NEAR BIGORNO.
What with a Pisan campanile, a Corsican manse, festooning vines, a cluster of bamboo canes—indicative of the warm south—and the group of mountains with the truncated peak in the distance, a very clever sketch was produced, though not one of my friend's best;—and I have great reason to be obliged to him for his sketches, without which I fear this would be a dull book. At that moment, indeed, I would have preferred his companionship. However, bating this feeling and a certain hankering for my breakfast in the course of a two hours' walk, I trudged on alone in a very pleasant frame of mind. Nothing could be more charming than the green slopes round which the path wound, with occasional glimpses of the Golo beneath,—its rapid stream white as the milky Rhone,—after leaving behind the orchards and gardens. The rest of the descent lay through evergreen shrubbery so frequently mentioned, and a more exquisite piece of máquis I had not seen. Thus sauntering on, sometimes talking with Antoine, a species of shrub, which I had not much observed before, attracted my particular attention among the arbutus and numerous other well-known varieties. It was a bushy evergreen, of shapely growth, five or six feet high, with masses of foliage and clusters of bright red berries, having an aromatic scent.
“What do you call this shrub, Antoine?” plucking a branch.
“Lustinea; the country people express an oil from the berries for use in their lamps.”
“Ah! I perceive it is the Lentiscus.” In Africa and the isle of Scios they make incisions in the stems, from which the gum mastic is procured. The Turks chew it to sweeten the breath. It grows also in Provence, Italy, and Spain.
Presently, I sat down on a bank, casting anxious glances up the path after my friend, and, basking in the sun, finished Antoine's basket of figs, which only whetted my appetite, while I was endeavouring to indoctrinate Antoine with the persuasion that our countrymen in general are neither “Calvinistes” nor “Juives.” Antoine, who had been asking a variety of questions about “Inghilterra” and “Londra” was not better informed on this subject than a great many foreigners I have met with in Catholic countries, who, by the former term, class all Protestants with the Reformed churches of the Continent. I have often had to inform them, to their manifest surprise, that we have bishops, priests and deacons, cathedrals, choirs, deans and canons, vestments, creeds, liturgies and sacraments, in the English church, and were, in short, very like themselves, at least in externals. Matters of faith I did not feel inclined to meddle with.
The discussion ended as we struck the level of the valley of the Golo, not far from Ponte Nuovo. The heat in this deep valley became suffocating, and the dusty high road was an ill exchange for the fresh mountain paths. Here, then, I made a decided halt, and this being the battle-field on which, in 1769, the French, after a desperate struggle, gained a decisive victory over General Paoli and the independent Corsicans, I had just engaged Antoine in pointing out the positions of the two armies, and tracing the tide of battle which, they say, deluged the Golo with blood and corpses for many miles,—when my lost companion came rushing down the hill-path among the rustling evergreens.
“You have been waiting long—excuse me; I have had a little adventure. That has detained me.”
“Humph!” My friend's sketching propensities often led him into a “little adventure,” ending in a story which, I should almost have imagined, he coined for a peace-offering, but that I had chapter and verse for the main incidents. There was that story of his being kicked off the mule, and—only the evening before—his rencontre with the interesting young shepherd.