only taken the usual early cup of coffee. The genial influence of this
meal had the effect of putting us on the best footing with our
fellow-voyagers. Pacing the deck afterwards with the Corsican priest, we
were joined by the stout Englishman. Observing our disappointment at
hearing we should be probably baulked of shooting in Corsica, he
expressed a hope that we would extend our excursion to Tuscany, where,
he was good enough to say, he would show us sport. He had been settled
there many years, and was now returning to his family by way of Leghorn.
Under a somewhat homely exterior, which had puzzled us at first as to
his position, we found our new acquaintance to be a man of refined
taste, great simplicity, as well as urbanity, of manners, and keenly
alive to the beautiful in nature and art. Such a specimen of the hearty
old English gentleman, unchanged—I was about to say uncontaminated—by
long residence abroad, it has been rarely my lot to meet with.
On rounding a projecting headland, we peeped into the mouth of Toulon
harbour, and every eye and glass were directed to the heights crowned
with forts, and the bold mountain masses towering above them.
[Illustration: OFF TOULON.]
Presently, we were threading the channel between the main land and the
Hyères Islands. They appeared to us a paradise of verdure, on which the
eye, weary of gazing at the bare and furrowed mountain-sides bounding
this coast, rested with delight. One imagined orange groves and myrtle
bowers, impervious to the summer's sun and sheltered by the lofty ridges
from the northern blasts—all this verdure fringing the edge of a bright
and tideless sea. Elsewhere, except rarely in the hollows, the mountain
ranges extending along this coast exhibit no signs of vegetation; the
whole mass appearing, with the sun full on them, not only scorched but
actually burnt to the colour of kiln-dried bricks.
All the afternoon we continued running at the steamer's full speed along
the shores of France and Italy. Notwithstanding their arid and sterile
aspect, nothing can be finer than the mountain ranges which bound this
coast, as every one who has crossed them in travelling from Nice well
knows. Glimpses, too, successively of Frejus, Cannes, and Nice, more or
less distant, as, crossing the Gulf of Genoa, we gradually increased our
distance from the shore, together with a capital dinner, were pleasant
interludes to the grand spectacle of Alps piled on Alps in endless
succession, and glowing a fiery red, which all the waters over which we
flew—deep, dark, or azure—could not quench.
Towards evening there were evident tokens in the sky, on the water, and
in the vessel's motion, of a change of weather. We were threatened with
a stormy night; and as we now began to lose the shelter of the land,
holding a course somewhat to the S.E. in order to round the northern
point of Corsica, there was no reason to regret that the passage across
the Tuscan sea would be performed while we were in our berths.
However, we walked the deck long after the other passengers had gone
below; enjoying the fresh breeze, though it was no soft zephyr wafting
sweet odours from the Ausonian shore. It is a sublime thing to stand on
the poop of a good ship when she is surging through the waves at ten
knots an hour in utter darkness, whether impelled by wind or steam;
especially when the elements are in strife. Nothing can give a higher
idea of the power of man to control them. With no horizon, not a star
visible in the vault above, and only the white curl on the crest of the
boiling waves, glimmering in our wake, on—on, we rush, the ship dipping
and rising over the long swells, and dashing floods of water and clouds
of spray from her bows.
But whither are we driving through these dark waters, and this
impenetrable, and seemingly boundless, gloom? The eye rests on the light
in the binnacle. We stoop to examine the compass; the card marks S.S.E.
Imagination expands the dark horizon. It is not boundless: the island
mountain-tops loom in the distance. They beckon us on; we realise them
now; at dawn the grey peaks of Cape Corso will be unveiled; we shall
dream of them to-night.
One of the watch struck the hour on the bell. “It is ten o'clock; let us
turn in.” There is an inviting glimmer through the cabin skylights. We
are better off in this floating hotel than has often been our lot,
baffling with storm and tempest, benighted, weary, cold and wet, in
rough roads, forest or desert waste, with dubious hopes of shelter and
comfort at the end of our march.
We paused for a moment, leaning over the brass rail which protected the
quarter deck. Below, on the main deck, a number of French soldiers,
wrapped in their grey coats, were huddled together, cowering under the
bulwarks, or wherever they could find shelter from the bitter night
wind.
The cabin lamps shed a cheerful light, reflected by the highly-polished
furniture and fittings. All the passengers were in their berths. We had
chosen ours near the door for fresher air. My companion climbed to his
cot in the upper tier, above mine.
“If you wake first, call me at daylight. We shall be off the coast of
Corsica. _Felicissima notte!_”
CHAP. IV.
