Chestnuts thrive around Alando, but the region is poor. Black sheep and goats find their nourishment on the mountain heaths. Their wool is here made into the Corsican pelone.
After crossing the Alluraja, a lofty range of hills between the rivers Golo and Tavignano, we descend, on an admirable road, towards Corte.
CHAPTER II.
THE CITY OF CORTE.
The arrondissement of Corte, the central district of the island, embraces fifteen cantons and 113 communes, and contains a population of 55,000. The town itself has about 5000 inhabitants.
Corte is an inland city with a situation not less imposing than those of the Corsican seaports. The panorama of brown hills in the midst of which it lies, the citadel on an inaccessible and rugged crag, give the town an air of iron defiance. Mountains rise on every side in the most varied forms. To the north the heights are low, and mostly dome-shaped, covered with copsewood, or fields of grain. The summer has clad these hills in a dark brown, and the region thus wears an aspect of the utmost sternness. They are the last spurs of the ranges that form the watershed between the Golo and Tavignano, and separate two valleys, the pastoral dale of Niolo, and the valley of the Tavignano. At the opening of the latter, where the Tavignano is joined by the Restonica, lies Corte. Three high and craggy hills command the entrance to this valley. Both rivers have forced a channel for themselves through deep ravines, and rush into one another over fragments of shattered cliffs. There is a stone bridge over each.
The little city has only one main street, which is newly built, and is called the Corso; an alley of elms gives it a singularly rural appearance. And here too I was astonished at the lonely seclusion, the idyllic stillness, that so peculiarly characterize the Corsican towns. You really believe yourself in the farthest nook of the world, and cut off from all connection with its ongoings.
The city is venerable from its associations with events in Corsican history. In the time of Paoli it was the centre of his democratic government, and in ancient times the residence of Moorish kings; it was important in every period as the central point of the island, and as possessing a fortress which frequently decided the course and issue of a campaign.
The citadel has a singular appearance. It is the Acropolis of Corsica. It stands on a black, steep, and rugged crag, which rises over the river Tavignano. Walls, towers, the old town—which the citadel encloses—all look black, ruinous, and desolate. They have been battered in a thousand sieges. This castle of Corte has been assaulted and defended oftener than Belgrade. The brave Vincentello d'Istria laid the foundations of the present structure, in the beginning of the fifteenth century. The loop-hole is still shown from which the Genoese suspended Gaffori's son, to deter his father from continuing his cannonade of the fortress. Enacting itself on and around this grim, giddy height, how wild must have been that heroic scene! The action of Gaffori is one of the noblest traits to be found in the range of Corsican history, which, as I have already said, for every instance of magnanimity in Greeks and Romans, can produce another no way inferior. The spirit that has animated this Corsican people, has proved itself no less heroic than that which we admire in Brutus and Timoleon; but the acts of national and individual heroism which this spirit produced, have lain buried in the obscurity of the period and the locality.
The name of Gaffori is Corte's fairest ornament, and his little house, still standing pierced with balls, the most splendid monument the city can show. This house preserves another heroic association, connected with Gaffori's brave and high-souled wife. The Genoese, whose constant policy it was to use the families of dreaded Corsicans as hostages, and to oppose natural affection to love of country, on one occasion took advantage of Gaffori's absence from home to attack his house, in order to secure the person of his wife. But she instantly barricaded the door and window, and, with a few friends who had hurried to her assistance, defended herself, musket in hand, for days against the Genoese, who showered a storm of bullets upon the house. The little garrison was reduced to the utmost extremity, and her friends counselled her to capitulate; Gaffori's wife, however, conveyed a cask of powder into a cellar, and seizing a match, swore that she would blow up the house the moment they ceased to fire upon the besiegers. Her friends, who knew her desperate courage, continued their resistance, and at length Gaffori himself appeared with a band of Corsicans, and rescued his wife. After the murder of Gaffori, this woman took his son, the boy who had once been bound to the walls of the castle, and made him swear to hate the Genoese and avenge his father. Hamilcar did the same with his son Hannibal in ancient times.