The revenues of the island, about £170,000 annually, are not sufficient to cover the military expenses, and the deficiency is made up by the imperial treasury.

Most of the inhabitants are Roman Catholics. The bishop is appointed by the Pope, and enjoys an income of £4,000.[116]

VIII.—SARDINIA.

It is a curious fact that an island so fertile as Sardinia, so rich in metals, and so favourably situated in the centre of the Tyrrhenian Sea, should have lagged behind in the race of progress as it has. When the Carthaginians held that island its population was certainly more numerous than it is now, and the fearful massacres placed on record by the historians of Rome testify to this fact. Its decadence was sudden and thorough. In part it may be accounted for by the configuration of the island, which presents steep cliffs towards Italy, whence emigrants might have arrived, whilst its western coast is bounded by marshes and insalubrious swamps. But the principal cause of this torpor, which endured for centuries, is traceable to the actions of man. The conquerors who succeeded the Romans and Byzantines in the possession of the island, whether Saracens, Pisans, Genoese, or Aragonese, monopolized its produce solely with a view to their own profit, and further mischief was wrought by the pirates of Barbary, who frequently descended upon its coasts. As recently as 1815 the Tunisians landed upon Sant’ Antioco, massacring the inhabitants, or carrying them into slavery. The coast districts became depopulated, and the inhabitants retired to the interior, where, oppressed by their feudal lords, they led a life of isolation from the rest of Europe. It is hardly a generation since Sardinia began to participate in the general progress made throughout Italy.

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Fig. 125.—THE SEA TO THE SOUTH OF SARDINIA.

Scale 1 : 2,000,000.

Sardinia is nearly as large as Sicily, but has only a fourth of its population.[117] Geographically it is more independent of Italy than the southern island, and a profound sea, more than 1,000 fathoms in depth, divides it from the African continent. Sardinia with Corsica forms a group of twin islands, which is separated from the Tuscan archipelago by a narrow strait only 170 fathoms in depth. {339} The geological structure of the two islands is identical, and there can be no doubt that the islands and rocks in the Strait of Bonifacio are the remains of an isthmus destroyed by the sea. On the other hand, we learn from a study of the geology of Sardinia that at a period not very remote that island must have consisted of several separate islands. The principal island formed a southerly continuation {340} of the mountains of Corsica, whilst the smaller ones lay to the west. Alluvial deposits, volcanic eruptions, and perhaps, also, an upheaval of the soil, have converted the shallow straits which separated them into dry land.

The mountains of Sardinia may be said to begin with the islands of Maddalena and Caprera, in the Strait of Bonifacio, and in the mountain mass of the Gallura they attain already a considerable height. A depression separates these from the southern portion of the great back-bone of the island, which stretches along the whole of the eastern coast, and terminates abruptly at Cape Carbonaro. These mountains, like those of Corsica, consist of crystalline rocks and schists; but whilst the slope on the latter island is steepest towards the west, the reverse is the case on Sardinia, and that island may almost be said to turn its back upon Italy. The general slope of the island is towards the west, and its occupation by Spain could therefore be justified by purely geographical arguments.