“The harvest is approaching,” said our guide. “Soon every house will have great heaps gathered in for the winter's store.”
We were on the borders of the mountainous district of the Niolo, the most primitive, not only geologically, as we have lately seen, but in point of manners, of any in Corsica. This it owes to its sequestered situation, hemmed in by the southern branch of the great central chain. It is approached by difficult paths and steps hewn out of the rock, the best being the pass of the Santa Regina. The interior of the bason is, however, extremely fertile. We had now in view the Monte Cinto and Monte Artica, the principal summits of the Niolo group, nearly 8000 feet high; and from part of our route Monte Rotondo was seen rising, with its snowy crest, a thousand feet higher, further to the south.
The country now assumed a wilder and more rugged character, cultivation disappeared, and the surface was either rocky or thickly covered with the natural shrubbery so often mentioned. Once more we were in the Macchia, threading it by a rough and narrow path. Flocks of sheep and goats were browsing among the bushes; and the sight of rude shepherds' huts, with their blazing fires, gave us to understand that we had reached the wilds beyond human habitation. At last, a steep ascent through the thickets by a slippery path surmounted a ridge commanding the prospect of one flank of a mountain, the forest property of our “man of the woods.” A furious torrent, its natural boundary, tumbled and dashed in its rocky channel far beneath. Our mules slid down the almost precipitous descent clothed with dense underwood; we forded the stream, and met our friend's forester, who was expecting our arrival, and had shouted to us as we crossed the ridge.
A storm of rain poured down in torrents while we were clambering up the opposite heights, making for shelter with as much speed as such an ascent permitted. Our place of refuge was a well-known haunt of the shepherds and banditti. It could not be called a cave, but was a hollow under a mass of insulated rock, worn away in the disintegrated granite, the harder shell of which formed an umbrella-shaped canopy, protecting us from the rain. It was miserably cold; but there were no dry materials at hand for lighting a fire, though the blackened rock and heaps of ashes and half-burnt logs looked very tempting.
Under such circumstances, the best thing to be done was to apply ourselves to the contents of Madame ——'s basket, as we had still harder work before us. The contents were just displayed when my fellow-traveller made his appearance. I had lost sight of him in the bush while hurrying on, he having dismounted, and left his mule to be led up by a shepherd. He, too, had sought shelter in the nearest rock he could find. It had a cavity with a low aperture, into which he thrust himself head-foremost. What was his surprise at beholding a pair of eyes glaring at him through the gloom! The thing—whether it were man or beast he could not at the moment distinguish—shrunk back. He, too, recoiled and made a sudden exit. Presently he saw a pair of legs protruding on the further side of the rock, which it appeared was perforated from both extremities, and the thing, serpent-like, gradually wriggled itself out. Then stood erect, shaggy and rough as a wild beast startled from its lair, one of the shepherd boys, who had also crept into the cavity for refuge from the storm. He cast one look of astonishment at the intruder, turned round, and, leaping into the bush, disappeared without uttering a word.
“Perhaps he took you for a detective in plain clothes, conscience-struck for having assisted to harbour the proscribed brigands!”
Our meal despatched, and the weather clearing, we began clambering up a mountain side, as steep as the ridge of a house; and the mules, being useless, were sent down in charge of the muleteer to the ford of the torrent. Signor F——'s forest spread over the whole face of the mountain, and how much further he best knew. We understood that he had a larger tract in another direction.
Trackless pine forests—some belonging to the communes, others to private individuals,—clothe the lower ranges of the mountains through all this part of the island. Vizzavona, which we crossed on our way to Ajaccio, and Aitona, lying to the south-west of the Niolo, belong to the State, and the French Admiralty draw from them large supplies of timber shipped to Toulon; especially the finest masts used in their navy. The Corsican pine-forests have been famous from early times. Theophrastus[28] mentions a ship built by the Romans with this timber, of such large dimensions as to carry fifty sails; and Sextus Pompeius, seizing this island as well as Sicily and Sardinia, drew from its forests the means of maintaining his naval supremacy.
Our “man of the woods” appeared to have hardly earned, and well to merit, the noble property in the possession of which he rejoiced. Yet he described himself as poor in the midst of his seeming wealth, impoverished to get together vast tracts of country, from which, at present, he received no return. His object was to obtain a market for sale of his timber, which he said could be floated down the rivers to the sea-coast at a moderate expense. Having seen, as we had, the Norwegian timber floating down rivers, precipitated over rapids, and rafted over immense lakes, during a flottage to the sea which it sometimes takes two years to accomplish[29], we could find no difficulty in believing that advantage might be taken of the rivers on either watershed of the central chain in Corsica, to bear this, the only wealth of these elevated regions, to the coast, which is nowhere more than about fifty miles distant. Of the anchorage and depth of water at the mouths of the rivers, I have no precise information, except so far that Signor F—— assured us there would be no difficulty in shipping his timber.
I had not counted on such an exhausting effort as climbing a thousand feet nearly perpendicular on the rocky and rugged surface of a mountain forest in Corsica demanded. Accustomed to traverse some of the finest pine-forests of Norway in a light carriole on excellent roads, or to canter along their avenues on little spirited horses, its native breed, without any feeling of fatigue, I had imagined our present enterprise to be much easier than it proved. Indeed, had it not been that the tangled roots of the pines, forming a network on the denuded surface of the rocks, afforded secure footing and a firm hold, and that, clasping the giant stems, one could take breath on the edge of the shelving cliffs, I should never have scrambled, and pulled myself, up to the summit.