The head-dress of the Corsican women is the mandile, a handkerchief

of any colour, which covers the forehead, and smoothly enwrapping the

head, is wound about the knot of hair behind; so that the hair is thus

concealed. The mandile is in use all over Corsica; it looks Moorish

and Oriental, and is of high antiquity, for there are female figures

on Etrurian vases represented with the mandile. It is very becoming on

young girls, less so on elderly women; it makes the latter look like

the Jewish females. The men wear the pointed brown or red baretto, the

ancient Phrygian cap, which Paris, son of Priam, wore. The marbles

representing this Trojan prince give him the baretto; the Persian

Mithras also wears it, as I have observed in the common symbolic group

where Mithras is seen slaying the bull. Among the Romans, the Phrygian

cap was the usual symbol of the barbarians; the well-known Dacian

captives of the triumphal arch of Trajan which now stand on the arch of

Constantine, wear it; so do other barbarian kings and slaves, Sarmatian

and Asiatic, whom we find represented in triumphal processions. The

Venetian Doge also wore a Phrygian cap as a symbol of his dignity.

The women in Corsica carry all their burdens on their head, and the

weight they will thus carry is hardly credible; laden in this way, they

often hold the spindle in their hand, and spin as they walk along. It

is a picturesque sight, the women of Bastia carrying their two-handled

brazen water-pitchers on their head; these bear a great resemblance

to the antique consecrated vases of the temples; I never saw them

except in Bastia; beyond the mountains they fetch their water in stone

pitchers, of rude but still slightly Etruscan form.

"Do you see yonder woman with the water-pitcher on her head?" "Yes,

what is remarkable about her?" "She might perhaps have been this day

a princess of Sweden, and the consort of a king." "_Madre di Dio!_"

"Do you see yonder village on the hillside? that is Cardo. The common

soldier Bernadotte one day fell in love with a peasant girl of Cardo.

The parents would not let the poor fellow court her. The _povero

diavolo_, however, one day became a king, and if he had married that

girl, she would have been a queen; and now her daughter there, with

the water on her head, goes about and torments herself that she is

not Princess of Sweden." It was on the highway from Bastia to San

Fiorenzo that Bernadotte worked as a common soldier on the roads.

At Ponte d'Ucciani he was made corporal, and very proud he was of

his advancement. He now watched as superintendent over the workmen;

afterwards he copied the rolls for Imbrico, clerk of court at Bastia.

There is still a great mass of them in his handwriting among the

archives at Paris.

It was on the Bridge of Golo, some miles from Bastia, that Massena

was made corporal. Yes, Corsica is a wonderful island. Many a one

has wandered among the lonely hills here, who never dreamed that he

was yet to wear a crown. Pope Formosus made a beginning in the ninth

century--he was a native of the Corsican village of Vivario; then a

Corsican of Bastia followed him in the sixteenth century, Lazaro, the

renegade, and Dey of Algiers; in the time of Napoleon, a Corsican woman

was first Sultaness of Morocco; and Napoleon himself was first Emperor

of Europe.

CHAPTER III.

ENVIRONS OF BASTIA.

How beautiful the walks are here in the morning, or at moon-rise! A

few steps and you are by the sea, or among the hills, and there or

here, you are rid of the world, and deep in the refreshing solitude of

nature. Dense olive-groves fringe some parts of the shore. I often lay

among these, beside a little retired tomb, with a Moorish cupola, the

burial-vault of some family, and looked out upon the sea, and the three

islands on its farthest verge. It was a spot of delicious calm; the air

was so sunny, so soothingly still, and wherever the eye rested, holiday

repose and hermit loneliness, a waste of brown rocks on the strand,

covered with prickly cactus, solitary watch-towers, not a human being,

not a bird upon the water; and to the right and left, warm and sunny,

the high blue hills.

I mounted the heights immediately above Bastia. From these there is a

very pleasant view of the town, the sea, and the islands. Vineyards,

olive-gardens, orange-trees, little villas of forms the most bizarre;

here and there a fan-palm, tombs among cypresses, ruins quite choked in

ivy, are scattered on every side. The paths are difficult and toilsome;

you wander over loose stones, over low walls, between bramble-hedges,

among trailing ivy, and a wild and rank profusion of thistles. The view

of the shore to the south of Bastia surprised me. The hills there, like

almost all the Corsican hills, of a fine pyramidal form, retire farther

from the shore, and slope gently down to a smiling plain. In this level

lies the great pond of Biguglia, encircled with reeds, dead and still,

hardly a fishing-skiff cutting its smooth waters. The sun was just

sinking as I enjoyed this sight. The lake gleamed rosy red, the hills

the same, and the sea was full of the evening splendour, with a single

ship gliding across. The repose of a grand natural scene calms the

soul. To the left I saw the cloister of San Antonio, among olive-trees

and cypresses; two priests sat in the porch, and some black-veiled nuns

were coming out of the church. I remembered a picture I had once seen

of evening in Sicily, and found it here reproduced.

Descending to the highway, I came to a road which leads to Cervione;

herdsmen were driving home their goats, riders on little red horses

flew past me, wild fellows with bronzed faces, all with the Phrygian

cap on their heads, the dark brown Corsican jacket of sheeps'-wool

hanging loosely about them, double-barrels slung upon their backs.

I often saw them riding double on their little animals: frequently a

man with a woman behind him, and if the sun was hot they were always

holding a large umbrella above them. The parasol is here indispensable;

I frequently saw both men and women--the women clothed, the men

naked--sitting at their ease in the shallow water near the shore,

and holding the broad parasol above their heads, evidently enjoying

themselves mightily. The women here ride like the men, and manage

their horses very cleverly. The men have always the zucca or round

gourd-bottle slung behind them; often, too, a pouch of goatskin, zaino,

and round their middle is girt the carchera--a leathern belt which

holds their cartridges.

Before me walked numbers of men returning from labour in the fields;

I joined them, and learned that they were not Corsicans, but Italians

from the Continent. More than five thousand labourers come every year

from Italy, particularly from Leghorn, and the country about Lucca

and Piombino, to execute the field labour for the lazy Corsicans.

Up to the present day the Corsicans have maintained a well-founded

reputation for indolence, and in this they are thoroughly unlike

other brave mountaineers, as, for example, the Samnites. All these

foreign workmen go under the common appellation of Lucchesi. I have

been able personally to convince myself with what utter contempt these

poor and industrious men are looked on by the Corsicans, because they

have left their home to work in the sweat of their brow, exposed to

a pestilential atmosphere, in order to bring their little earnings

to their families. I frequently heard the word "Lucchese" used as

an opprobrious epithet; and particularly among the mountains of

the interior is all field-work held in detestation as unworthy of a

freeman; the Corsican is a herdsman, as his forefathers have been from

time immemorial; he contents himself with his goats, his repast of

chestnuts, a fresh draught from the spring, and what his gun can bring

down.

I learned at the same time that there were at present in Corsica great

numbers of Italian democrats, who had fled to the island on the failure

of the revolution. There were during the summer about one hundred

and fifty of them scattered over the island, men of all ranks; most

of them lived in Bastia. I had opportunities of becoming acquainted

with the most respectable of these refugees, and of accompanying them

on their walks. They formed a company as motley as political Italy

herself--Lombards, Venetians, Neapolitans, Romans, and Florentines. I

experienced the fact that in a country where there is little cultivated

society, Italians and Germans immediately exercise a mutual attraction,

and have on neutral ground a brotherly feeling for each other. There

was a universality in the events and results of the year 1848, which

broke down many limitations, and produced certain views of life and

certain theories within which individuals, to whatever nationalities

they may belong, feel themselves related and at home. I found among

these exiles in Corsica men and youths of all classes, such as are to

be met with in similar companies at home--enthusiastic and sanguine

spirits; others again, men of practical experience, sound principle,

and clear intellect.

The world is at present full of the political fugitives of European

nations; they are especially scattered over the islands, which have

long been, and are in their nature destined to be, used as asylums.

There are many exiles in the Ionian Islands and in the islands of

Greece, many in Sardinia and Corsica, many in the islands of the

English Channel, most of all in Britain. It is a general and European

lot which has fallen to these exiles--only the locality is different;

and banishment itself, as a result of political crime, or political

misfortune, is as old as the history of organized states. I remembered

well how in former times the islands of the Mediterranean--Samos,

Delos, Ægina, Corcyra, Lesbos, Rhodes--sheltered the political refugees

of Greece, as often as revolution drove them from Athens or Thebes, or

Corinth or Sparta. I thought of the many exiles whom Rome sent to the

islands in the time of the Emperors, as Agrippa Posthumus to Planasia,

the philosopher Seneca to Corsica itself. Corsica particularly has been

at all times not only a place of refuge, but a place of banishment;

in the strictest sense of the word, therefore, an island of _bandits_,

and this it still is at the present day. The avengers of blood wander

homeless in the mountains, the political fugitives dwell homeless in

the towns. The ban of outlawry rests upon both, and if the law could

reach them, their fate would be the prison, if not death.

Corsica, in receiving these poor banished Italians, does more than

simply practise her cherished religion of hospitality, she discharges a

debt of gratitude. For in earlier centuries Corsican refugees found the

most hospitable reception in all parts of Italy; and banished Corsicans

were to be met with in Rome, in Florence, in Venice, and in Naples.

The French government has hitherto treated its guests on the island

with liberality and tolerance. The remote seclusion of their position

compels these exiles to a life of contemplative quiet; and they are,

perhaps precisely on this account, more fortunate than their brethren

in misfortune in Jersey or London.

CHAPTER IV.

FRANCESCO MARMOCCHI OF FLORENCE--THE GEOLOGY OF CORSICA.

Hic sola hæc duo sunt, exul, et exilium.--SENECA _in

Corsica_.

Προσκυνοῦντες τὴν εἱμαρμένην σοφοὶ .--ÆSCHYL. _Prom._

I was told in a bookseller's shop into which I had gone in search

of a Geography of the island, that there was one then in the press,

and that its author was Francesco Marmocchi, a banished Florentine.

I immediately sought this gentleman out, and made in him one of

the most valuable of all my Italian acquaintances. I found a man

of prepossessing exterior, considerably above thirty, in a little

room, buried among books. Possibly the rooms of most political exiles

do not present such a peaceful aspect. On the bookshelves were the

best classical authors; and my eye lighted with no small pleasure on

Humboldt's _Cosmos_; on the walls were copperplate views of Florence,

and an admirable copy of a Perugino; all this told not only of the

seclusion of a scholar, but of that of a highly cultivated Florentine.

There are perhaps few greater contrasts than that between Florence and

Corsica, and my own feelings were at first certainly peculiar, when,

after six weeks' stay in Florence, I suddenly exchanged the Madonnas of

Raphael for the Corsican banditti; but it is always to be remembered

that Corsica is an island of enchanting beauty; and though banishment

to paradise itself would remain banishment, still the student of nature

may at least, as Seneca did, console himself here with the grandeur and

beauty around him, in undisturbed tranquillity. All that Seneca wrote

from his Corsican exile to his mother on the consolation to be found

in contemplating nature, and in science, Francesco Marmocchi may fully

apply to himself. This former Florentine professor seemed to me, in his

dignified retirement and learned leisure, the happiest of all exiles.

Francesco Marmocchi was minister of Tuscany during the revolution,

along with Guerazzi; he was afterwards secretary to the ministry:

more fortunate than his political friend, he escaped from Florence to

Rome, and then from Rome to Corsica, where he had already lived three

years. His unwearied activity, and the stoical serenity with which he

bears his exile, attest the manly vigour of his character. Francesco

Marmocchi is one of the most esteemed and talented Italian geographers.

Besides his great work, a Universal Geography in six quarto volumes,

a new edition of which is at present publishing, he has written a

special Geography of Italy in two volumes; a Historical Geography

of the Ancient World, of the Middle Ages, and of Modern Times; a

Natural History of Italy, and other works. I found him correcting

the proof-sheets of his little Geography of Corsica, an excellent

hand-book, which he has unfortunately been obliged to write in French.

This book is published in Bastia, by Fabiani; it has afforded me some

valuable information about Corsica.

One morning before sunrise we went into the hills round Cardo, and

here, amid the fresh bloom of the Corsican landscape, if the reader

will suppose himself in our company, we shall take the geographer

himself for guide and interpreter, and hear what he has to say upon the

island. I give almost the very words of his Geography.

Corsica owes her existence to successive conglobations of upheaved

masses; during an extended period she has had three great volcanic

processes, to which the bizarre and abrupt contours of her landscape

are to be ascribed. These three upheavals may be readily distinguished.

