It inhabits the highest regions of eternal snow, mounting constantly higher as the summer sun melts the snow from the hills. By day it frequents the shores of the lakes, where it finds pasturage; at night it retires again to the snow. The muffro sleeps on the snow, and the female drops its young on the snow. Like the chamois, the muffro posts sentinels while feeding. Sometimes, in severe winters, when deep snow covers their pasture-grounds, these wild sheep appear in herds among the tame goats, and they are frequently to be seen in the valleys of Vivario, Niolo, and Guagno, feeding peaceably among the flocks of the shepherds. The young animal may be tamed, the old not. They are frequently hunted, and when shots are heard echoing from rock to rock up among the hills, people know that men are stalking the muffro or the bandit. Both are lawful game, brothers of the mountain-fastnesses, and both climb to the eternal snow.
After a descent of three hours we reached the cabins, and the foul atmosphere of these wretched hovels contrasted so disagreeably with the pure ether I had been breathing, that I did not rest more than an hour till I had the mule saddled, and put myself on the road for Corte. I bade the good people of Co di Mozzo a hearty farewell, and wished that their flocks might increase and multiply like the flocks of Jacob. They accompanied me to the gate of the enclosure; and as I rode away, men and children saluted me with an honest burst of evvivas.
A ride of some hours brought me once more to the region of chestnuts and citrons, and I had thus, in one day, from the heights of perpetual snow to the gardens of Corte, travelled through three distinct zones of climate, which was like journeying from the arctic winter of Norway to the countries of southern Europe.
CHAPTER V.
VENDETTA OR NOT?
I was not destined to leave the quiet Corte without some slightly unpleasant recollections, and that owing to my guide of Monte Rotondo. It was not till after I had returned to the town that I learned to what a furious and passionate individual I had trusted myself. Although he had told me a falsehood, and, proving to be unacquainted with the road to the summit, had compelled me to take the goat-herd Angelo as guide, I gave him the full hire we had agreed on. But the fellow, in the most impudent way, demanded half as much again. The vehement language on both sides drew the notice of some Corsican gentlemen, who took my part. "This is a stranger," said one of them to the guide, "and with us the stranger is always in the right." I replied to the polite speaker, "that I claimed my rights not as a stranger, but as a man, and that I should instantly have recourse to the authorities of the town, if the rascal continued to molest me." The latter threw his wages on the table, and stormed out of the room, exclaiming that he should know how to have his revenge on the German. On this the landlady of the locanda came to me and bade me be on my guard, as the fellow was passionate beyond all bounds, and last year had stabbed a man in the market-place.
Somewhat anxious, I asked the reason. "Because," said the landlady, "the Lucchese had struck his little brother for hanging on to his cart, as children do. The boy ran with his complaint to his brother, who instantly rushed out with his dagger, and murdered the other with one blow."
"How was he punished?" "With five months' imprisonment; for somehow or other the murder could not be properly proved." "Now, I confess—la giustizia Corsa è un poco corta—your Corsican justice is a little short; but, my good woman, you knew the ungovernable temper of this man—you knew he had already shed blood, and yet you yourself engaged me this devil for a guide, and allowed an unarmed stranger to enter the hills with him!"
"I thought, sir, you would see it in his eyes, and I gave you a wink once or twice, too. The fellow had offered himself, and if I had been the reason of your sending him away, then I should have got myself into trouble."
I now remembered that the good woman had asked me as I was going off with the guide: "When do you expect to return?" and that when I said, "In two days," she shrugged her shoulders, and seemed to intimate something with her eyes.
"Very well," I said to the woman, "I shall not give the man a single quattrino more than was agreed on. On that my mind is made up."
He came in the evening and took away quietly enough the money I had thrown down. But although this looked like an admission of his misconduct, I thought it best to maintain a sharp look-out, and did not go beyond the gates after night-fall.