_Coast of Capo Corso.—Peculiarity of Scenery.—Verdure, and
Mountain Villages.—Il Torre di Seneca.—Land at Bastia._
The voyage from Marseilles to Bastia is performed, under favourable
circumstances, in eighteen hours; but we had only just made the extreme
northern point of Corsica when I was hastily roused, at six o'clock,
from a blissful state of unconsciousness of the gale of wind and rough
sea which had retarded our progress during the night.
Hurrying on deck, the first objects which met the eye were a rocky islet
with a lighthouse on a projecting point, and then it rested on the
glorious mountains of Capo Corso, lifting their grey summits to the
clouds, and stretching away to the southward in endless variety of
outline. We were abreast of the rocky island of Capraja; on the other
hand lay Elba, with its mountain peaks; Pianosa and Monte-Cristo rose
out of the Tuscan sea further on. Behind these picturesque islands, the
distant range of the Apennines hung like a cloud in the horizon. The sun
rose over them in unclouded glory, no trace being left of the
night-storm, but a fresh breeze, and the heaving and swelling of the
deep waters.
Banging along the eastern coast of Capo Corso, at a short distance from
the shore, with the early light now thrown upon it, the natural
features of the country—groups of houses, villages, and even single
buildings of a marked character—were distinctly visible. We were not
long in discovering that Corsican scenery is of a peculiar and highly
interesting character.
The infinite variety existing in all the Creator's works is remarkably
exhibited in the physical aspect of different countries, though the
landscape be formed of the same materials, whether mountains, forests,
wood, water, and extended plains, or a composition of all or any of
these features on a greater or less scale. The change is sometimes very
abrupt. Thus, the character of Sardinian scenery is essentially
different from the Corsican, notwithstanding the two islands are only
separated by a strait twenty miles broad. Climate, atmosphere,
geological formation, and vegetable growth, all contribute to this
variety. The impress given to the face of nature by the hand of man,
whether by cultivation, or in the forms, and, as we shall presently see,
the position, of the various buildings which betoken his presence, give,
of course, in a secondary degree, a difference of character to the
landscape.
Remarks of this kind occurred in a conversation with our stout English
friend and my fellow-traveller, while they were sketching the coast of
Capo Corso from the deck of the _Industrie_. Trite as they may appear,
it is surprising how little even many persons who have travelled are
alive to such distinctions. What more natural than to say, “I have seen
Alpine scenery in Switzerland; why should I encounter the difficulties
of a northern tour to witness the same thing on a smaller scale in
Norway? What can the islands in the Tuscan sea have to offer
essentially different from Italian scenery with which I am already
familiar?”
Only a practised eye can make the discrimination, and it requires some
knowledge of physical geography, and the vegetable kingdom, to be able
to analyse causes producing these diversified effects. Every class of
rock, every species of tree, the various elevations of the surface of
the globe, and the plants which clothe its different regions, have each
their own forms and characteristics; and, of course, a landscape, being
an aggregate of these several parts, ought to reflect the varieties of
the materials composing it. An artist must have carefully studied from
nature to have acquired a nice perception of these varied effects, and
even should he be able to grasp the result, he may not succeed in
transferring it to his sketch. Far less can words convey an adequate
idea of the varied effects of natural scenery; so that one does not
wonder when the reader complains of the sameness of the representation.
In the present instance, were there pictured to his imagination the
distant peaks of Elba on the one hand, and on the other the long
mountain ranges of Capo Corso, bathed in purple light, as the sun rose
in the eastern horizon, the grey cliffs of rocks and promontories
bordering the coast, contrasted with the verdure of the valleys and
lower elevations, vineyards and olive grounds on the hill-sides, and the
landscape dotted with villages, churches, and ancient towers, we should
doubtless have a very charming sketch, but it would not convey a
distinct idea of the peculiarities of Corsican scenery.
What struck us most, independently of the general effect, was the
extraordinary verdure and exuberance of the vegetation which overspread
the surface of the country far up the mountain sides, not only as
contrasted with the sterile aspect of the coasts of the continent we had
just left, but as being, in itself, different from anything which had
before fallen under our observation in other countries, whether forest,
underwood, or grassy slope. For the moment, we were unable to conjecture
of what it consisted; but we had not long set foot on shore before we
were at no loss to account for our admiration of this singular feature
in Corsican, and in this particular, also, of Sardinian scenery.