The first masses of Corsican land that rose were those that occupy

the entire south-western side. This earliest upheaval took place in a

direction from north-west to south-east; its marks are the two great

ribs of mountain which run parallel, from north-east to south-west,

down towards the sea, and form the most important promontories of

the west coast. The axis of Corsica at that time must therefore have

been different from its later one; and the islands in the channel of

Bonifazio, as well as a part of the north-east of Sardinia, then stood

in connexion with Corsica. The material of this first upheaval is

mostly granite; consequently at the period of this primeval revolution

there was no life of any sort on the island.

The direction of the second upheaval was from south-west to north-east,

and the material here again consists largely of granitoids. But as we

advance to the north-east, we find the granite gradually giving way to

the ophiolitic (_ophiolitisch_) earth system. The second upheaval is,

however, hardly discernible. It is clear that it destroyed most of the

northern ridge of the first; but Corsican geology has preserved very

few traces of it.

The undoubted effect of the third and last upheaval was the almost

entire destruction of the southern portion of the first; and it

was at this time the island received its present form. It occurred

in a direction from north to south. So long as the masses of this

last eruption have not come in contact with the masses of previous

upheavals, their direction remains regular, as is shown by the

mountain-chain of Cape Corso. But it had to burst its way through the

towering masses of the southern ridge with a fearful shock; it broke

them up, altering its direction, and sustaining interruption at many

points, as is shown by the openings of the valleys, which lead from the

interior to the plain of the east coast, and have become the beds of

the streams that flow into the sea on this side--the Bevinco, the Golo,

the Tavignano, the Fiumorbo, and others.

The rock strata of this third upheaval are primitive ophiolitic

and primitive calcareous, covered at various places by secondary

formations.

The primitive masses, which occupy, therefore, the south and west of

the island, consist almost entirely of granite. At their extremities

they include some layers of gneiss and slate. The granite is almost

everywhere covered--a clear proof that it was elevated at a period

antecedent to that during which the covering masses were forming in

the bosom of the ocean, to be deposited in horizontal strata on the

crystalline granite masses. Strata of porphyry and eurite pierce

the granite; a decided porphyritic formation crowns Mounts Cinto,

Vagliorba, and Perturato, the highest summits of Niolo, overlying the

granite. From two to three feet of mighty greenstone penetrate these

porphyritic rocks.

The intermediary masses occupy the whole of Cape Corso, and the east of

the island. They consist of bluish gray limestone, huge masses of talc,

stalactites, serpentine, euphotides, quartz, felspar, and porphyries.

The tertiary formations appear only in isolated strips, as at San

Fiorenzo, Volpajola, Aleria, and Bonifazio. They exhibit numerous

fossils of marine animals of subordinate species--sea-urchins, polypi,

and many other petrifactions in the limestone layers.

In regard to the plains of the east coast of Corsica, as the plains

Biguglia, Mariana, and Aleria, they are diluvial deposits of the period

when the floods destroyed vast numbers of animal species. Among the

diluvial fossils in the neighbourhood of Bastia, the head of a lagomys

has been found--a small hare without tail, existing at the present day

in Siberia.

There is no volcano in Corsica; but traces of extinct volcanoes may

be seen near Porto Vecchio, Aleria, Balistro, San Manza, and at other

points.

It seems almost incredible that an island like Corsica, so close to

Sardinia and Tuscany, and, above all, so near the iron island of Elba,

should be so poor in metals as it really is. Numerous indications of

metallic veins are, it is true, to be found everywhere, now of iron or

copper, now of lead, antimony, manganese, quicksilver, cobalt, gold and

silver, but these, as the engineer Gueymard has shown in his work on

the geology and mineralogy of Corsica, are illusory.

The only metal mines of importance that can be wrought, are, at

present, the iron mines of Olmeta and Farinole in Cape Corso, an iron

mine near Venzolasca, the copper mine of Linguizzetta, the antimony

mine of Ersa in Cape Corso, and the manganese mine near Alesani.

On the other hand, Corsica is an inexhaustible treasury of the rarest

and most valuable stones, an elysium of the geologist. But they lie

unused; no one digs the treasure.

* * * * *

It may not be out of place here to give a detail of these beautiful

stones, arranged in the usual geological order.

1. _Granites._--Red granite, resembling the Oriental granite, between

Orto and the lake of Ereno; coral-red granite at Olmiccia; rose-red

granite at Cargese; red granite, tending to purple, at Aitone; rosy

granite of Carbuccia; rosy granite of Porto; rose-red granite at

Algajola; granite with garnets (the bigness of a nut) at Vizzavona.

2. _Porphyries._--Variegated porphyry in Niolo; black porphyry with

rosy spots at Porto Vecchio; pale yellow porphyry, with rosy felspar at

Porto Vecchio; grayish green porphyry, with amethyst, on the Restonica.

3. _Serpentines._--Green, very hard serpentines; also transparent

serpentines at Corte, Matra, and Bastia.

4. Eurites, amphibolites, and euphotides; globular eurite at Curso

and Girolata, in Niolo, and elsewhere; globular amphibolite, commonly

termed orbicular granite (the nodules consist of felspar and amphiboles

in concentric layers) in isolated blocks at Sollucaro, on the Taravo,

in the valley of Campolaggio and elsewhere; amphibolite, with crystals

of black hornblende in white felspar at Olmeto, Levie, and Mela;

euphotides, called also Verde of Corsica, and Verde d'Orezza, in the

bed of the Fiumalto, and in the valley of Bevinco.

5. _Jasper_ and _Agates_.--Jasper (in granites and porphyries) in

Niolo, and the valley of Stagno; agates (also in the granites and

porphyries) in the same localities.

6. _Marble_ and _Alabaster_.--White statuary marble of dazzling

splendour at Ortiporio, Casacconi, Borgo de Cavignano, and elsewhere;

bluish gray marble at Corte; yellow alabaster in the valley of S.

Lucia, near Bastia; white alabaster, semi-transparent, foliated and

fibrous, in a grotto behind Tuara, in the gulf of Girolata.

CHAPTER V.

A SECOND LESSON, THE VEGETATION OF CORSICA.

It was an instructive lesson that Francesco Marmocchi, _quondam_

professor of natural history, _quondam_ minister of Tuscany, now

Fuoruscito, and poor solitary student, gave me, that rosiest of all

morning hours as we stood high up on the green Mount Cardo, the fair

Mediterranean extended at our feet, exactly of such a colour as Dante

has described: _color del Oriental zaffiro_.

"See," said Marmocchi, "where the blue outline shows itself, yonder is

the beautiful Toscana."

Ah, I see Toscana well; plainly I see fair Florence, and the halls

where the statues of the great Tuscans stand, Giotto, Orcagna, Nicola

Pisano, Dante, Petrarca, Boccacio, Macchiavelli, Galilei, and the

godlike Michael Angelo; three thousand Croats--I can see them--are

parading there among the statues; the air is so clear, you can see and

hear everything: listen, Francesco, to the verses the marble Michael

Angelo is now addressing to Dante:--

"Dear is to me my sleep, and that I am of stone;

While this wo lasts, this ignominy deep,

To see nought, and to hear nought, that alone

Is well; then wake me not, speak low, and weep!"

But do you see how this dry brown rock has decorated himself over and

over with flowers? On his head he wears a glorious plume of myrtles,

white with blossom, and his breast is wound with a threefold cord

of honour; with ivy, bramble, and the white wild vine--the clematis.

There are no fairer garlands than those wreaths of clematis with their

clusters of white blossom, and delicate leaves; the ancients loved them

well, and willingly in lyric hours wore them round their heads.

Within the compass of a few paces, what a profusion of different

plants! Here are rosemary and cytisus, there wild asparagus, beside

it a tall bush of lilac-blossomed erica; here again the poisonous

euphorbia, which sheds a milk-white juice when you break it; and here

the sympathetic helianthemum, with its beautiful golden flowers, which

one by one all fall off when you have broken a single twig; yonder,

outlandish and bizarre, stands the prickly cactus, like a Moorish

heathen, near it the wild olive shrub, the cork-oak, the lentiscus,

the wild fig, and at their roots bloom the well-known children of

our northern homes--the scabiosa, the geranium, and the mallow.

How exquisite, pungent, invigorating are the perfumes that all this

blooming vegetation breathes forth; the rue there, the lavender, the

mint, and all those labiatae. Did not Napoleon say on St. Helena,

as his mournful thoughts turned again to his native island: "All was

better there, to the very smell of the soil; with shut eyes I should

know Corsica from its fragrance alone."

Let us hear something from Marmocchi now, on the botany of Corsica in

general.

Corsica is the most central region of the great plant-system of the

Mediterranean--a system characterized by a profusion of fragrant

Labiatæ and graceful Caryophylleæ. These plants cover all parts of the

island, and at all seasons of the year fill the air with their perfume.

On account of the central position of Corsica, its vegetation connects

itself with that of all the other provinces of the immense botanic

region referred to; through Cape Corso it is connected with the plants

of Liguria, through the east coast with those of Tuscany and Rome,

through the west and south coasts with the botany of Provence, Spain,

Barbary, Sicily, and the East; and finally, through the mountainous

and lofty region of the interior, with that of the Alps and Pyrenees.

What a wondrous opulence, and astonishing variety, therefore, in the

Corsican vegetation!--a variety and opulence that infinitely heightens

the beauty of the various regions of this island, already rendered so

picturesque by their geological configuration.

Some of the forests, on the slopes of the mountains, are as beautiful

as the finest in Europe--particularly those of Aitone and Vizzavona;

besides, many provinces of Corsica are covered with boundless groves of

chestnuts, the trees in which are as large and fruitful as the finest

on the Apennines or Etna. Plantations of olives, from their extent

entitled to be called forests, clothe the eminences, and line the

valleys that run towards the sea, or lie open to its influences. Even

on the rude sides of the higher mountains, the grape-vine twines itself

round the orchard-fences, and spreads to the view its green leaves and

purple fruit. Fertile plains, golden with rich harvests, stretch along

the coasts of the island, and wheat and rye enliven the hillsides, here

and there, with their fresh green, which contrasts agreeably with the

dark verdure of the copsewoods, and the cold tones of the naked rock.

The maple and walnut, like the chestnut, thrive in the valleys and on

the heights of Corsica; the cypress and the sea-pine prefer the less

elevated regions; the forests are full of cork oaks and evergreen oaks;

the arbutus and the myrtle grow to the size of trees. Pomaceous trees,

but particularly the wild olive, cover wide tracts on the heights. The

evergreen thorn, and the broom of Spain and Corsica, mingle with heaths

in manifold variety, and all equally beautiful; among these may be

distinguished the _erica arborea_, which frequently reaches an uncommon

height.

On the tracts which are watered by the overflowing of streams and

brooks, grow the broom of Etna, with its beautiful golden-yellow

blossoms, the cisti, the lentisks, the terebinths, everywhere where the

hand of man has not touched the soil. Further down, towards the plains,

there is no hollow or valley which is not hung with the rhododendron,

whose twigs, towards the sea-coast, entwine with those of the tamarisk.

The fan-palm grows on the rocks by the shore, and the date-palm,

probably introduced from Africa, on the most sheltered spots of the

coast. The _cactus opuntia_ and the American agave grow everywhere in

places that are warm, rocky, and dry.

What shall I say of the magnificent cotyledons, of the beautiful

papilionaceous plants, of the large verbasceæ, the glorious purple

digitalis, that deck the mountains of the island? And of the mallows,

the orchises, the liliaceæ, the solanaceæ, the centaurea, and the

thistles--plants which so beautifully adorn the sunny and exposed, or

cool and shady regions where their natural affinities allow them to

grow?

The fig, the pomegranate, the vine, yield good fruit in Corsica, even

where the husbandman neglects them, and the climate and soil of the

coasts of this beautiful island are so favourable to the lemon and the

orange, and the other trees of the same family, that they literally

form forests.

The almond, the cherry, the plum, the apple-tree, the pear tree, the

peach, and the apricot, and, in general, all the fruit trees of Europe,

are here common. In the hottest districts of the island, the fruits

of the St. John's bread-tree, the medlar of various kinds, the jujube

tree, reach complete ripeness.

The hand of man, if man were willing, might introduce in the proper

quarters, and without much trouble, the sugar-cane, the cotton plant,

tobacco, the pine-apple, madder, and even indigo, with success.

In a word, Corsica might become for France a little Indies in the

Mediterranean.

