Expedition to the Mountains.—Environs of Ozieri.—First View of the Peaks of Genargentu.—Forests.—Value of the Oak Timber.—Cork Trees; their Produce, and Statistics of the Trade.—Hunting the Wild Boar, &c.—The Hunters' Feast.—A Bivouac in the Woods.—Notices of the Province of Barbagia.—Independence of the Mountaineers.
The hunting excursion in the mountains south of Ozieri was in the order of the day, the expedition being on a much larger scale than that arranged by our honest Tempiese friends at the Caffè de la Costituzione. We were to camp out; and the party consisted of upwards of thirty horsemen, well mounted and armed, with the Conte di T—— and some other Oziese gentlemen for leaders. We had also a large pack of dogs, some of them fine animals, almost equal to bloodhounds.
Our route from the town led us over a succession of scraggy hills, with cultivation in the bottoms, and some straggling vineyards, not very flourishing. The walnut trees in the glens, and small inclosures mixed with copse wood, reminded us more of English or Welsh scenery than anything we had before seen in either of the Mediterranean islands. After passing a village standing on high ground, there was a long ascent, and in about an hour and a half from our leaving Ozieri, on gaining the summit of a ridge of hills outlying from the Goceano range, we opened on a magnificent view of the great central chain of mountains, stretching away to the south-east in giant limbs and folds, with Genargentu and other summits shrouded in a grey silvery haze. A broad valley was spread out beneath our point of view, and the mountain range immediately opposite, the lower regions of which, as far as the eye could command the view, right and left, were clothed with dense forests, straggling down in broken masses and detached clumps to the edge of the intervening valley.
Into the depths of these forests we were to penetrate in pursuit of our game, and finer covers to be stocked with cingale and capriole, or bolder scenery for the theatre of our sylvan sport, can scarcely be imagined. It was spirit-stirring when, full in view of these grand natural features, our numerous cavalcade wound down the hill in scattered groups to the plain beneath, among pollard cork trees, just now shedding their acorns. There was deep ploughing in the rich vale watered by the upper streams of the Tirso, which winds through the valley at the foot of the Goceano range. After crossing the holms, we were on slopes of greensward, lightly feathered with the red fern, and dotted with trees, like a park.
And now we touched the verge of the forest, rough with brakes of giant heaths, such underwood alternating with grassy glades wherever the woods opened. This part of the forest consists of an unbroken mass of primitive cork trees of great size. The rugged bark, the strangely-angular growth of the limbs, hung with grey lichens in fantastic combs, and the thick olive-green foliage almost excluding the light of heaven, with the roar of the wind through the trees,—for it was a dull, cold day, the coldest we spent in Sardinia,—with all this, a Scandinavian forest could not be more dreary and savage. After tracking the gloomy depths of shade for a considerable distance, it was an agreeable change to quit the forest and warm our blood by cantering up a slope of scrub. Then, after crossing a grassy hollow, we came among scattered woods of the most magnificent oaks, both evergreen and deciduous, I ever saw. Some of the trees were of enormous size, and if the quality of the timber be equal to the scantling, Sardinia would supply materials of great value for naval purposes.
The forests of the Barbagia, into which we now penetrated, like those of the Gallura, are principally virgin forests; the want of roads, of navigable rivers, and even of flottage, presenting formidable obstacles to the conveyance of the timber to the seaboard for exportation, though the first is not insurmountable. The forests of the Marghine and Goceano ranges round Macomer, having the little port of Boso on the western coast for an outlet, are felled to some extent. The contracts are mostly in the hands of foreigners, who obtain them on such low terms that their profits are enormous. Mr. Tyndale gives the details of a contract obtained by a Frenchman for 18,000 oak trees, at fifteen lire nove, 12s. each, the trees being said to realise from 200 to 300 francs (8l. to 12l.) each at Toulon or Marseilles. In England, we pay from 1s. 6d. to 2s. 3d. per cubic foot for very indifferent American oak, and from 1s. 9d. to 2s. 6d. for Baltic oak, perhaps superior to the Sardinian.
In the course of the Corsican notices in this volume, it was mentioned that after my return to England, I had some communications with a government department respecting the pine forests of Corsica.[69] On my taking occasion also to represent the great abundance of oak timber of large dimensions standing in Sardinia, I learnt that a valuable report on the subject had been made to the Admiralty by Mr. Craig, Her Majesty's excellent Consul-General in the island. It did not, however, appear that any steps had been taken in consequence.
Great damage is done to the forests by the herdsmen and shepherds, who are permitted, under certain restrictions, to burn down portions of underwood, such as the lentiscus, daphne, and cistus, to allow the pasturage to grow for their flocks. But though this is not legal before the eighth of September, when the intense heat of the summer has passed away, and the periodical autumnal rains are necessary for the young herbage, the law is broken, and not only accidental but wilful conflagrations have been the destruction of numerous forests. What with this waste, the injury done to the growing timber by the contractors, and the indolence of the natives, the noble forests of Sardinia are of little account. Even the government, it is said, purchase most of the oak used in the dockyards of Genoa at the French ports before mentioned.
Similar observations apply to cork, though capable of easier transport, and said to be as fine as any in the world. The Sardinian forests would supply large quantities; but it enters little into the exports of the island. We saw a great many trees stripped by the peasants for domestic uses, naked and miserable skeletons; with them it is indiscriminate slaughter, doing irreparable injury to the trees. There now lie before me the specimens I collected of the successive layers of the bark. The spongy external cuticle, swelling into excrescences, is only used for floats of the fishermen's nets in the island. Beneath lies a coating of more compact, but cellular, tissue, of a beautiful rich colour—a sort of red umber. This layer, called la camicia (the shift), covers the good or “female” bark, with which every one is acquainted in the shape of corks.
The bark will bear cutting every ten years, commencing when the trees are about that age; but it should not be cut till the inner bark is an inch or an inch and a quarter thick. I consider that the bark of old trees is less valuable. Some of those we saw in the forests of the Gallura and Barbagia must have been the growth of many centuries. It is calculated that each tree, on an average, produces upwards of 30 lbs. of bark at a cutting; there are about 220 lbs. in a quintal, worth, at Marseilles, 20 francs; and a quintal of cork makes from 4500 to 5000 bottle-corks.