Not to dwell now on the peculiar character of the mountain ranges of
Corsica, I will only mention one other peculiarity in the landscape
which strikes the eye throughout the island, but is nowhere more
remarkable than in the views presented as we ranged along the coast of
Capo Corso. As the former instance belongs to the department of physical
geography, this comes under the class of effects produced by the works
of man. The peculiarity consists in the villages being all placed at
high elevations. They are seen perched far up the mountain sides,
straggling along the scarp of a narrow terrace, or crowded together on
the platform of some projecting spur; churches, convents, towers, and
hamlets crowning the peaked summits of lower eminences almost equally
inaccessible. The only extensive plains in the island are so
insalubrious as to be almost uninhabitable, and this has been their
character from the time the island was first colonised. For this reason,
probably, in some measure, but more especially for defence, in the
hostilities to which the island has been exposed from foreign invaders
during many ages, as well as by internal feuds hardly yet extinct,
nearly the whole population is collected in the elevated villages or
_paese_ forming this singular and picturesque feature in Corsican
scenery. They are visible from a great distance, and sometimes ten or a
dozen of them are in sight at one time.
Capo Corso is not, as might be supposed, a mere cape or headland, but a
narrow peninsula, containing a number of villages, and washed on both
sides by the Tuscan sea; being about twenty-five miles long, though only
from five to ten miles broad. Nearly the whole area is occupied by a
continuation of the central chain which traverses the island from north
to south. The average height of the range through Capo Corso, where it
is called _La Serra_, does not exceed 1500 feet above the level of the
sea, but it swells into lofty peaks; the highest, _Monte Stella_,
between Brando and Nonza, rising 5180 feet above the shore of the
Mediterranean.
[Illustration: ERSA, CAPO CORSO.]
From the central chain spurs branch off to the sea on both coasts,
forming narrow valleys at the base and in the gorges of the mountains,
of which the principal on the eastern side are Lota, Cagnano, and Luri;
the last-named being the most fertile and picturesque, as well as the
largest of these mountain valleys, though only six miles long and three
wide. On the western side lie the valleys of Olmeta, Olcani, and
Ogliastro; Olmeta being the largest. The valleys are watered by mountain
torrents, often diverted to irrigate the lands under tillage, as well as
gardens and vine and olive plantations. Each _paese_ has its small tract
of more fertile land, marked by a deeper verdure, where the valleys open
out and the streams discharge their waters into the Mediterranean. At
this point, called the _Marino_, there is generally a little port, with
a hamlet inhabited by a hardy race of sailors engaged in the traffic
carried on coastwise between the villages of the interior and the
seaports.
This mountainous district contains a considerable population, and the
inhabitants are distinguished for their industry and economy. They live
in much comfort on the produce obtained by persevering labour from the
small portions of cultivated soil. Numerous flocks of sheep are herded
on the vast wastes overhanging the valleys. The olive and vine flourish,
and extensive chestnut woods supply at some seasons the staple diet of
the poorer classes. The slopes of the hills about the villages are
converted into gardens and orchards, in which we find figs, peaches,
apples, pears,—with oranges and lemons in the more sheltered spots. The
wines are in general sound, and we found them excellent where special
care had been bestowed on the manufacture.
The Corsicans are generally indolent, but it is said that there are no
less than a hundred families in the mountainous province of Capo Corso
who are considered rich, some of them wealthy; and all these owe their
improved fortunes to the enterprising spirit of some relative who left
it poor, and after years of toil in Mexico, in Brazil, or some other
part of South America, returned with his savings to his native village.
One valley after another opened as the steamer ran down the coast, each
with its _Marino_ distinguished by a fresher verdure, and its cluster of
white houses on the beach. The night mists still filled the hollows, and
villages and hamlets hung like cloud-wreaths on the mountain-sides and
the summits of the hills; the most inaccessible of which were crowned
with ruins of castles and towers.
Tradition asserts that one of these towers was the prison of Seneca the
Philosopher. _Il Torre di Seneca_, as it is called, stands on an
escarped pinnacle of rock, terminating one of the loftiest of the
detached sugar-loaf hills.
[Illustration: IL TORRE DI SENECA.]
Seneca spent seven years in exile, having been banished to Corsica by
the emperor Claudius, on suspicion of an illicit intercourse with the
profligate Julia. The islands in the Tuscan sea were the Tasmania of the
Roman empire, places of transportation for political offenders, and
those who fell under the imperial frown—which was the same thing. Some
smaller islands off the Italian coast, Procida, Ischia, &c., served the
same purpose. _Relegatio ad insulam_ was the legal phrase for this
punishment. Augustus banished his grandson Agrippa to the desolate
island of _Planosa_, the Pianosa mentioned just before in connection
with Elba. There he was strangled by order of Tiberius.