This singularly magnificent vegetation of the island is favoured by the

climate. The Corsican climate has three distinct zones of temperature,

graduated according to the elevation of the soil. The first climatic

zone rises from the level of the sea to the height of five hundred and

eighty metres (1903 English feet); the second, from the line of the

former, to the height of one thousand nine hundred and fifty metres

(6398 feet); the third, to the summit of the mountains.

The first zone or region of the coast is warm, like the parallel tracts

of Italy and Spain. Its year has properly only two seasons, spring

and summer; seldom does the thermometer fall 1° or 2° below zero of

Reaumur (27° or 28° Fah.); and when it does so, it is only for a few

hours. All along the coast, the sun is warm even in January, the nights

and the shade cool, and this at all seasons of the year. The sky is

clouded only during short intervals; the heavy sirocco alone, from the

south-east, brings lingering vapours, till the vehement south-west--the

libeccio, again dispels them. The moderate cold of January is rapidly

followed by a dog-day heat of eight months, and the temperature mounts

from 8° to 18° of Reaumur (50° to 72° Fah.), and even to 26° (90° Fah.)

in the shade. It is, then, a misfortune for the vegetation, if no rain

falls in March or April--and this misfortune occurs often; but the

Corsican trees have, in general, hard and tough leaves, which withstand

the drought, as the oleander, the myrtle, the cistus, the lentiscus,

the wild olive. In Corsica, as in all warm climates, the moist and

shady regions are almost pestilential; you cannot walk in these in the

evening without contracting long and severe fever, which, unless an

entire change of air intervene, will end in dropsy and death.

The second climatic zone resembles the climate of France, more

especially that of Burgundy, Morvan, and Bretagne. Here the snow,

which generally appears in November, lasts sometimes twenty days; but,

singularly enough, up to a height of one thousand one hundred and sixty

metres (3706 feet), it does no harm to the olive; but, on the contrary,

increases its fruitfulness. The chestnut seems to be the tree proper to

this zone, as it ceases at the elevation of one thousand nine hundred

and fifty metres (6398 feet), giving place to the evergreen oaks, firs,

beeches, box-trees, and junipers. In this climate, too, live most of

the Corsicans in scattered villages on mountain slopes and in valleys.

The third climate is cold and stormy, like that of Norway, during eight

months of the year. The only inhabited parts are the district of Niolo,

and the two forts of Vivario and Vizzavona. Above these inhabited

spots no vegetation meets the eye but the firs that hang on the gray

rocks. There the vulture and the wild-sheep dwell, and there are the

storehouse and cradle of the many streams that pour downwards into the

valleys and plains.

Corsica may therefore be considered as a pyramid with three horizontal

gradations, the lowermost of which is warm and moist, the uppermost

cold and dry, while the intermediate shares the qualities of both.

CHAPTER VI.

LEARNED MEN.

If we reflect on the number of great men that Corsica has produced

within the space of scarcely a hundred years, we cannot but be

astonished that an island so small, and so thinly populated, is yet so

rich in extraordinary minds. Its statesmen and generals are of European

note; and if it has not been so fruitful in scientific talent, this is

a consequence of its nature as an island, and of its iron history.

But even scientific talent of no mean grade has of late years been

active in Corsica, and names like Pompei, Renucci, Savelli, Rafaelli,

Giubeja, Salvatore Viali, Caraffa, Gregori, are an honour to the

island. The men of most powerful intellect among these belong to the

legal profession. They have distinguished themselves particularly in

jurisprudence, and as historians of their own country.

A man the most remarkable and meritorious of them all, and whose

memory will not soon die in Corsica, was Giovanni Carlo Gregori. He

was born in Bastia in 1797, and belonged to one of the best families

in the island. Devoting himself to the study of law, he first became

auditor in Bastia, afterwards judge in Ajaccio, councillor at the

king's court in Riom, then at the appeal court in Lyons, where he was

also active as president of the Academy of Sciences, and where, on

the 27th of May 1852, he died. He has written important treatises on

Roman jurisprudence; but he had a patriotic passion for the history of

his native country, and with this he was unceasingly occupied. He had

resolved to write a history of Corsica, had made detailed researches,

and collected the necessary materials for it; but death overtook him,

and the loss of his work to Corsica cannot be sufficiently lamented.

Nevertheless, Gregori has done important service to his native country:

he edited the new edition of the national historian Filippini, a

continuation of whose work it had been his purpose to write; he also

edited the Corsican history of Petrus Cyrnæus; and in the year 1843

he published a highly important work--the Statutes of Corsica. In his

earlier years he had written a Corsican tragedy, with Sampiero for a

hero, which I have not seen.

Gregori maintained a most lively literary connexion with Italy and

Germany. His acquirements were unusually extended, and his activity of

the genuine Corsican stubbornness. Among his posthumous manuscripts are

a part of his History of Corsica, and rich materials for a history of

the commerce of the naval powers. The death of Gregori filled not only

Corsica, but the men of science in France and Italy, with deep sorrow.

He and Renucci also rendered good service to the public library of

Bastia, which contains sixteen thousand volumes, and occupies a large

building formerly belonging to the Jesuits. They may be said, in

fact, to have _made_ this library, which ranks with that of Ajaccio

as second in the island. Science in Corsica is still, on the whole, in

its infancy. As the historian Filippini, the contemporary of Sampiero,

complains,--indolence, the mainly warlike bent given to the nature

of the Corsicans by their perpetual struggles, and the consequent

ignorance, entirely prevented the formation of a literature. But it

is remarkable, that in the year 1650 the Corsicans founded an Academy

of Sciences, the first president of which was Geronimo Biguglia, the

poet, advocate, theologian, and historian. It is well known that people

in those times were fond of giving such academies the most whimsical

names; the Corsicans called theirs the Academy dei Vagabondi (of the

Vagabonds), and a more admirable and fitting appellation they could not

at that period have selected. The Marquis of Cursay, whose memory is

still affectionately cherished by the Corsicans, restored this Academy;

and Rousseau, himself entitled to the name of Vagabond from his

wandering life, wrote a little treatise for this Corsican institution

on the question: "Which is the most necessary virtue for heroes, and

what heroes have been deficient in this virtue?"--a genuinely Corsican

subject.

The educational establishments--the Academy just referred to has

been dissolved--are, in Bastia, as in Corsica in general, extremely

inadequate. Bastia has a Lyceum, and some lower schools. I was present

at a distribution of prizes in the highest of the girls' schools. It

took place in the court of the old college of the Jesuits, which was

prettily decorated, and in the evening brilliantly illuminated. The

girls, all in white, sat in rows before the principal citizens and

magistrates of the town, and received bay-wreaths--those who had won

them. The head mistress called the name of the happy victress, who

thereupon went up to her desk and received the wreath, which she then

brought to one of the leading men of the town, silently conferring on

him the favour of crowning her, which ceremony was then gone through

in due form. Innumerable such bay-wreaths were distributed; and

many a pretty child bore away perhaps ten or twelve of them for her

immortal works, receiving them all very gracefully. It seemed to me,

however, that wealthy parents, or celebrated old families, were too

much flattered; and they never ceased crowning Miss Colonna d'Istria,

Miss Abatucci, Miss Saliceti--so that these young ladies carried more

bays home with them than would serve to crown the immortal poets of a

century. The graceful little festival--in which there was certainly too

much French flattering of vanity--was closed by a play, very cleverly

acted by the young ladies.

Bastia has a single newspaper--_L'Ere Nouvelle, Journal de la

Corse_--which appears only on Fridays. Up till this summer, the

advocate Arrighi, a man of talent, was the editor. The new Prefect

of Corsica, described to me as a young official without experience,

exceedingly anxious to bring himself into notice, like the Roman

prefects of old in their provinces, had been constantly finding

fault with the Corsican press, the most innocent in the world; and

threatening, on the most trifling pretexts, to withdraw the Government

permission to publish the paper in question, till at length M.

Arrighi was compelled to retire. The paper, entirely Bonapartist in

its politics, still exists; the only other journal in Corsica is the

Government paper in Ajaccio.

There are three bookselling establishments in Bastia, among which the

Libreria Fabiani would do honour even to a German city. This house has

published some beautiful works.

CHAPTER VII.

CORSICAN STATISTICS--RELATION OF CORSICA TO FRANCE.

In the Bastian Journal for July 16, 1852, I found the statistics

of Corsica according to calculations made in 1851, and shall here

communicate them. Inhabitants

In 1740, 120,380

1760, 130,000

1790, 150,638

1821, 180,348

1827, 185,079

In 1831, 197,967

1836, 207,889

1841, 221,463

1846, 230,271

1851, 236,251

The population of the several arrondissements, five in number, was as

follows:--In the arrondissement of Ajaccio, 55,008; Bastia, 20,288;

Calvi, 24,390; Corte, 56,830; Sartene, 29,735.[B]

Corsica is divided into sixty-one cantons, 355 communes; contains

30,438 houses, and 50,985 households.

Males.

Unmarried, 75,543

Married, 36,715

Widowers, 5,680

-------

117,938

Females.

Unmarried, 68,229

Married, 36,916

Widows, 13,168

-------

118,313

236,187 of the inhabitants are Roman Catholics, fifty-four Reformed

Christians. The French born on the island, _i.e._, the Corsicans

included, are 231,653:--Naturalized French, 353; Germans, 41; English,

12; Dutch, 6; Spaniards, 7; Italians, 3806; Poles, 12; Swiss, 85; other

foreigners, 285.

Of diseased people, there were in the year 1851, 2554; of these 435

were blind in both eyes, 568 in one eye; 344 deaf and dumb; 183 insane;

176 club-footed.

Occupation--32,364 men and women were owners of land; 34,427 were

day-labourers; 6924 domestics; people in trades connected with

building--masons, carpenters, painters, blacksmiths, &c., 3194;

dealers in wrought goods, and tailors, 4517; victual-dealers, 2981;

drivers of vehicles, 1623; dealers in articles of luxury--watchmakers,

goldsmiths, engravers, &c., 55; monied people living on their incomes,

13,160; government officials, 1229; communal magistrates, 803; military

and marinari, 5627; apothecaries and physicians, 311; clergy, 955;

advocates, 200; teachers, 635; artists, 105; _littérateurs_, 51;

prostitutes, 91; vagabonds and beggars, 688; sick in hospital, 85.

One class, and that the most original class in the island, has no

figure assigned to it in the above list--I mean the herdsmen. The

number of bandits is stated to be 200; and there may be as many

Corsican bandits in Sardinia.

That the reader may be able to form a clear idea of the general

administration of Corsica, I shall here furnish briefly its more

important details.

Corsica has been a department since the year 1811. It is governed by

a prefect, who resides in Ajaccio. He also discharges the functions of

sub-prefect for the arrondissement of Ajaccio. He has four sub-prefects

under him in the other four arrondissements. The prefect is assisted

by the Council of the prefecture, consisting of three members, besides

the prefect as president, and deciding on claims of exemption, &c.,

in connexion with taxes, the public works, the communal and national

estates. There is an appeal to the Council of State.

The General Council, the members of which are elected by the voters of

each canton, assembles yearly in Ajaccio to deliberate on the public

affairs of the nation. It is competent to regulate the distribution of

the direct taxes over the arrondissements. The General Council can only

meet by a decree of the supreme head of the state, who determines the

length of the sitting. There is a representative for each canton, in

all, therefore, there are sixty-one.

In the chief town of each arrondissement meets a provincial council

of as many members as there are cantons in the arrondissement. The

citizens who, according to French law, are entitled to vote, are also

voters for the Legislative Assembly. There are about 50,000 voters in

Corsica.

Mayors, with adjuncts named by the prefect, conduct the affairs of the

communes; the people have retained so much of their democratic rights,

that they are allowed to elect the municipal council over which the

mayor presides.

As regards the administration of justice, the high court of the

department is the Appeal Court of Bastia, which consists of one chief

president, two _présidents de chambre_, seventeen councillors, one

auditor, one procurator-general, two advocates-general, one substitute,

five clerks of court.

The Court of Assize holds its sittings in Bastia, and consists of

three appeal-councillors, the procurator-general, and a clerk of court.

It sits usually once every four months. There is a Tribunal of First

Instance in the principal town of each arrondissement. There is also

in each canton a justice of the peace. Each commune has a tribunal of

simple municipal police, consisting of the mayor and his adjuncts.

The ecclesiastical administration is subject to the diocese of Ajaccio,

the bishop of which--the only one in Corsica--is a suffragan of the

Archbishop of Aix.

Corsica forms the seventeenth military division of France. Its

head-quarters are in Bastia, where the general of the division resides.

