Where Si is spoken: since thy neighbours round
Take vengeance on thee with a tardy hand,—
To dam the mouth of Arno's rolling tide
Let Capraja and Gorgona raise a mound
That all may perish in the waters wide."
The island of Capraja conceals the western extremity of Corsica; but behind it rise, in far extended outline, the blue hills of Cape Corso. Farther west, and off Piombino, Elba heaves its mighty mass of cliff abruptly from the sea, descending more gently on the side towards the Continent, which we could faintly descry in the extreme distance. The sea glittered in the deepest purple, and the sun, sinking behind Capraja, tinged the sails of passing vessels with a soft rose-red. A voyage on this basin of the Mediterranean is in reality a voyage through History itself. In thought, I saw these fair seas populous with the fleets of the Phœnicians and the Greeks, with the ships of those Phocæans, whose roving bands were once busy here;—then Hasdrubal, and the fleets of the Carthaginians, the Etruscans, the Romans, the Moors, and the Spaniards, the Pisans, and the Genoese. But still more impressively are we reminded, by the constant sight of Corsica and Elba, of the greatest drama the world's history has presented in modern times—the drama which bears the name of Napoleon. Both islands lie in peaceful vicinity to each other; as near almost as a man's cradle and his grave—broad, far-stretching Corsica, which gave Napoleon birth, and the little Elba, the narrow prison in which they penned the giant. He burst its rocky bonds as easily as Samson the withes of the Philistines. Then came his final fall at Waterloo. After Elba, he was merely an adventurer; like Murat, who, leaving Corsica, went, in imitation of Napoleon, to conquer Naples with a handful of soldiers, and met a tragic end.
The view of Elba throws a Fata Morgana into the excited fancy, the picture of the island of St. Helena lying far off in the African seas. Four islands, it seems, strangely influenced Napoleon's fate—Corsica, England, Elba, and St. Helena. He himself was an island in the ocean of universal history—unico nel mondo, as the stout Corsican sailor said, beside whom I stood, gazing on Corsica, and talking of Napoleon. "Ma Signore," said he, "I know all that better than you, for I am his countryman;" and now, with the liveliest gesticulations, he gave me an abridgment of Napoleon's history, which interested me more in the midst of this scenery than all the volumes of Thiers. And the nephew?—"I say the Napoleone primo was also the unico." The sailor was excellently versed in the history of his island, and was as well acquainted with the life of Sampiero as with those of Pasquale Paoli, Saliceti, and Pozzo di Borgo.
Night had fallen meanwhile. The stars shone brilliantly, and the waves phosphoresced. High over Corsica hung Venus, the stellone or great star, as the sailors call it, now serving us to steer by. We sailed between Elba and Capraja, and close past the rocks of the latter. The historian, Paul Diaconus, once lived here in banishment, as Seneca did, for eight long years, in Corsica. Capraja is a naked granite rock. A Genoese tower stands picturesquely on a cliff, and the only town in the island, of the same name, seems to hide timidly behind the gigantic crag which the fortress crowns. The white walls and white houses, the bare, reddish rocks, and the wild and desolate seclusion of the place, give the impression of some lonely city among the cliffs of Syria. Capraja, which the bold Corsicans made a conquest of in the time of Paoli, remained in possession of the Genoese when they sold Corsica to France; with Genoa it fell to Piedmont.
Capraja and its lights had vanished, and we were nearing the coast of Corsica, on which fires could be seen glimmering here and there. At length we began to steer for the lighthouse of Bastia. Presently we were in the harbour. The town encircles it; to the left the old Genoese fort, to the right the Marina, high above it in the bend a background of dark hills. A boat came alongside for the passengers who wished to go ashore.
And now I touched, for the first time, the soil of Corsica—an island which had attracted me powerfully even in my childhood, when I saw it on the map. When we first enter a foreign country, particularly if we enter it during the night, which veils everything in a mysterious obscurity, a strange expectancy, a burden of vague suspense, fills the mind, and our first impressions influence us for days. I confess my mood was very sombre and uneasy, and I could no longer resist a certain depression.