The two leaders also were loosed from the traces, and, with a parting flick at their hind quarters, were sent cantering down the road in front of us. Meanwhile, we got down from our perch, and tasted Corsican snow for the first time.
The col, or Bocca, was bare of trees; and we looked down upon magnificent views. These cols are nearly always denuded of vegetation, even when surrounded on every side by rich forests. Exposed to the winds from every quarter, they rise out of their green nest, grey and bleak, like a bald head surrounded by a thick monastic fringe.
On one side of us lay the forest through which we had passed; on the other lay a chain of blue inland hills and valleys, and the chestnut region of Bocognano. Indigo clouds, fringed and angry, hung above, and everything was toned down to the same deep stormy blue, as the thunder growled heavily beneath us.
The snow lies exceedingly thick upon the Foce Pass in winter, and only three weeks before our arrival some fellow-countrymen of ours had experienced the difficulty of crossing the island between Corte and Ajaccio. The diligence had broken down, and they had been compelled to walk nine miles through heavy snow to the nearest halting-place; and this in the month of March. Yet it gave one almost a shudder to leave the cold, clear bracing air of the col, with its sunny sky and snowy hills, for the blue-black growling inferno at our feet. But it had to be done, and we little guessed with what celerity.
No sooner were the passengers reseated, and the driver and conductor each in his place, than both the long whips began to play furiously, the horses were put into a gallop, and down we went, flying over the steep winding road like the wind, the men shouting madly, the carriage swaying from side to side, and the rocks and trees passing us as in a dream.
Every corner turned was a miracle of skill on the part of the clever horses, and, as we hung mid-air over the precipice, balanced like Mahomet's coffin twixt earth and heaven, we one and all mentally breathed our last prayer, and thought of the obituary columns of the Times or Galignani.
The pace grew more fast and furious, and the fun more boisterous than ever when we sighted a porcine happy family on the road before us, and enjoyed the sport of a chase.
Certainly those pigs ran as never could run British or civilized pigs. The family consisted of a stout mamma, three little ones, and a handsome large papa, one of the "hogs of the country," with a good deal of the wild boar about him, being of a bright orange colour, with high, stiff, black bristles up his back. The chase was kept up for a mile or two, with wonderful spirit on the part of the exhausted pigs, and amid a chorus of laughter from drivers and passengers, until at length a little roughness in the side of the road allowed the panting, squeaking victims to escape down the precipitous slope.
Chasing the two leaders seemed tame work after this; and No. 3 ventured to put in a word for the general safety of the public.
"Have the goodness," she said with dignity, touching the arm of the conductor, and casually moving her other hand towards the region of her pocket, "to go a little slower. This pace is unsafe."