The gendarmerie, so important for Corsica, forms the seventeenth

legion, and is also stationed in Bastia. It is composed of four

companies, with four _chefs_, sixteen lieutenancies, and one hundred

and two brigades.

I add a few particulars in regard to agriculture and industrial

affairs. Agriculture, the foundation of all national wealth, is

very low in Corsica. This is very evident from the single fact,

that the cultivated lands of the island amount to a trifle more than

three-tenths of the surface. The exact area of the island is 874,741

hectars.[C] The progress of agriculture is infinitely retarded by

family feuds, bandit-life, the community of land in the parishes,

the want of roads, the great distance of the tilled grounds from the

dwellings, the unwholesome atmosphere of the plains, and most of all by

the Corsican indolence.

Native industry is in a very languishing state. It is confined to

the merest necessaries--the articles indispensable to the common

handicrafts, and to sustenance; the women almost everywhere wear the

coarse brown Corsican cloth (_panno Corso_), called also _pelvue_; the

herdsmen prepare cheese, and a sort of cheesecake, called _broccio_;

the only saltworks are in the Gulf of Porto Vecchio. There are anchovy,

tunny, and coral fisheries on many parts of the coast, but they are not

diligently pursued.

The commerce of Corsica is equally trifling. The principle export is

oil, which the island yields so abundantly, that with more cultivation

it might produce to the value of sixty millions of francs; it also

exports pulse, chestnuts, fish, fresh and salted, wood, dyeing plants,

hides, corals, marble, a considerable amount of manufactured tobacco,

especially cigars, for which the leaf is imported. The main imports

are--grain of various kinds, as rye, wheat, and rice; sugar, coffee,

cattle, cotton, lint, leather, wrought and unwrought iron, brick,

glass, stoneware.

The export and import are grievously disproportionate. The Customs

impose ruinous restrictions on all manufacture and all commerce; they

hinder foreigners from exchanging their produce for the produce of the

country; hence the Corsicans must pay tenfold for their commodities

in France, while even wine is imported from Provence free of duty,

and thus checks the native cultivation of the vine. For Corsica is, in

point of fact, precluded from exporting wine to France; France herself

being a productive wine country. Even meal and vegetables are sent to

the troops from Provence. The export of tobacco to the Continent is

forbidden.[D] The tyrannical customs-regulations press with uncommon

severity on the poor island; and though she is compelled to purchase

articles from France to the value of three millions yearly, she sends

into France herself only a million and a half. And Corsica yields the

exchequer yearly 1,150,000 francs.

Bastia, Ajaccio, Isola Rossa, and Bonifazio are the principal trading

towns.

But however melancholy the condition of Corsica may be in an industrial

and a commercial point of view, its limited population protects it

at least from the scourge of pauperism, which, in the opulent and

cultivated countries of the Continent, can show mysteries of a much

more frightful character than those of bandit-life and the Vendetta.

For five-and-twenty years now, with unimportant interruptions, have

the French been in possession of the island of Corsica; and they

have neither succeeded in healing the ever open wound of the Corsican

people, nor have they, with all the means that advanced culture places

at their disposal, done anything for the country, beyond introducing a

few very trifling improvements. The island that has twice given France

her Emperor, and twice dictated her laws, has gained nothing by it

but the satisfaction of her revenge. The Corsican will never forget

the disgraceful way in which France appropriated his country; and a

high-spirited people never learns to love its conquerors. When I heard

the Corsicans, even of the present day, bitterly inveighing against

Genoa, I said to them--"Leave the old Republic of Genoa alone; you have

had your full Vendetta on her--Napoleon, a Corsican, annihilated her;

France betrayed you, and bereft you of your nationality; you have had

your full Vendetta on France, for you sent her your Corsican Napoleon,

who enslaved her; and even now this great France is a Corsican

conquest, and your own province."

Two emperors, two Corsicans, on the throne of France, bowing her down

with despotic violence;--well, if an ideal conception can have the

worth of reality, then we are compelled to say, never was a brave

subjugated people more splendidly avenged on its subduers. The name of

Napoleon, it may be confidently affirmed, is the only tie that binds

the Corsican nation to France; without this its relation to France

would be in no respect different from that of other conquered countries

to their foreign masters. I have read, in many authors, the assertion

that the Corsican nation is at the core of its heart French. I hold

this assertion to be a mistake, or an intentional falsehood. I have

never seen the least ground for it. The difference between Corsican

and Frenchman in nationality, in the most fundamental elements of

character and feeling, puts a deep gulf between the two. The Corsican

is decidedly an Italian; his language is acknowledged to be one of the

purest dialects of Italian, his nature, his soil, his history, still

link the lost son to his old mother-country. The French feel themselves

strange in the island, and both soldiers and officials consider their

period of service there as a "dreary exile in the isle of goats." The

Corsican does not even understand such a temperament as the French--for

he is grave, taciturn, chaste, consistent, thoroughly a man, and

steadfast as the granite of his country.

Corsican patriotism is not extinct. I saw it now and then burst out.

The old grudge still stirs the bosom of the Corsican, when he remembers

the battle of Ponte Nuovo. Travelling one day, in a public conveyance,

over the battle-field of Ponte Nuovo, a Corsican sitting beside me, a

man from the interior, pulled me vehemently by the arm, as we came in

sight of the famous bridge, and cried, with a passionate gesture--"This

is the spot where the Genoese murdered our freedom--I mean the French."

The reader will understand this, when he remembers that the name

of Genoese means the same as deadly foe; for hatred of Genoa, the

Corsicans themselves say, is with them undying. Another time I asked

a Corsican, a man of education, if he was an Italian. "Yes," said he,

"for I am a Corsican." I understood him well, and reached him my hand.

These are isolated occurrences--accidents, but frequently a living

word, caught from the mouth of the people, throws a vivid light on its

state of feeling, and suddenly reveals the truth that does not stand in

books compiled by officials.

I have heard it said again and again, and in all parts of the

country--"We Corsicans would gladly be Italian--for we are in reality

Italians, if Italy were only united and strong; as she is at present,

we must be French, for we need the support of a great power; by

ourselves we are too poor."

The Government does all it can to dislodge the Italian language, and

replace it with the French. All educated Corsicans speak French, and,

it is said, well; fashion, necessity, the prospect of office, force

it upon many. Sorry I was to meet Corsicans (they were always young

men) who spoke French with each other evidently out of mere vanity.

I could not refrain on such occasions from expressing my astonishment

that they so thoughtlessly relinquished their beautiful native tongue

for that of the French. In the cities French is much spoken, but the

common people speak nothing but Italian, even when they have learned

French at school, or by intercourse with Frenchmen. French has not at

all penetrated into the mountainous districts of the interior, where

the ancient, venerated customs of the elder Corsicans--their primitive

innocence, single-heartedness, justice, generosity, and love of

liberty--remain unimpaired. Sad were it for the noble Corsican people

if they should one day exchange the virtues of their rude but great

forefathers for the refined corruption of enervated Parisian society.

The moral rottenness of society in France has robbed the French nation

of its strength. It has stolen like an infection into society in

other countries, deepened their demoralization, and made incapacity

for action general. It has disturbed the hallowed foundation of all

human society--the family relation. But a people is ripe for despotism

that has lost the spirit of family. The whole heroic history of the

Corsicans has its source in the natural law of the inviolability and

sacredness of the family relation, and in that alone; even their free

constitution which they gave themselves in the course of years, and

completed under Paoli, is but a development of the family. All the

virtues of the Corsicans spring from this spirit; even the frightful

night-sides of their present condition, such as the Vendetta, belong to

the same root.

We look with shuddering on the avenger of blood, who descends from his

mountain haunts, to stab his foe's kindred, man by man; yet this bloody

vampire may, in manly vigour, in generosity, and in patriotism, be a

very hero compared with such bloodless, sneaking villains, as are to

be found contaminating with their insidious presence the great society

of our civilisation, and secretly sucking out the souls of their

fellow-men.

CHAPTER VIII.

BRACCIAMOZZO, THE BANDIT.

"Che bello onor s'acquista in far Vendetta."--DANTE.

The second day after my arrival in Bastia, I was awakened during

the night by an appalling noise in my locanda, in the street of the

Jesuits. It was as if the Lapithæ and Centaurs had got together by the

ears. I spring to the door, and witness, in the _salle-à-manger_, the

following scene:--Mine host infuriated and vociferating at the pitch

of his voice--his firelock levelled at a man who lies before him on

his knees, other people vociferating, interfering, and trying to calm

him down; the man on his knees implores mercy: they put him out of the

house. It was a young man who had given himself out in the locanda for

a Marseillese, had played the fine gentleman, and, in the end, could

not pay his bill.

The second day after this, I happened to cross early in the morning

the Place San Nicolao, the public promenade of the Bastinese, on my

way to bathe. The executioners were just erecting a guillotine beside

the town-house, though not in the centre of the Place, still on the

promenade itself. Carabineers and a crowd of people surrounded the

shocking scene, to which the laughing sea and the peaceful olive-groves

formed a contrast painfully impressive. The atmosphere was close and

heavy with the sirocco. Sailors and workmen stood in groups on the

quay, silently smoking their little chalk-pipes, and gazing at the red

scaffold, and not a few of them, in the pointed barretto, brown jacket,

hanging half off, half on; their broad breasts bare, red handkerchiefs

carelessly knotted about their necks, looked as if they had more to do

with the guillotine than merely to stare at it. And, in fact, there

probably was not one among the crowd who was not likely to meet with

the same fate, if accident but willed it, that the hallowed custom of

the Vendetta should stain his band with murder, and murder should force

him to the life of the bandit.

"Who is it they are going to execute?"

"Bracciamozzo (Stump-arm). He is only three-and-twenty. The sbirri

caught him in the mountains; but he defended himself like a devil--they

shot him in the arm--the arm was taken off, and it healed."

"What has he done?"

"_Dio mio!_--he has killed ten men!"

"Ten men! and for what?"

"Out of _capriccio_."

I hastened into the sea to refresh myself with a bath, and then

back into my locanda, in order to see no more of what passed. I was

horror-struck at what I had heard and seen, and a shuddering came over

me in this wild solitude. I took out my Dante; I felt as if I must read

some of his wild phantasies in the _Inferno_, where the pitch-devils

thrust the doomed souls down with harpoons as often as they rise for a

mouthful of air. My locanda lay in the narrow and gloomy street of the

Jesuits. An hour had elapsed, when a confused hum, and the trample of

horses' feet brought me to the window--they were leading Bracciamozzo

past, accompanied by the monks called the Brothers of Death, in their

hooded capotes, that leave nothing of the face free but the eyes, which

gleam spectrally out through the openings left for them--veritable

demon-shapes, muttering in low hollow tones to themselves, horrible, as

if they had sprung from Dante's Hell into reality. The bandit walked

with a firm step between two priests, one of whom held a crucifix

before him. He was a young man of middle size, with beautiful bronze

features and raven-black curly hair, his face pale, and the pallor

heightened by a fine moustache. His left arm was bound behind his

back, the other was broken off near the shoulder. His eye, fiery no

doubt as a tiger's, when the murderous lust for blood tingled through

his veins, was still and calm. He seemed to be murmuring prayers. His

pace was steady, and his bearing upright. Gendarmes rode at the head

of the procession with drawn swords; behind the bandit, the Brothers

of Death walked in pairs; the black coffin came last of all--a cross

and a death's-head rudely painted on it in white. It was borne by four

Brothers of Mercy. Slowly the procession moved along the street of the

Jesuits, followed by the murmuring crowd; and thus they led the vampire

with the broken wing to the scaffold. My eyes have never lighted on

a scene more horrible, seldom on one whose slightest details have so

daguerreotyped themselves in my memory.

I was told afterwards that the bandit died without flinching, and that

his last words were: "I pray God and the world for forgiveness, for I

acknowledge that I have done much evil."

This young man, people said to me, had not become a murderer from

personal reasons of revenge, that is, in order to fulfil a Vendetta;

he had become a bandit from ambition. His story throws a great deal of

light on the frightful state of matters in the island. When Massoni

was at the height of his fame [this man had avenged the blood of

a relation, and then become bandit], Bracciamozzo, as the people

began to call the young Giacomino, after his arm had been mutilated,

carried him the means of sustenance: for these bandits have always an

understanding with friends and with goat-herds, who bring them food in

their lurking-places, and receive payment when the outlaws have money.