The following evening I took a walk in the company of a Corsican officer whose acquaintance I had made. Outside the gate I witnessed a slight specimen of Corsican temperament. A youth of about fifteen had tied a horse to a fence, and was throwing stones at it, quite beside himself with rage, and howling out his fury like some maddened beast. The poor animal had probably offended him by a fit of obstinacy. I stood looking at him, and provoked at such malignant brutality, at last called to him to cease. Instantly my companion said to me: "For Heaven's sake come away, and be quiet." I obeyed, not a little struck with the scene, and the suppressed tones in which my companion had addressed me. This, too, was a glimpse of the state of Corsican society.
Shortly after, the youth flew past on the horse like a demon, his hair streaming, his face on flame, his eyes still sparkling with fury.
I felt deeply at that moment that I was among barbarians, and a sudden longing for Florence and its mild Italians filled me.
But there was still another disagreeable little incident in store for me. We had not gone a mile further into the hills, when I saw my guide walking along a height a little distance from the road, his gun upon his shoulder. He sat down on a rock, resting his piece across his knee. I did not know whether he still bore me a grudge, and meant mischief, but it was possible. I pointed him out to my companion, and continued my walk past him, not choosing to show any signs of fear; but I felt uncomfortable. "He will not shoot at you," said the officer, "unless you have offended him by some injurious word. But if you have done that, no saying what may happen; these men will stand no insult." He did not shoot, for which I was obliged to the bloodthirsty vampire, or the poor devil, let me rather call him—for nature sins here more than man. The blood that is shed among the Corsican hills is seldom shed from such a despicable motive as lust of gold—almost always from false notions of honour. The Corsican Vendetta is a chivalrous duel for life and death.
CHAPTER VI.
FROM CORTE TO AJACCIO.
Travelling from Corte to Ajaccio, you keep ascending for several leagues till you reach Monte d'Oro; the road leads southwards through a beautiful and well-cultivated undulating region, full of magnificent chestnut-groves. Nothing can be more cheerful than the landscapes of the canton of Serraggio, formerly the pieve of Venaco. Brooks which descend from Monte Rotondo water here a lovely green country, on whose eminences little hamlets stand, as Pietro, Casa Nova, Riventosa, and Poggio.
Poggio di Venaco preserves the memory of the handsome Arrigo Colonna, who was Count of Corsica in the tenth century. As the traveller wanders onwards, he lights every now and then on romantic old traditions, which keep his imagination busy, and form great part of his pleasure. Arrigo was so beautiful in person, and courteous and graceful in manner, that he was called the Bel-Messere; and by this name he still lives in the mouths of the people. His wife, too, was a beautiful and noble woman, and his seven children were all fair and young. But his foes were resolved to rob him of his authority, and a fierce Sardinian conspired with them against his life. One day, the assassins fell upon him and stabbed him, and they took his seven children and threw them all into the lake "of the seven bowls." When this wicked deed had been done, a voice was heard in the air, which wailed and cried, "Bel-Messere is dead! Luckless Corsica, hope for no happiness more!" All the people raised a lament for Bel-Messere; but his wife took shield and spear, and hastened at the head of her vassals to the castle of Tralavedo, to which the murderers had retired, and she burned down the castle, and put all the murderers to the sword. Still many a night on the green hills of Venaco nine ghosts may be seen wandering about; these are the ghosts of Bel-Messere, his wife, and the seven poor children.
It was Sunday. The people were walking about in the villages, or, oftener, they were to be seen, like their fathers in times long gone by, sitting round the church;—a beautiful picture in the Sabbath stillness, men peacefully keeping the holiday of God's rest. But even on Sunday, and before the church-door, there comes a sudden musket-shot sometimes, and then the scene changes.
In the neighbourhood of Vivario the country becomes wilder, and the eminences more considerable. Many a passer-by stops a while at the threshold of the little church of Vivario, and looks at a gravestone there. A verse of the Bible in Latin is engraved on it—Maledictus qui percusserit clam proximum suum, et dicet omnis populus amen—Cursed be he that smiteth his neighbour secretly, and all the people shall say, Amen. The stone tells a Vendetta story of the seventeenth century; under it the avenger of blood lies buried. Blessed be the memory of the priest of Vivario, who took this curse from the Bible and engraved it upon the stone. They say it is the talisman of Vivario, for the last Vendetta of the village is thereon inscribed. Would that the hand that wrote it had been the hand of a giant, and had written in giant letters over all Corsica—Maledictus qui percusserit clam proximum suum, et dicet omnis populus amen!
