It is about nine miles in circumference, and I should judge from its appearance that the greatest part of the surface is rocky, though not without green hollows, dells, and verdant slopes. But the olive and the vine usually thrive, and are largely cultivated, on such spots; and if, as I should imagine, the natural vegetation and the climate are similar to those of the other islands in the Tuscan sea with which we are acquainted, happy may the lord of Monte-Cristo be; for, in the hands of a wealthy English gentleman, such a spot may be made an earthly paradise.
After about an hour's walk we halted for the muleteer to come up. A glorious point of view it was, embracing a wide expanse of the bright sea, with the islands which had supplied so many striking and pleasant recollections. Looking backward, the purple mountains of Capo Corso now appeared massed together in endless variety of outline, with Bastia at their base, the citadel and white houses glowing in the evening sunshine. Turning to the right, the eye caught the fine effect of the meeting of the plain and mountains—the interminable level, stretching far away till it was lost in distance, and teeming with luxuriant vegetation, but with only here and there a solitary clump of trees,—and the long mountain-range line after line rising into peaks above the gracefully rounded hills that swelled up from the level of the plain. Woods, orchards, vineyards overspread the lower slopes, the hollows were buried in thickets of evergreen, and picturesque villages and towers appeared, though rarely, on the summits of the hills.
MEETING OF MOUNTAIN AND PLAIN, NEAR BASTIA.
Who would not linger at the sight of Furiani, the most important of these villages, its ivy-mantled towers crumbling to ruins?—Furiani, where the Corsicans, in a national assembly, first organised their insurrection against the Genoese, and elected the prudent and intrepid Giaffori one of their leaders; with cries of “Evviva la libertà! evviva il popolo!”—Furiani, where, in almost their last struggle, two hundred Corsicans held the fortifications long after they were a heap of ruins, and at length cut their way by night to the shore.
The muleteer at last made his appearance with his sorry cavalcade, and my companion having taken advantage of our halt to make the sketch of the “Meeting of the mountains and plain,” which was not quite finished, that we might not lose time, as the sun was descending behind the mountains, one of the mules was tied to a stake, in order that my friend might overtake us, while we made the best of our way forward.
I still preferred walking, and pushed on at a pace which suited none of my company, human or asinine. We had got ahead about a mile, when shouts from behind opened a scene perfectly ludicrous. There was the little mule trotting up the road at most unusual speed, impelled by my friend's shouts and the big stones with which he was pelting the miserable beast. He too came up at a long trot, rather excited, and calling to the muleteer, “Catch your mule, Giovanni! I'll have nothing more to do with the brute.”
“What is it all about?”
It appeared that my friend, having finished his sketch, prepared to mount and push after us. The mule, however, had a design diametrically opposed to this. No sooner was it loosed from the stake to which it was tied, than the poor beast very naturally felt a strong impulse to return to its stable at Bastia. Could instinct have forewarned it what it would have to encounter before midnight, the retrograde impulse would have been still stronger. Every one knows how difficult it is to deal with a mule when it is in the mood either not to go at all, or to go the wrong way. Having driven a team of these animals—fine Calabrian mules they were, equal to the best Spanish—all the way from Naples to Dieppe, I can boast of some experience in the mulish temperament.
To make matters worse, the English saddle being all too large for its wizened sides, in spite of all our care in knotting the girths, it twisted round in the attempt to mount, and my very excellent friend—no disparagement to his noble horsemanship, for one has no firm seat even when mounted on a vicious pony—before he could bring the saddle to a level and gain his equilibrium, was fairly pitched over the side of the road. Mule having now achieved that glorious libertà, the instinctive aspiration of Corsican existence, whether man, mule, or moufflon, started forward alone, my friend following, I have no doubt, in rather a thundering rage.