Mis amores,
Que todo se passa en flores."—Spanish Song.
Near Vescovato lies the little hamlet of Venzolasca. It is a walk as if through paradise, over the hills to it through the chestnut-groves. On my way I passed the forsaken Capuchin convent of Vescovato. Lying on a beautifully-wooded height, built of brown granite, and roofed with black slate, it looked as grave and austere as Corsican history itself, and had a singularly quaint and picturesque effect amid the green of the trees.
In travelling through this little "Land of Chestnuts," one forgets all fatigues. The luxuriance of the vegetation, and the smiling hills, the view of the plain of the Golo, and the sea, make the heart glad; the vicinity of numerous villages gives variety and human interest, furnishing many a group that would delight the eye of the genre painter. I saw a great many walled fountains, at which women and girls were filling their round pitchers; some of them had their spindles with them, and reminded me of what Peter of Corsica has said.
Outside Venzolasca stands a beautifully situated tomb belonging to the Casabianca family. This is another of the noble and influential families which Vescovato can boast. The immediate ancestors of the present French senator Casabianca made their name famous by their deeds of arms. Raffaello Casabianca, commandant of Corsica in 1793, Senator, Count, and Peer of France, died in Bastia at an advanced age in 1826. Luzio Casabianca, Corsican deputy to the Convention, was captain of the admiral's ship, L'Orient, in the battle of Aboukir. After Admiral Brueys had been torn in pieces by a shot, Casabianca took the command of the vessel, which was on fire, the flames spreading rapidly. As far as was possible, he took measures for saving the crew, and refused to leave the ship. His young son Giocante, a boy of thirteen, could not be prevailed on to leave his father's side. The vessel was every moment expected to blow up. Clasped in each other's arms, father and son perished in the explosion. You can wander nowhere in Corsica without breathing an atmosphere of heroism.
Venzolasca has a handsome church, at least interiorly. I found people engaged in painting the choir, and they complained to me that the person who had been engaged to gild the wood-carving, had shamefully cheated the village, as he had been provided with ducat-gold for the purpose, and had run off with it. The only luxury the Corsicans allow themselves is in the matter of church-decoration, and there is hardly a paese in the island, however poor, which does not take a pride in decking its little church with gay colours and golden ornaments.
From the plateau on which the church of Venzolasca stands, there is a magnificent view seawards, and, in the opposite direction, you have the indescribably beautiful basin of the Castagniccia. Few regions of Corsica have given me so much pleasure as the hills which enclose this basin in their connexion with the sea. The Castagniccia is an imposing amphitheatre, mountains clothed in the richest green, and of the finest forms, composing the sides. The chestnut-woods cover them almost to their summit; at their foot olive-groves, with their silver gray, contrast picturesquely with the deep green of the chestnut foliage. Half-appearing through the trees are seen scattered hamlets, Sorbo, Penta, Castellare, and far up among the clouds Oreto, dark, with tall black church-towers.
The sun was westering as I ascended these hills, and the hours of that afternoon were memorably beautiful. Again I passed a forsaken cloister—this time, of the Franciscans. It lay quite buried among vines, and foliage of every kind, dense, yet not dense enough to conceal the abounding fruit. As I passed into the court, and was entering the church of the convent, my eye lighted on a melancholy picture of decay, which Nature, with her luxuriance of vegetation, seemed laughingly to veil. The graves were standing open, as if those once buried there had rent the overlying stones, that they might fly to heaven; skulls lay among the long green grass and trailing plants, and the cross—the symbol of all sorrow—had sunk amid a sea of flowers.