Giacomino, intoxicated with the renown of the bold bandit Massoni,

took it into his head to follow his example, and become the admiration

of all Corsica. So he killed a man, took to the bush, and was a

bandit. By and bye he had killed ten men, and the people called him

Vecchio--the old one, probably because, though still quite young, he

had already shed as much blood as an old bandit. One day Vecchio shot

the universally esteemed physician Malaspina, uncle of a hospitable

entertainer of my own, a gentleman of Balagna; he concealed himself

in some brushwood, and fired right into the _diligenza_ as it passed

along the road from Bastia. The mad devil then sprang back into the

mountains, where at length justice overtook him.

A career of this frightful description, then, is possible for a man

in Corsica. Nobody there despises the bandit; he is neither thief

nor robber, but only fighter, avenger, and free as the eagle on the

hills. Hot-headed youths are fired with the thought of winning fame

by daring deeds of arms, and of living in the ballads of the people.

The inflammable temperament of these men--who have been tamed by no

culture, who shun labour as a disgrace, and, thirsting for action,

know nothing of the world but the wild mountains among which Nature has

cooped them up within their sea-girt island--seems, like a volcano, to

insist on vent. On another, wider field, and under other conditions,

the same men who house for years in caverns, and fight with sbirri in

the bush, would become great soldiers like Sampiero and Gaffori. The

nature of the Corsicans is the combative nature; and I can find no more

fitting epithet for them than that which Plato applies to the race of

men who are born for war, namely, "impassioned."[E] The Corsicans are

impassioned natures; passionate in their jealousy and in their pursuit

of fame; passionately quick in honour, passionately prone to revenge.

Glowing with all this fiery impetuosity, they are the born soldiers

that Plato requires.

After Bracciamozzo's execution, I was curious to see whether the _beau

monde_ of Bastia would promenade as usual on the Place San Nicolao

in the evening, and I did not omit walking in that direction. And lo!

there they were, moving up and down on the Place Nicolao, where in the

morning bandit blood had flowed--the fair dames of Bastia. Nothing now

betrayed the scene of the morning; it was as if nothing had happened. I

also wandered there; the colouring of the sea was magically beautiful.

The fishing-skiffs floated on it with their twinkling lights, and the

fishermen sang their beautiful song, _O pescator dell' onda_.

In Corsica they have nerves of granite, and no smelling-bottles.

CHAPTER IX.

THE VENDETTA, OR REVENGE TO THE DEATH.

"Eterna faremo Vendetta."--_Corsican Ballad._

The origin of the bandit life is to be sought almost exclusively in

the ancient custom of the Vendetta, that is, of exacting blood for

blood. Almost all writers on this subject, whom I have read, state that

the Vendetta began to be practised in the times when Genoese justice

was venal, or favoured murder. Without doubt, the constant wars,

and defective administration of justice greatly contributed to the

evil, and allowed the barbarous custom to become inveterate, but its

root lies elsewhere. For the law of blood for blood does not prevail

in Corsica only, it exists also in other countries--in Sardinia, in

Calabria, in Sicily, among the Albanians and Montenegrins, among the

Circassians, Druses, Bedouins, &c.

Like phenomena must arise under like conditions; and these are not

far to seek, for the social condition of all these peoples is similar.

They all lead a warlike and primitive life; nature around them is wild

and impressive; they are all, with the exception of the Bedouins, poor

mountaineers inhabiting regions not easily accessible to culture, and

clinging, with the utmost obstinacy, to their primitive condition and

ancient barbarous customs; further, they are all equally penetrated

with the same intense family sympathies, and these form the sacred

basis of such social life as they possess. In a state of nature, and

in a society rent asunder by prevailing war and insecurity, the family

becomes a state in itself; its members cleave fast to each other;

if one is injured, the entire little state is wronged. The family

exercises justice only through itself, and the form this exercise of

justice takes, is revenge. And thus it appears that the law of blood

for blood, though barbarous, still springs from the injured sense of

justice, and the natural affection of blood-relations, and that its

source is a noble one--the human heart. The Vendetta is barbarian

justice. Now the high sense of justice characterizing the Corsicans is

acknowledged and eulogized even by the authors of antiquity.

Two noble and great passions have, all along, swayed the the Corsican

mind--the love of family and the love of country. In the case of a

quite poor people, living in a sequestered island--an island, moreover,

mountainous, rugged, and stern--these passions could not but be

intense, for to that nation they were all the world. Love of country

produced that heroic history of Corsica which we know, and which is in

reality nothing but an inveterate Vendetta against Genoa, handed down

for ages from father to son; and love of family has produced the no

less bloody, and no less heroic history of the Vendetta, the tragedy

of which is not yet played to an end. The exhaustless native energy

of this little people is really something inconceivable, since, while

rending itself to pieces in a manner the most sanguinary, it, at the

same time, possessed the strength to maintain so interminable and so

glorious a struggle with its external foes.

The love of his friends is still to the Corsican what it was in the

old heroic times--a religion; only the love of his country is with

him a higher duty. Many examples from Corsican history show this. As

among the ancient Hellenes, fraternal love ranked as love's highest

and purest form, so it is ranked among the Corsicans. In Corsica, the

fraternal relation is viewed as the holiest of all relations, and the

names of brother and sister indicate the purest happiness the heart can

have--its noblest treasure, or its saddest loss. The eldest brother, as

the stay of the family, is revered simply in his character as such. I

believe nothing expresses so fully the range of feeling, and the moral

nature of a people, as its songs. Now the Corsican song is strictly a

dirge, which is at the same time a song of revenge; and most of these

songs of revenge are dirges of the sister for her brother who has

fallen. I have always found in this poetry that where-ever all love

and all laudation are heaped upon the dead, it is said of him, He was

my brother. Even the wife, when giving the highest expression to her

love, calls her husband, brother. I was astonished to find precisely

the same modes of expression and feeling in the Servian popular poetry;

with the Servian woman, too, the most endearing name for her husband

is brother, and the most sacred oath among the Servians is when a

man swears by his brother. Among unsophisticated nations, the natural

religion of the heart is preserved in their most ordinary sentiments

and relations--for these have their ground in that which alone is

lasting in the circumstances of human life; the feeling of a people

cleaves to what is simple and enduring. Fraternal love and filial love

express the simplest and most enduring relations on earth, for they are

relations without passion. And the history of human wo begins with Cain

the fratricide.

Wo, therefore, to him who has slain the Corsican's brother or

blood-relation! The deed is done; the murderer flees from a double

dread--of justice, which punishes murder; and of the kindred of the

slain, who avenge murder. For as soon as the deed has become known,

the relations of the fallen man take their weapons, and hasten to

find the murderer. The murderer has escaped to the woods; he climbs

perhaps to the perpetual snow, and lives there with the wild sheep:

all trace of him is lost. But the murderer has relatives--brothers,

cousins, a father; these relatives know that they must answer for the

deed with their lives. They arm themselves, therefore, and are upon

their guard. The life of those who are thus involved in a Vendetta is

most wretched. He who has to fear the Vendetta instantly shuts himself

up in his house, and barricades door and window, in which he leaves

only loop-holes. The windows are lined with straw and with mattresses;

and this is called _inceppar le fenestre_. The Corsican house among

the mountains, in itself high, almost like a tower, narrow, with a

high stone stair, is easily turned into a fortress. Intrenched within

it, the Corsican keeps close, always on his guard lest a ball reach

him through the window. His relatives go armed to their labour in the

field, and station sentinels; their lives are in danger at every step.

I have been told of instances in which Corsicans did not leave their

intrenched dwellings for ten, and even for fifteen years, spending all

this period of their lives besieged, and in deadly fear; for Corsican

revenge never sleeps, and the Corsican never forgets. Not long ago,

in Ajaccio, a man who had lived for ten years in his room, and at last

ventured upon the street, fell dead upon the threshold of his house as

he re-entered: the ball of him who had watched him for ten years had

pierced his heart.

I see, walking about here in the streets of Bastia, a man whom the

people call Nasone, from his large nose. He is of gigantic size, and

his repulsive features are additionally disfigured by the scar of a

frightful wound in his eye. Some years ago he lived in the neighbouring

village of Pietra Nera. He insulted another inhabitant of the place;

this man swore revenge. Nasone intrenched himself in his house, and

closed up the windows, to protect himself from balls. A considerable

time passed, and one day he ventured abroad; in a moment his foe sprang

upon him, a pruning-knife in his hand. They wrestled fearfully; Nasone

was overpowered; and his adversary, who had already given him a blow

in the neck, was on the point of hewing off his head on the stump of

a tree, when some people came up. Nasone recovered; the other escaped

to the macchia. Again a considerable time passed. Once more Nasone

ventured into the street: a ball struck him in the eye. They raised the

wounded man; and again his giant nature conquered, and healed him. The

furious bandit now ravaged his enemy's vineyard during the night, and

attempted to fire his house. Nasone removed to the city, and goes about

there as a living example of Corsican revenge--an object of horror to

the peaceable stranger who inquires his history. I saw the hideous man

one day on the shore, but not without his double-barrel. His looks made

my flesh creep; he was like the demon of revenge himself.

Not to take revenge is considered by the genuine Corsicans as

degrading. Thirst for vengeance is with them an entirely natural

sentiment--a passion that has become hallowed. In their songs, revenge

has a _cultus_, and is celebrated as a religion of filial piety. Now,

a sentiment which the poetry of a people has adopted as an essential

characteristic of the nationality is ineradicable; and this in the

highest degree, if woman has ennobled it as _her_ feeling. Girls and

women have composed most of the Corsican songs of revenge, and they

are sung from mountain-top to shore. This creates a very atmosphere of

revenge, in which the people live and the children grow up, sucking in

the wild meaning of the Vendetta with their mother's milk. In one of

these songs, it is said that twelve lives are insufficient to avenge

the fallen man's--boots! That is Corsican. A man like Hamlet, who

struggles to fill himself with the spirit of the Vendetta, and cannot

do it, would be pronounced by the Corsicans the most despicable of all

poltroons. Nowhere in the world, perhaps, does human blood and human

life count for so little as in Corsica. The Corsican is ready to take

life, but he is also ready to die.

Any one who shrinks from avenging himself--a milder disposition,

perhaps, or a tincture of philosophy, giving him something of

Hamlet's hesitancy--is allowed no rest by his relations, and all his

acquaintances upbraid him with pusillanimity. To reproach a man for

suffering an injury to remain unavenged is called _rimbeccare_. The old

Genoese statute punished the _rimbecco_ as incitation to murder. The

law runs thus, in the nineteenth chapter of these statutes:--

"Of those who upbraid, or say _rimbecco_.--If any one upbraids or says

_rimbecco_ to another, because that other has not avenged the death

of his father, or of his brother, or of any other blood-relation, or

because he has not taken vengeance on account of other injuries and

insults done upon himself, the person so upbraiding shall be fined in

from twenty-five to fifty lire for each time, according to the judgment

of the magistrate, and regard being had to the quality of the person,

and to other circumstances; and if he does not pay forthwith, or cannot

pay within eight days, then shall he be banished from the island for

one year, or the corda shall be put upon him once, according to the

judgment of the magistrate."

In the year 1581, the severity of the law was so far increased, that

the tongue of any one saying _rimbecco_ was publicly pierced. Now, it

is especially the women who incite the men to revenge, in their dirges

over the corpse of the person who has been slain, and by exhibiting

the bloody shirt. The mother fastens a bloody rag of the father's shirt

to the dress of her son, as a perpetual admonition to him that he has

to effect vengeance. The passions of these people have a frightful, a

demoniac glow.

In former times the Corsicans practised the chivalrous custom of

previously _proclaiming_ the war of the Vendetta, and also to what

degree of consanguinity the vengeance was to extend. The custom has

fallen into disuse. Owing to the close relationship between various

families, the Vendetta, of course, crosses and recrosses from one

to another, and the Vendetta that thus arises is called in Corsica,

_Vendetta transversale_.

In intimate and perfectly natural connexion with this custom, stand

the Corsican family feuds, still at the present day the scourge of

the unhappy island. The families in a state of Vendetta, immediately

draw into it all their relatives, and even friends; and in Corsica,

as in other countries where the social condition of the population is

similar, the tie of clan is very strong. Thus wars between families

arise within one and the same village, or between village and village,

glen and glen; and the war continues, and blood is shed for years.