In a lonely and desolate part of the mountains of Vivario stands a little blockhouse, with a garrison of ten men. The large valley of the Tavignano ends here, and a range of heights forms the water-shed between it and the Gravone, which flows in the opposite direction, towards Ajaccio. On the boundary line between the two valleys stand the two snow-capped mountains, Monte Renoso and Monte d'Oro, which latter attains an elevation only a few metres less than that of Rotondo, and surpasses it in grandeur of form. For many hours the traveller has this mountain constantly before his eye.
The road passes between the two mountains, through the glorious forest of Vizzavona. It consists mainly of larches, which are frequently 120 feet in height, and twenty-one in thickness. Of all the fir species this mighty, broad-branched, fragrant larch is probably the finest, next to the cedar; and as I have no acquaintance with the cedars of Asia I may say that the Corsican larch is the most imposing tree I ever beheld. To see it in its silent, gloomy majesty on the mighty granite rocks of these hills was always a high enjoyment for me. It well befits this imperial tree to stand on granite. It towers high above the cliffs, which its roots victoriously pierce; and on many spots, known only to the eagle and the wild sheep, it rises in solitary majesty. There are magnificent specimens of various other kinds of firs in the forest, red beeches, and evergreen oaks (ilex). It shelters abundance of game, particularly deer, which are in Corsica of no great size; the wild swine frequent the regions nearer the coast, where they are eagerly hunted.
The forest of Vizzavona is, next to that of Aitone in the canton of Evisa, the largest in Corsica. All these forests are in the mountainous districts. Some belong to the state, most of them to the communes. Nothing, comparatively speaking, has yet been made of them. I observed a snake sunning itself by the wayside. Corsica has only two species of snakes, and no poisonous animals except a spider called Malmignatto—the bite of which produces a sudden chill all over the body, and sometimes death—and the venomous ant Innafantato.
It was about noon when I passed through the forest. There was a suffocating heat in the atmosphere, but the wood offered its cool springs. Everywhere they trickle down the rocks to swell the waters of the Gravone; their water is cold and pleasant. Seneca can never have tasted the Corsican mountain streams, else he would not have said in his epigram that Corsica could not afford a draught of water.
At length I reached the ridge of the hills, at the highest point on the road to Ajaccio, 3500 feet above the level of the sea. This is the Foce, or Pass of Vizzavona, frequently mentioned in the Corsican popular songs.
The road now descends into the valley of Gravone. Two chains of mountains confine this fruitful valley. The northern, running out from Monte d'Oro, ends above Ajaccio in the Punta della Parata. It separates the basin of the Gravone from that of the Liamone. The southern runs out in a parallel direction from Monte Renoso, and separates the valleys of the Gravone and the Prunelli. On both sides of the Gravone stand villages on the hills. They have a more cheerful appearance than any I have ever seen in Corsica.
The first village we enter in this canton is Bocognano, which lies near the mouth of the wild gorge of Vizzavona. On every side rise dark, wooded hills with snowy summits; the whole region is of a stern, impressive character. They are herdsmen that dwell here—poor men, but stout in heart and strong in arm. They live on milk, or on chestnuts. Many manufacture the pelone. Every one goes armed in this district. The sight of these powerful men, with their double-barrels and carchera, and in the brown woollen blouse, accords well with the gloomy Alpine heights and the pine-forests all around. These Corsican highlanders look as if they were made of iron, like the fusils which they carry. The people here seemed to be still sticking fast in all the rust and rudeness of the Middle Ages.
The road continues to descend towards Ajaccio. At length we descried the magnificent gulf. It was about five o'clock in the afternoon when we gained the neighbourhood of the city. The richer cultivation of the heights, vineyards, and olive-orchards, and the fertile plain of Campoloro, announced the vicinity of the capital of Corsica. It showed itself as a row of white houses stretching into the gulf, at the foot of a range of hills, and surrounded by villas. Through the avenue of elms, which leads along the gulf into the town, I now, with joyous emotion, entered the little native city of the man who convulsed the world.