We have already referred to the uses of certain kinds of heath in the manufacture of briar pipes, and of the use of cistus for heating baking-ovens. The amount of cistus used in baking bread is enormous. The shrub has light roots, and as it is much easier to pull the whole plant up than to cut it, it is usually completely uprooted. A hard-working woman can gather and bind from eight to fourteen bundles of cistus in a day. These she can sell for about a half-penny each, so that she can earn from fourpence to sevenpence a day.
There are still many fine forests in the island, containing glorious specimens of pine, oak, beech, chestnut, and walnut. In the south the woods are chiefly of cork-oak. The chestnut-trees are of great value, as the nut is the principal form of food for man and beast during the winter months. Certain parts of Corsica were never entirely subdued by either the French or the Genoese. The people hid themselves away amongst the mountains, and existed on chestnuts. The trees bear an abundance of fruit, and require no cultivation, so that plenty of food was always at hand, and merely required gathering. It was like the manna in the wilderness. Thus the people were enabled to fight all the year round. There is no fighting now, and there are other foods besides chestnuts, but in many out-of-the-way places, where the fruit is plentiful and good, the people still make it their chief food, because it costs nothing, either in labour or money. They can spend their time in idleness, “in playing cards and dominoes, in gossiping, in talking politics, and in doing as little work as possible.” The chestnuts are ground into flour, out of which bread is made, and also a kind of pease-pudding called polenta. “It is cooked in a great cauldron with much stirring over a wood fire, and is eaten hot, the dough-like mass being cut into thick slabs by means of a wire.” Chestnut flour costs about half the price of wheaten flour, for, as no wheat is grown in the island, wheaten flour has to be imported from Marseilles.
Another important plant is the olive, which will ripen its fruit up to an elevation of 2,000 feet. The best olive district is not far from Calvi. It is said that the Corsicans were forced by one of their Genoese Governors to plant the olive-trees for which this part of the island is now so famous. If this be true, then it is one of the very few things for which the Corsican has to thank the Genoese. When the olives are ripe, they are gathered by the women, and taken to the mills to be crushed. Two or three qualities of oil can be got by repeated crushings, but that which is first obtained is the best, and is used for table purposes. The inferior kinds are used for lighting, and for oiling machinery. The salted olives sold in bottles in English shops are unripe fruits soaked in water and then bottled in brine. The leaves of the olive are sharp and slender, and greyish-green in colour. They are something like those of the common willow, but smaller. The fruit, when ripe, is small, shiny, and black. It must be remembered that the wild olive is a native of the Mediterranean, and not an imported plant, as most of the fruit-trees of England are.
The most striking trees in appearance are the tall, dark pines, of which there are several kinds. Then there are tangled masses of prickly pear (the common cactus). The prickly pear is a perfect weed. It grows anywhere and everywhere, and once it has taken root, it is almost impossible to kill it. If a leaf be broken off and allowed to fall to the ground, it takes root where it falls and starts a new plant. It is used for making hedges, and the boldest boy would think twice before he tried to make his way through its numerous thorns and poisonous bristles. Some of the spines are so strong that they can be used as pins, and a certain writer[D] says that a friend of his “used to save the buying of pins on the part of the ladies of his family by going out to gather the spines of the most prickly variety of cactus.”
[D] Barry.
CHAPTER XI
THE VENDETTA
We know that in very early times, when a man felt himself injured, he took the law into his own hands and punished the offender—that is, if he were strong enough. Later on, when men got more civilized, this was not permitted, but offenders were punished by being fined. The fine was paid to the injured person or to his family—so much for an eye, so much for a leg, and so much for a life. Thus we read in the laws of Ethelbert: “If one man strike another with the fist on the nose—three shillings. If the eye be struck out, let boot (i.e., amends) be made with forty shillings.”
So in due time law took the place of private vengeance, and now, throughout almost the whole of Europe, if a man is wronged, he seeks redress in the public courts of law. This, however, is not yet the case in Corsica. There many people carry out their own punishments in their own way, or, in other words, they shoot their foes. Hence murders are common. At one period of Corsican history it is said that there were 28,000 murders in thirty years. Things are not nearly so bad as that now. The practice of taking private revenge is called the vendetta.