Vendetta, or lesser injuries--frequently the merest accidents--afford

occasion, and with temperaments so passionate as those of the

Corsicans, the slightest dispute may easily terminate in blood, as

they all go armed. The feud extends even to the children; instances

have been known in which children belonging to families at feud have

stabbed and shot each other. There are in Corsica certain relations

of clientship--remains of the ancient feudal system of the time of the

seigniors, and this clientship prevails more especially in the country

beyond the mountains, where the descendants of the old seigniors live

on their estates. They have no vassals now, but dependants, friends,

people in various ways bound to them. These readily band together as

the adherents of the house, and are then, according to the Corsican

expression, the _geniali_, their protectors being the _patrocinatori_.

Thus, as in the cities of mediæval Italy, we have still in Corsica

wars of families, as a last remnant of the feuds of the seigniors.

The granite island has maintained an obstinate grasp on her antiquity;

her warlike history and constant internal dissensions, caused by the

ambition and overbearing arrogance of the seigniors, have stamped the

spirit of party on the country, and till the present day it remains

rampant.

In Corsica, the frightful word "enemy" has still its full old meaning.

The enemy is there the deadly enemy; he who is at enmity with another,

goes out to take his enemy's life, and in so doing risks his own. We,

too, have brought the old expression "deadly enemy" with us from a

more primitive state, but the meaning we attach to it is more abstract.

_Our_ deadly enemies have no wish to murder us--they do us harm behind

our backs, they calumniate us, they injure us secretly in all possible

ways, and often we do not so much as know who they are. The hatreds of

civilisation have usually something mean in them; and hence, in our

modern society, a man of noble feeling can no longer be an enemy--he

can only despise. But deadly foes in Corsica attack the life; they

have loudly and publicly sworn revenge to the death, and wherever they

find each other, they stab and shoot. There is a frightful manliness

in this; it shows an imposing, though savage and primitive force of

character. Barbarous as such a state of society is, it nevertheless

compels us to admire the natural force which it develops, especially as

the Corsican avenger is frequently a really tragic individual, urged by

fate, because by venerated custom, to murder. For even a noble nature

can here become a Cain, and they who wander as bandits on the hills of

this island, are often bearers of the curse of barbarous custom, and

not of their own vileness, and may be men of virtues that would honour

and signalize them in the peaceable life of a civil community.

A single passion, sprung from noble source--revenge, and nothing but

revenge! it is wonderful with what irresistible might it seizes on a

man. Revenge is, for the poor Corsicans, the dread goddess of Fate,

who makes their history. And thus through a single passion man becomes

the most frightful demon, and more merciless than the Avenging Angel

himself, for he does not content himself with the first-born. Yet dark

and sinister as the human form here appears, the dreadful passion,

nevertheless, produces its bright contrast. Where foes are foes for

life and death, friends are friends for life and death; where revenge

lacerates the heart with tiger blood-thirstiness, there love is capable

of resolutions the most sublime; there we find heroic forgetfulness of

self, and the Divine clemency of forgiveness; and nowhere else is it

possible to see the Christian precept, Love thine enemy, realized in a

more Christian way than in the land of the Vendetta.

Often, too, mediators, called _parolanti_, interfere between the

parties at feud, who swear before them an oath of reconciliation.

This oath is religiously sacred; he who breaks it is an outlaw, and

dishonoured before God and man. It is seldom broken, but it is broken,

for the demon has made his lair in human hearts.

CHAPTER X.

BANDIT LIFE.

"On! on! These are his footsteps plainly;

Trust the dumb lead of the betraying track!

For as the bloodhounds trace the wounded deer,

So we, by his sweat and blood, do scent him out."

ÆSCHYL. _Eumen._

How the Corsican may be compelled to live as bandit, may be suddenly

hurled from his peaceable home, and the quiet of civic life, into the

mountain fastnesses, to wander henceforth with the ban of outlawry on

him, will be clear from what we have seen of the Vendetta.

The Corsican bandit is not, like the Italian, a thief and robber,

but strictly what his name implies--a man whom the law has _banned_.

According to the old statute, all those are _banditti_ on whom sentence

of banishment from the island has been passed, because justice has not

been able to lay hands on them. They were declared outlaws, and any one

was free to slay a bandit if he came in his way. The idea of banishment

has quite naturally been extended to all whom the law proscribes.

The isolation of Corsica, want of means, and love of their native soil,

prevent the outlawed Corsicans from leaving their island. In former

times, Corsican bandits occasionally escaped to Greece, where they

fought bravely; at present, many seek refuge in Italy, and still more

in Sardinia, if they prefer to leave their country. Flight from the law

is nowhere in the world a simpler matter than in Corsica. The blood has

scarcely been shed before the doer of the deed is in the hills, which

are everywhere close at hand, and where he easily conceals himself

in the impenetrable macchia. From the moment that he has entered the

macchia, he is termed bandit. His relatives and friends alone are

acquainted with his traces; as long as it is possible, they furnish

him with necessaries; many a dark night they secretly receive him into

their houses; and however hard pressed, the bandit always finds some

goat-herd who will supply his wants.

The main haunts of the bandits are between Tor and Mount Santo Appiano,

in the wildernesses of Monte Cinto and Monte Rotondo, and in the

inaccessible regions of Niolo. There the deep shades of natural forests

that have never seen an axe, and densest brushwood of dwarf-oak,

albatro, myrtles, and heath, clothe the declivities of the mountains;

wild torrents roar unseen through gloomy ravines, where every path

is lost; and caves, grottos, and shattered rocks, afford concealment.

There the bandit lives, with the falcon, the fox, and the wild sheep,

a life more romantic and more comfortless than that of the American

savage. Justice takes her course. She has condemned the bandit _in

contumaciam_. The bandit laughs at her; he says in his strange way,

"I have got the _sonetto_!" meaning the sentence _in contumaciam_.

The sbirri are out upon his track--the avengers of blood the same--he

is in constant flight--he is the Wandering Jew of the desolate hills.

Now come the conflicts with the gendarmes, heroic, fearful conflicts;

his hands grow bloodier; but not with the blood of sbirri only, for

the bandit is avenger too; it is not for love to his wretched life--it

is far rather for revenge that he lives. He has sworn death to his

enemy's kindred. One can imagine what a wild and fierce intensity his

vengeful feelings must acquire in the frightful savageness of nature

round him, and in its yet more frightful solitude, under constant

thoughts of death, and dreams of the scaffold. Sometimes the bandit

issues from the mountains to slay his enemy; when he has accomplished

his vengeance, he vanishes again in the hills. Not seldom the Corsican

bandit rises into a Carl Moor[F]--into an avenger upon society of

real or supposed injuries it has done him. The history of the bandit

Capracinta of Prunelli is still well known in Corsica. The authorities

had unjustly condemned his father to the galleys; the son forthwith

took to the macchia with some of his relations, and these avengers

from time to time descended from the mountains, and stabbed and shot

personal enemies, soldiers, and spies; they one day captured the public

executioner, and executed the man himself.

It frequently happens, as we might naturally expect, that the bandits

allow themselves to become the tools of others who have a Vendetta

to accomplish, and who have recourse to them for the obligation of a

dagger or a bullet. In a country of such limited extent, and where the

families are so intricately and so widely connected, the bandits cannot

but become formidable. They are the sanguinary scourges of the country;

agriculture is neglected, the vineyards lie waste--for who will

venture into the field if he is menaced by Massoni or Serafino? There

are, moreover, among the bandits, men who were previously accustomed

to exercise influence upon others, and to take part in public life.

Banished to the wilderness, their inactivity becomes intolerable to

them; and I was assured that some, in their caverns and hiding-places,

continue even to read newspapers which they contrive to procure. They

frequently exert an influence of terror on the communal elections, and

even on the elections for the General Council. It is no unusual thing

for them to threaten judges and witnesses, and to effect a bloody

revenge for the sentence pronounced. This, and the great mildness

of the verdicts usually brought in by Corsican juries, have been the

ground of a wish, already frequently expressed, for the abolition of

the jury in Corsica. It is not to be denied that a Corsican jury-box

may be influenced by the fear of the vengeance of the bandits; but

if we accuse them indiscriminately of excessive leniency, we shall in

many cases do these jurymen wrong; for the bandit life and its causes

must be viewed under the conditions of Corsican society. I was present

at the sitting of a jury in Bastia, an hour after the execution of

Bracciamozzo, and in the same building in front of which he had been

guillotined; the impression of the public execution seemed to me

perceptible in the appearance of the jury and the spectators, but not

in that of the prisoner at the bar. He was a young man who had shot

some one--he had a stolid hardened face, and his skull looked like a

negro's, as if you might use it for an anvil. Neither what had lately

occurred, nor the solemnity of the proceedings of the assize, made the

slightest impression on the fellow; he showed no trace of embarrassment

or fear, but answered the interrogatories of the examining judge with

the greatest _sang-froid_, expressing himself briefly and concisely as

to the circumstances of his murderous act. I have forgotten to how many

years' confinement he was sentenced.

Although the Corsican bandit never lowers himself to common robbery,

he holds it not inconsistent with his knightly honour to extort money.

The bandits levy black-mail, they tax individuals, frequently whole

villages, according to their means, and call in their tribute with

great strictness. They impose these taxes as kings of the bush; and

I was told their subjects paid them more promptly and conscientiously

than they do their taxes to the imperial government of France. It often

happens, that the bandit sends a written order into the house of some

wealthy individual, summoning him to deposit so many thousand francs in

a spot specified; and informing him that if he refuses, himself, his

house, and his vineyards, will be destroyed. The usual formula of the

threat is--_Si preparasse_--let him prepare. Others, again, fall into

the hands of the bandits, and have to pay a ransom for their release.

All intercourse becomes thus more and more insecure; agriculture

impossible. With the extorted money, the bandits enrich their relatives

and friends, and procure themselves many a favour; they cannot put the

money to any immediate personal use--for though they had it in heaps,

they must nevertheless continue to live in the caverns of the mountain

wilds, and in constant flight.

Many bandits have led their outlaw life for fifteen or twenty

years, and, small as is the range allowed them by their hills, have

maintained themselves successfully against the armed power of the

State, victorious in every struggle, till the bandit's fate at length

overtook them. The Corsican banditti do not live in troops, as in this

way the country could not support them; and, moreover, the Corsican

is by nature indisposed to submit to the commands of a leader. They

generally live in twos, contracting a sort of brotherhood. They have

their deadly enmities among themselves too, and their deadly revenge;

this is astonishing, but so powerful is the personal feel of revenge

with the Corsican, that the similarity of their unhappy lot never

reconciles bandit with bandit, if a Vendetta has existed between them.

Many stories are told of one bandit's hunting another among the hills,

till he had slain him, on account of a Vendetta. Massoni and Serafino,

the two latest bandit heroes of Corsica, were at feud, and shot at

each other when opportunity offered. A shot of Massoni's had deprived

Serafino of one of his fingers.

The history of the Corsican bandits is rich in extraordinary, heroic,

chivalrous, traits of character. Throughout the whole country they sing

the bandit dirges; and naturally enough, for it is their own fate,

their own sorrow, that they thus sing. Numbers of the bandits have

become immortal; but the bold deeds of one especially are still famous.

His name was Teodoro, and he called himself king of the mountains.

Corsica has thus had two kings of the name of Theodore. Teodoro Poli

was enrolled on the list of conscripts, one day in the beginning of

the present century. He had begged to be allowed time to raise money

for a substitute. He was seized, however, and compelled to join the

ranks. Teodoro's high spirit and love of freedom revolted at this.

He threw himself into the mountains, and began to live as bandit.

He astonished all Corsica by his deeds of audacious hardihood, and

became the terror of the island. But no meanness stained his fame; on

the contrary, his generosity was the theme of universal praise, and

he forgave even relatives of his enemies. His personal appearance was

remarkably handsome, and, like his namesake, the king, he was fond of

rich and fantastic dress. His lot was shared by his mistress, who lived

in affluence on the contributions (_taglia_) which Teodoro imposed

upon the villages. Another bandit, called Brusco, to whom he had vowed

inviolable friendship, also lived with him, and his uncle Augellone.

