Most of the soil is uncultivated, and in many parts the great rocks of red granite come up above the surface, and lie bare to the eye, unadorned with either tree, grass, or flower.
On the east coast there is a long stretch of low-lying land between the mountains and the sea. This is the most unhealthy part of the island, a mixture of swamps and lagoons, where deadly fevers have their home. It is only in winter and spring that life is possible on the eastern plain. In the spring the plain is exceedingly beautiful, decked with flowers and bright with verdure. On one side rolls the bluest of seas, crested with the whitest of foam. As you stand by the shore, and watch the great waves dashing themselves to pieces on the breakers or rippling caressingly over the tawny sands, it is almost impossible to believe that this smiling region is, during the hot weather, one of the unhealthiest places in Europe. About July or August the peasants lock up their houses, pack their carts with poultry, provisions, and children, and go up 3,000 feet into the mountains, to escape the fevers that come with the hot weather. Houses are shuttered and barred, fields and vineyards are left untended, and the peasants simply run away as fast as they can from a land where merely to sleep means death. The French Government is doing its best to improve the condition of things by planting groves of eucalyptus-trees in the most unhealthy places.
The eastern plain is broken here and there by a number of lagoons or shallow lakes, separated from the sea by long narrow sand-banks. These lagoons swarm with fish and cockles. One of them is known as the Lake of Diana. It is a great sheet of salt water, with one narrow opening to the sea. It contains a small island, 460 yards in circumference, which is made up entirely of oyster-shells, covered, however, with grass, shrubs, and trees. The island is built in the shallowest part of the lagoon, and dates from the time when Aleria used to send large supplies of salted oysters to the people of Rome.
The sharp piece projecting from the north of Corsica is called the Cap. It is only from eight to ten miles wide. Through it runs a range of mountains between 3,000 and 4,000 feet high, which lies nearer the west coast than the east, and has short narrow valleys running down to the eastern coast. The people of this part of Corsica are noted for being more peaceful and law-abiding than those in the other parts of the island.
The climate of Corsica is a very delightful one. More than half the days in the year are sunny ones, and of the dull, dreary kind that so often trouble our own island there are perhaps not more than fifty in a year. Mist and fog are seldom seen, and the rains, though heavy, do not last for long together. At times the islanders suffer from two objectionable winds, the mistral and the sirocco. The mistral comes over the sea from France. It is violent and cold, and arises in the highlands of Central France. It rushes down the Valley of the Rhone like “a blast from a giant’s bellows,” making those people who have gone to Southern France for warmth wish that they had stayed at home. Then it sweeps across the blue waters of the Mediterranean, and by the time it arrives at Corsica it has lost a little of its sting. Yet it still remains cold enough to be unpleasant. The sirocco is a hot wind from the south. It blows from the fiery desert of Sahara, and as its hot, sand-laden breath passes over the northern shores of Africa, the people find it nearly impossible to work, or even to move. In its journey across the Mediterranean it is slightly cooled, but it is never welcomed by the Corsicans, for not only is it still hot, but it has also become moist by contact with the water, and therefore produces great discomfort.
CHAPTER II
A PEEP AT CORSICAN HISTORY
A few of the main events in Corsican history during the last three or four hundred years will be told in connection with the accounts given in the following chapters, of the principal towns of the island. But before speaking of these later years of bloodshed and strife, let us get a glimpse of what happened during earlier times.
The first thing that strikes us on reading a history of Corsica is that, though the people live upon a small island, they have never acted as so many other island races have done. We never hear of Corsican sailors setting forth on voyages of adventure or exploration. There is no record of them invading the lands of their neighbours, either upon the islands or upon the shores of the Mediterranean. They do not appear to have practised piracy, preying upon the ships that passed their very doors as they carried the goods of other countries to and fro across the waters. As a rule, it may be said that they did not seek to interfere with anyone else. But, on the other hand, many people interfered with them. No one seemed to be able to leave them alone. The Mediterranean was of old “the Great Sea.” On its waters the earliest sailors of whom we know anything went out to trade and to travel. On its shores many of the great nations that we read about first grew to glory and then sank into silence. Amongst these we may mention the people of Carthage, Greece, Rome, Pisa, and Genoa. All these in turn invaded Corsica, and did their best to conquer the island.
Corsica was at one time in the hands of the Carthaginians, but between two and three hundred years before the birth of Christ it passed under the control of Rome, at that time the mistress of the world. The Romans had their chief settlement at Aleria, near that Lake of Diana of which we have already spoken. The Corsicans did not tamely submit to the Roman invaders. They never, in fact, tamely submitted to anyone. They fought with courage and cunning. Like true mountaineers, they were hardy and fearless. They captured one of the Roman generals, and sent him home with a treaty of peace which they had forced him to sign. They rebelled over and over again, and it took the Romans nearly a hundred years before they obtained a peaceful occupation. Even then the islanders had not been completely conquered, and it was only in the lands by the sea that the Romans could really call themselves masters.