Augellone means _bird of ill omen_--it is customary for the bandits

to give themselves surnames as soon as they begin to play a part in

the macchia. The Bird of Ill Omen became envious of Brusco, because

Teodoro was so fond of him, and one day he put the cold iron a little

too deep into his breast. He thereupon made off into the rocks. When

Teodoro heard of the fall of Brusco, he cried aloud for grief, not

otherwise than Achilles at the fall of Patroclus, and, according to the

old custom of the avengers, began to let his beard grow, swearing never

to cut it till he had bathed in the blood of Augellone. A short time

passed, and Teodoro was once more seen with his beard cut. These are

the little tragedies of which the mountain fastnesses are the scene,

and the bandits the players--for the passions of the human heart are

everywhere the same. Teodoro at length fell ill. A spy gave information

of the hiding-place of the sick lion, and the wild wolf-hounds, the

sbirri, were immediately among the hills--they killed Teodoro in a

goat-herd's shieling. Two of them, however, learned how dangerously he

could still handle his weapons. The popular ballad sings of him, that

he fell with the pistol in his hand and the firelock by his side, _come

un fiero paladino_--like a proud paladin. Such was the respect which

this king of the mountains had inspired, that the people continued to

pay his tribute, even after his fall. For at his death there was still

some due, and those who owed the arrears came and dropped their money

respectfully into the cradle of the little child, the offspring of

Teodoro and his queen. Teodoro met his death in the year 1827.

Gallocchio is another celebrated outlaw. He had conceived an attachment

for a girl who became faithless to him, and he had forbidden any

other to seek her hand. Cesario Negroni wooed and won her. The young

Gallocchio gave one of his friends a hint to wound the father-in-law.

The wedding guests are dancing merrily, merrily twang the fiddles

and the mandolines--a shot! The ball had missed its way, and pierced

the father-in-law's heart. Gallocchio now becomes bandit. Cesario

intrenches himself. But Gallocchio forces him to leave the building,

hunts him through the mountains, finds him, kills him. Gallocchio now

fled to Greece, and fought there against the Turks. One day the news

reached him that his own brother had fallen in the Vendetta war which

had continued to rage between the families involved in it by the death

of the father-in-law, and that of Cesario. Gallocchio came back, and

killed two brothers of Cesario; then more of his relatives, till at

length he had extirpated his whole family. The red Gambini was his

comrade; with his aid he constantly repulsed the gendarmes; and on one

occasion they bound one of them to a horse's tail, and dragged him so

over the rocks. Gambini fled to Greece, where the Turks cut off his

head; but Gallocchio died in his sleep, for a traitor shot him.

Santa Lucia Giammarchi is also famous; he held the bush for sixteen

years; Camillo Ornano ranged the mountains for fourteen years; and

Joseph Antommarchi was seventeen years a bandit.

The celebrated bandit Serafino was shot shortly before my arrival in

Corsica; he had been betrayed, and was slain while asleep. Arrighi,

too, and the terrible Massoni, had met their death a short time

previously--a death as wild and romantic as their lives had been.

Massoni was a man of the most daring spirit, and unheard of energy;

he belonged to a wealthy family in Balagna. The Vendetta had driven

him into the mountains, where he lived many years, supported by

his relations, and favoured by the herdsmen, killing, in frequent

struggles, a great number of sbirri. His companions were his brother

and the brave Arrighi. One day, a man of the province of Balagna, who

had to avenge the blood of a kinsman on a powerful family, sought him

out, and asked his assistance. The bandit received him hospitably,

and as his provisions happened to be exhausted at the time, went to a

shepherd of Monte Rotondo, and demanded a lamb; the herdsman gave him

one from his flock. Massoni, however, refused it, saying--"You give me

a lean lamb, and yet to-day I wish to do honour to a guest; see, yonder

is a fat one, I must have it;" and instantly he shot the fat lamb down,

and carried it off to his cave.

The shepherd was provoked by the unscrupulous act. Meditating revenge,

he descended from the hills, and offered to show the sbirri Massoni's

lurking-place. The shepherd was resolved to avenge the blood of his

lamb. The sbirri came up the hills, in force. These Corsican gendarmes,

well acquainted with the nature of their country, and practised in

banditti warfare, are no less brave and daring than the game they

hunt. Their lives are in constant danger when they venture into the

mountains; for the bandits are watchful--they keep a look-out with

their telescopes, with which they are always provided, and when danger

is discovered they are up and away more swiftly than the muffro, the

wild sheep; or they let their pursuers come within ball-range, and they

never miss their mark.

The sbirri, then, ascended the hills, the shepherd at their head; they

crept up the rocks by paths which he alone knew. The bandits were lying

in a cave. It was almost inaccessible, and concealed by bushes. Arrighi

and the brother of Massoni lay within, Massoni himself sat behind the

bushes on the watch.

Some of the sbirri had reached a point above the cave, others guarded

its mouth. Those above looked down into the bush to see if they could

make out anything. One sbirro took a stone and pitched it into the

bush, in which he thought he saw some black object; in a moment a man

sprang out, and fired a pistol to awake those in the cavern. But the

same instant were heard the muskets of the sbirri, and Massoni fell

dead on the spot.

At the report of the fire-arms a man leapt out of the cave, Massoni's

brother. He bounded like a wild-goat in daring leaps from crag to crag,

the balls whizzing about his head. One hit him fatally, and he fell

among the rocks. Arrighi, who saw everything that passed, kept close

within the cave. The gendarmes pressed cautiously forward, but for

a while no one dared to enter the grotto, till at length some of the

hardiest ventured in. There was nobody to be seen; the sbirri, however,

were not to be cheated, and confident that the cavern concealed their

man, camped about its mouth.

Night came. They lighted torches and fires. It was resolved to starve

Arrighi into surrender; in the morning some of them went to a spring

near the cave to fetch water--the crack of a musket once, twice,

and two sbirri fell. Their companions, infuriated, fired into the

cavern--all was still.

The next thing to be done was to bring in the two dead or dying men.

After much hesitation a party made the attempt, and again it cost one

of them his life. Another day passed. At last it occurred to one of

them to smoke the bandit out like a badger--a plan already adopted with

success in Algiers. They accordingly heaped dry wood at the entrance

of the cave, and set fire to it; but the smoke found egress through

chinks in the rock. Arrighi heard every word that was said, and kept

up actual dialogues with the gendarmes, who could not see, much less

hit him. He refused to surrender, although pardon was promised him. At

length the procurator, who had been brought from Ajaccio, sent to the

city of Corte for military and an engineer. The engineer was to give

his opinion as to whether the cave might be blown up with gunpowder.

The engineer came, and said it was possible to throw petards into

it. Arrighi heard what was proposed, and found the thought of being

blown to atoms with the rocks of his hiding-place so shocking, that he

resolved on flight.

He waited till nightfall, then rolling some stones down in a false

direction, he sprang away from rock to rock, to reach another mountain.

The uncertain shots of the sbirri echoed through the darkness. One ball

struck him on the thigh. He lost blood, and his strength was failing;

when the day dawned, his bloody track betrayed him, as its bloody sweat

the stricken deer. The sbirri took up the scent. Arrighi, wearied to

death, had lain down under a block. On this block a sbirro mounted,

his piece ready. Arrighi stretched out his head to look around him--a

report, and the ball was in his brain.

So died these three outlawed avengers, fortunate that they did not end

on the scaffold. Such was their reputation, however, with the people,

that none of the inhabitants of Monte Rotondo or its neighbourhood

would lend his mule to convey away the bodies of the fallen men. For,

said these people, we will have no part in the blood that you have

shed. When at length mules had been procured, the dead men, bandits and

sbirri, were put upon their backs, and the troop of gendarmes descended

the hills, six corpses hanging across the mule-saddles, six men killed

in the banditti warfare.

If this island of Corsica could again give forth all the blood which in

the course of centuries has been shed upon it--the blood of those who

have fallen in battle, and the blood of those who have fallen in the

Vendetta--the red deluge would inundate its cities and villages, and

drown its people, and crimson the sea from the Corsican shore to Genoa.

Verily, violent death has here his peculiar realm.

It is difficult to believe what the historian Filippini tells us, that,

in thirty years of his own time, 28,000 Corsicans had been murdered

out of revenge. According to the calculation of another Corsican

historian, I find that in the thirty-two years previous to 1715, 28,715

murders had been committed in Corsica. The same historian calculates

that, according to this proportion, the number of the victims of the

Vendetta, from 1359 to 1729, was 333,000. An equal number, he is of

opinion, must be allowed for the wounded. We have, therefore, within

the time specified, 666,000 Corsicans struck by the hand of the

assassin. This people resembles the hydra, whose heads, though cut off,

constantly grow on anew.

According to the speech of the Corsican Prefect before the

General Council of the Departments, in August 1852, 4300 murders

(_assassinats_) have been committed since 1821; during the four years

ending with 1851, 833; during the last two of these 319, and during the

first seven months of 1852, 99.

The population of the island is 250,000.

The Government proposes to eradicate the Vendetta and the bandit life

by a general disarming of the people. How this is to be effected, and

whether it is at all practicable, I cannot tell. It will occasion

mischief enough, for the bandits cannot be disarmed along with the

citizens, and their enemies will be exposed defenceless to their balls.

The bandit life, the family feuds, and the Vendetta, which the law has

been powerless to prevent, have hitherto made it necessary to permit

the carrying of arms. For, since the law cannot protect the individual,

it must leave him at liberty to protect himself; and thus it happens

that Corsican society finds itself, in a sense, without the pale of the

state, in the condition of natural law, and armed self-defence. This

is a strange and startling phenomenon in Europe in our present century.

It is long since the wearing of pistols and daggers was forbidden, but

every one here carries his double-barreled gun, and I have found half

villages in arms, as if in a struggle against invading barbarians--a

wild, fantastic spectacle, these reckless men all about one in some

lonely and dreary region of the hills, in their shaggy pelone, and

Phrygian cap, the leathern cartridge-belt about their waist, and gun

upon their shoulder.

Nothing is likely to eradicate the Vendetta, murder, and the bandit

life, but advanced culture. Culture, however, advances very slowly

in Corsica. Colonization, the making of roads through the interior,

such an increase of general intercourse and industry as would infuse

life into the ports--this might amount to a complete disarming of

the population. The French Government, utterly powerless against the

defiant Corsican spirit, most justly deserves reproach for allowing

an island which possesses the finest climate; districts of great

fertility; a position commanding the entire Mediterranean between

Spain, France, Italy, and Africa; and the most magnificent gulfs and

harbours; which is rich in forests, in minerals, in healing springs,

and in fruits, and is inhabited by a brave, spirited, highly capable

people--for allowing Corsica to become a Montenegro or Italian Ireland.

[B] There is a discrepancy which requires explanation between

the sum of these and the population given for 1851. Their

total is 50,000 below the other figure.--_Tr._

[C] A hectar equals 2 acres, 1 rood, 35 perches English.

[D] Of raw tobacco grown in the island, since manufactured

tobacco was mentioned among the exports.--_Tr._

[E] German, _Eiferartig_. The word referred to is probably

θυμοειδής, usually translated _high-spirited_, _hot-tempered_.

See Book II. of the _Republic_.--_Tr._

[F] The hero of Schiller's tragedy of _The Robbers_.--_Tr._

BOOK IV.--WANDERINGS IN CORSICA.

CHAPTER I.

SOUTHERN PART OF CAPE CORSO.

Cape Corso is the long narrow peninsula which Corsica throws out to the

north.

It is traversed by a rugged mountain range, called the Serra, the

highest summits of which, Monte Alticcione and Monte Stello, reach an

altitude of more than 5000 feet. Rich and beautiful valleys run down on

both sides to the sea.

I had heard a great deal of the beauty of the valleys of this region,

of their fertility in wine and oranges, and of the gentle manners

of their inhabitants, so that I began my wanderings in it with true

pleasure. A cheerful and festive impression is produced at the very

first by the olive-groves that line the excellent road along the

shore, through the canton San Martino. Chapels appearing through the

green foliage; the cupolas of family tombs; solitary cottages on the

strand; here and there a forsaken tower, in the rents of which the wild

fig-tree clings, while the cactus grows profusely at its base,--make

the country picturesque. The coast of Corsica is set round and round

with these towers, which the Pisans and Genoese built to ward off the

piratical attacks of the Saracens. They are round or square, built

of brown granite, and stand isolated. Their height is from thirty

to fifty feet. A company of watchers lay within, and alarmed the

surrounding country when the Corsairs approached. All these towers are

now forsaken, and gradually falling to ruin. They impart a strangely

romantic character to the Corsican shores.

It was pleasant to wander through this region in the radiant morning;

the eye embraced the prospect seawards, with the fine forms of the

islands of Elba, Capraja, and Monte Cisto, and was again relieved by

the mountains and valleys descending close to the shore. The heights

here enclose, like sides of an amphitheatre, little, blooming, shady

dales, watered by noisy brooks. Scattered round, in a rude circle,

stand the black villages, with their tall church-towers and old

cloisters. On the meadows are herdsmen with their herds, and where the

valley opens to the sea, always a tower and a solitary hamlet by the

shore, with a boat or two in its little haven.

Every morning at sunrise, troops of women and girls may be seen coming

from Cape Corso to Bastia, with produce for the market. They have

a pretty blue or brown dress for the town, and a clean handkerchief

wound as mandile round the hair. These forms moving along the shore

through the bright morning, with their neat baskets, full of laughing,

golden fruit, enliven the way very agreeably; and perhaps it would be

difficult to find anything more graceful than one of those slender,

handsome girls pacing towards you, light-footed and elastic as a Hebe,

with her basket of grapes on her head. They are all in lively talk with

their neighbours as they pass, and all give you the same beautiful,

light-hearted _Evviva_. Nothing better certainly can one mortal wish

another than that he should _live_.

But now forward, for the sun is in Leo, and in two hours he will be

fierce. And behind the Tower of Miomo, towards the second pieve of

Brando, the road ceases, and we must climb like the goat, for there

are few districts in Cape Corso supplied with anything but footpaths.

From the shore, at the lonely little Marina di Basina, I began to

ascend the hills, on which lie the three communes that form the pieve

of Brando. The way was rough and steep, but cheered by gushing brooks

and luxuriant gardens. The slopes are quite covered with these, and

they are full of grapes, oranges, and olives--fruits in which Brando

specially abounds. The fig-tree bends low its laden branches, and

holds its ripe fruit steadily to the parched mouth, unlike the tree of

Tantalus.

On a declivity towards the sea, is the beautiful stalactite cavern

of Brando, not long since discovered. It lies in the gardens of a

retired officer. An emigrant of Modena had given me a letter for

this gentleman, and I called on him at his mansion. The grounds are

magnificent. The Colonel has transformed the whole shore into a garden,

which hangs above the sea, dreamy and cool with silent olives, myrtles,

and laurels; there are cypresses and pines, too, isolated or in groups,

flowers everywhere, ivy on the walls, vine-trellises heavy with grapes,

oranges tree on tree, a little summer-house hiding among the greenery,

a cool grotto deep under ground, loneliness, repose, a glimpse of

emerald sky, and the sea with its hermit islands, a glimpse into your

own happy human heart;--it were hard to tell when it might be best to

live here, when you are still young, or when you have grown old.

An elderly gentleman, who was looking out of the villa, heard me

ask the gardener for the Colonel, and beckoned me to come to him.

His garden had already shown me what kind of a man he was, and the

little room into which I now entered told his character more and more

plainly. The walls were covered with symbolic paintings; the different

professions were fraternizing in a group, in which a husbandman, a

soldier, a priest, and a scholar, were shaking hands; the five races

were doing the same in another picture, where a European, an Asiatic,

a Moor, an Australian, and a Redskin, sat sociably drinking round

a table, encircled by a gay profusion of curling vine-wreaths. I

immediately perceived that I was in the beautiful land of Icaria, and

that I had happened on no other personage than the excellent uncle of

Goethe's Wanderjahre. And so it was. He was the uncle--a bachelor,

a humanistic socialist, who, as country gentleman and land-owner,

diffused widely around him the beneficial influences of his own great

though noiseless activity.

He came towards me with a cheerful, quiet smile, the _Journal des

Débats_ in his hand, pleased apparently with what he had been reading

in it.

"I have read in your garden and in your room, signore, the _Contrat

Social_ of Rousseau, and some of the _Republic_ of Plato. You show me

that you are the countryman of the great Pasquale."

We talked long on a great variety of subjects--on civilisation and on

barbarism, and how impotent theory was proving itself. But these are

old affairs, that every reflecting man has thought of and talked about.

Much musing on this interview, I went down to the grotto after taking

leave of the singular man, who had realized for me so unexpectedly the

creation of the poet. After all, this is a strange island. Yesterday a

bandit who has murdered ten men out of _capriccio_, and is being led

to the scaffold; to-day a practical philosopher, and philanthropic

advocate of universal brotherhood--both equally genuine Corsicans,

their history and character the result of the history of their nation.

As I passed under the fair trees of the garden, however, I said to

myself that it was not difficult to be a philanthropist in paradise. I

believe that the wonderful power of early Christianity arose from the

circumstance that its teachers were poor, probably unfortunate men.

There is a Corsican tradition that St. Paul landed on Cape Corso--the

Promontorium Sacrum, as it was called in ancient times--and there

preached the gospel. It is certain that Cape Corso was the district of

the island into which Christianity was first introduced. The little

region, therefore, has long been sacred to the cause of philanthropy

and human progress.

The daughter of one of the gardeners led me to the grotto. It is

neither very high nor very deep, and consists of a series of chambers,

easily traversed. Lamps hung from the roof. The girl lighted them,

and left me alone. And now a pale twilight illuminated this beautiful

crypt, of such bizarre stalactite formations as only a Gothic

architect could imagine--in pointed arches, pillar-capitals, domed

niches, and rosettes. The grottos of Corsica are her oldest Gothic

churches, for Nature built them in a mood of the most playful fantasy.

As the lamps glimmered, and shone on, and shone through, the clear

yellow stalactite, the cave was completely like the crypt of some

cathedral. Left in this twilight, I had the following little fantasy in

stalactite--

A wondrous maiden sat wrapped in a white veil on a throne of

the clearest alabaster. She never moved. She wore on her head a

lotos-flower, and on her breast a carbuncle. The eye could not cease

to gaze on the veiled maiden, for she stirred a longing in the bosom.

Before her kneeled many little gnomes; the poor fellows were all of

dropstone, all stalactites, and they wore little yellow crowns of the

fairest alabaster. They never moved; but they all held their hands

stretched out towards the white maiden, as if they wished to lift her

veil, and bitter drops were falling from their eyes. It seemed to me

as if I knew some of them, and as if I must call them by their names.

"This is the goddess Isis," said the toad sneeringly; she was sitting

on a stone, and, I think, threw a spell on them all with her eyes.

"He who does not know the right word, and cannot raise the veil of the

beautiful maiden, must weep himself to stone like these. Stranger, wilt

thou say the word?"

I was just falling asleep--for I was very tired, and the grotto was so

dim and cool, and the drops tinkled so slowly and mournfully from the

roof--when the gardener's daughter entered, and said: "It is time!"

"Time! to raise the veil of Isis?--O ye eternal gods!" "Yes, Signore,

to come out to the garden and the bright sun." I thought she said well,

and I immediately followed her.

"Do you see this firelock, Signore? We found it in the grotto, quite

coated with the dropstone, and beside it were human bones; likely they

were the bones and gun of a bandit; the poor wretch had crept into this

cave, and died in it like a wounded deer." Nothing was now left of

the piece but the rusty barrel. It may have sped the avenging bullet

into more than one heart. Now I hold it in my hand like some fossil

of horrid history, and it opens its mouth and tells me stories of the

Vendetta.

CHAPTER II.

FROM BRANDO TO LURI.

"Say, whither rov'st thou lonely through the hills,

A stranger in the region?"--_Odyssey._

I now descended to Erba Lunga, an animated little coast village, which

sends fishing-boats daily to Bastia. The oppressive heat compelled me

to rest here for some hours.

This was once the seat of the most powerful seigniors of Cape Corso,

and above Erba Lunga stands the old castle of the Signori dei Gentili.

The Gentili, with the Seigniors da Mare, were masters of the Cape. The

neighbouring island of Capraja also belonged to the latter family.

Oppressively treated by its violent and unscrupulous owners, the

inhabitants rebelled in 1507, and placed themselves under the Bank

of Genoa. Cape Corso was always, from its position, considered as

inclining to Genoa, and its people were held to be unwarlike. Even at

the present day the men of the Corsican highlands look down on the

gentle and industrious people of the peninsula with contempt. The

historian Filippini says of the Cape Corsicans: "The inhabitants of

Cape Corso clothe themselves well, and are, on account of their trade

and their vicinity to the Continent, much more domestic than the other

Corsicans. Great justice, truth, and honour, prevail among them. All

their industry is in wine, which they export to the Continent." Even in

Filippini's time, therefore, the wine of Cape Corso was in reputation.

It is mostly white; the vintage of Luri and Rogliano is said to be the

best; this wine is among the finest that Southern Europe produces, and

resembles the Spanish, the Syracusan, and the Cyprian. But Cape Corso

is also rich in oranges and lemons.

If you leave the sea and go higher up the hills, you lose all the

beauty of this interesting little wine-country, for it nestles low

in the valleys. The whole of Cape Corso is a system of such valleys

on both its coasts; but the dividing ranges are rugged and destitute

of shade; their low wood gives no shelter from the sun. Limestone,

serpentine, talc, and porphyry, show themselves. After a toilsome

journey, I at length arrived late in the evening in the valley of

Sisco. A paesane had promised me hospitality there, and I descended

into the valley rejoicing in the prospect. But which was the commune of

Sisco? All around at the foot of the hills, and higher up, stood little

black villages, the whole of them comprehended under the name Sisco.

Such is the Corsican custom, to give all the hamlets of a valley the

name of the pieve, although each has its own particular appellation.

I directed my course to the nearest village, whither an old cloister

among pines attracted me, and seemed to say: Pilgrim, come, have

a draught of good wine. But I was deceived, and I had to continue

climbing for an hour, before I discovered my host of Sisco. The little

village lay picturesquely among wild black rocks, a furious stream

foaming through its midst, and Monte Stello towering above it.

I was kindly received by my friend and his wife, a newly married

couple, and found their house comfortable. A number of Corsicans

came in with their guns from the hills, and a little company of

country-people was thus formed. The women did not mingle with us; they

prepared the meal, served, and disappeared. We conversed agreeably till

bedtime. The people of Sisco are poor, but hospitable and friendly. On

the morrow, my entertainer awoke me with the sun; he took me out before

his house, and then gave me in charge to an old man, who was to guide

me through the labyrinthine hill-paths to the right road for Crosciano.

I had several letters with me for other villages of the Cape, given

me by a Corsican the evening before. Such is the beautiful and

praiseworthy custom in Corsica; the hospitable entertainer gives his

departing guest a letter, commending him to his relations or friends,

who in their turn receive him hospitably, and send him away with

another letter. For days thus you travel as guest, and are everywhere

made much of; as inns in these districts are almost unknown, travelling

would otherwise be an impossibility.

Sisco has a church sacred to Saint Catherine, which is of great

antiquity, and much resorted to by pilgrims. It lies high up on

the shore. Once a foreign ship had been driven upon these coasts,

and had vowed relics to the church for its rescue; which relics the

mariners really did consecrate to the holy Saint Catherine. They are

highly singular relics, and the folk of Sisco may justly be proud of

possessing such remarkable articles, as, for example, a piece of the

clod of earth from which Adam was modelled, a few almonds from the

garden of Eden, Aaron's rod that blossomed, a piece of manna, a piece

of the hairy garment of John the Baptist, a piece of Christ's cradle,

a piece of the rod on which the sponge dipped in vinegar was raised to

Christ's lips, and the celebrated rod with which Moses smote the Red

Sea.

Picturesque views abound in the hills of Sisco, and the country becomes

more and more beautiful as we advance northwards. I passed through

a great number of villages--Crosciano, Pietra, Corbara, Cagnano--on

the slopes of Monte Alticcione, but I found some of them utterly

poverty-stricken; even their wine was exhausted. As I had refused

breakfast in the house of my late entertainer, in order not to send the

good people into the kitchen by sunrise, and as it was now mid-day,

I began to feel unpleasantly hungry. There were neither figs nor

walnuts by the wayside, and I determined that, happen what might, I

would satisfy my craving in the next paese. In three houses they had

nothing--not wine, not bread--all their stores were expended. In the

fourth, I heard the sound of a guitar. I entered. Two gray-haired men

in ragged _blouses_ were sitting, the one on the bed, the other on a

stool. He who sat on the bed held his _cetera_, or cithern, in his arm,

and played, while he seemed lost in thought. Perhaps he was dreaming

of his vanished youth. He rose, and opening a wooden chest, brought

out a half-loaf carefully wrapped in a cloth, and handed me the bread

that I might cut some of it for myself. Then he sat down again on the

bed, played his cithern, and sang a _vocero_, or dirge. As he sang, I

ate the bread of the bitterest poverty, and it seemed to me as if I had

found the old harper of _Wilhelm Meister_, and that he sung to me the

song--

"Who ne'er his bread with tears did eat,

Who ne'er the weary midnight hours

Weeping upon his bed hath sate,

He knows you not, ye heavenly powers!"

Heaven knows how Goethe has got to Corsica, but this is the second of

his characters I have fallen in with on this wild cape.