In some of his Epigrams, and the Books _de Consolatione_, composed
during his exile, Seneca paints the country and the climate in the
darkest colours. There is no doubt but these islands, though in sight of
the coast of Italy, appeared to the polished Romans as barbarous and
full of horrors as our penal settlements at the antipodes were
considered long after their first occupation; so that the picture of
Corsica, drawn by Seneca, may have been much exaggerated by his
distempered and splenetic state of mind. The probability is, that he
resided during his exile at one of the Roman colonies on the eastern
coast, Aleria or Mariana. What is called the _Torre di Seneca_ is the
ruin of a stronghold or watch-tower of the middle ages; and it is not
likely that the spot was occupied by the Romans at any period of their
dominion in Corsica, their possessions consisting only of the two
colonies, and some harbours on the coast.
But those lonely towers standing close to the shore, which we see from
time to time as we coast along—massive, round, and grey with lichens as
the rocks at their base; what do their ruins tell of times past? Were
they a chain of forts for the defence of the coast against Saracen, or
other invaders, in the middle ages? They appear too small to hold a
garrison, and too insulated for mutual support. More probably they were
watch-towers, from which signals were made when the vessels of the
corsairs hovered on the coast, that the inhabitants might betake
themselves, with their cattle and goods, to the fortified villages and
castles on the hills. We are told that, at the beginning of the
eighteenth century, there were fifteen of those towers on the north
coast of the island, and eighty-five in its whole circuit; but many of
them are now fallen to ruin.
At length, Bastia appeared in sight, rising in an amphitheatre to a
ridge studded with villas; the houses of the old town being crowded
about the port. Sweeping round the mole, we found ourselves in a
diminutive harbour, among vessels of small burthen. This basin is
surrounded on three sides by tall gloomy buildings, of the roughest
construction, piled up, tier above tier, to a great height. A
man-of-war's boat shoves off from the shore in good style, and lands the
Count's niece with due honours. Other boats come alongside the steamer,
and all is confusion.
“Did you see the meeting between the two Corsican brothers—the sallow,
fever-worn soldier from Algiers, our poor fellow-traveller, and the
hearty mountaineer?”
“No; I was paying my last _devoirs_ to _madame_.”
“The contrast between the two was striking. I shall never forget the way
they were laced in each other's arms, and the glance of keen anxiety
with which the mountaineer looked into his sick brother's face, marking
the ravages which time and disease had worked on those much-loved
features.”
In the air of his mountain-village that brother, we would hope, grew
strong again. Perhaps, having rejoined his regiment, his bones are left
in the Crimea; perhaps, he again survives, and breathes once more his
native air. Who can tell?
Our hale English friend remained on board to pursue the voyage to
Leghorn. What a din, what frantic gestures, what a rush of these
irascible Corsicans at our baggage! It is borne off to the
custom-house, and undergoes an examination far from rigorous. We mount
several flights of steps, leading from one narrow street to another in
this old quarter of the town, and are led to an hotel, which had much
the air of a second or third-rate Italian _locanda_—lofty and spacious
apartments, neither clean nor well arranged; and the _déjeûner_ was a
sorry affair. _N'importe_; we shall not stay longer in Bastia than is
necessary, and we may go further and fare worse. Meanwhile, a battalion
of French infantry were on parade, with the band playing in the
barrack-yard under our windows. We threw them open to enjoy the fresh
breeze and sweeten the room. They commanded a fine view of the coast we
had passed, now seen in profile under the effect of a bright sunshine,
with the waves washing in wreaths of foam on every jutting point and
rock.
CHAP. V.
_Bastia.—Territorial Divisions.—Plan of the Rambles.—Hiring
Mules.—The Start._
I cannot imagine any one's loitering in Bastia longer than he can help.
Its only attractions are the sea and the mountain views from the
environs; and those are commanded equally well from many points along
the coast. What the old town is we have already seen—narrow and crooked
streets, with gaunt houses piled up about the port; and there is the old
Genoese fortress frowning over it, and the church of St. John, of Pisan
architecture, the interior rich in marbles and gilding, but the _façade_
below notice as a work of art. A new quarter has been added to the town,
higher up, in which there are some handsome houses, particularly in the
_Rue de la Traverse_.
In early times a few poor traders from Cardo, a _paese_ on the heights,
settled at the mouth of a stream which formed here a small harbour. It
was their _Marino_, so that Cardo may be said to be in some sort the
Fiesole of Bastia. About the close of the fourteenth century, the
Genoese built the Donjon, which is still standing, to defend the port,
then becoming of importance. From this _bastióne_, the new town derived
its name. It was the capital of the island during the Pisan and Genoese
occupation, and so continued under the French government till 1811, when
the prefecture and general administration of affairs were transferred
to Ajaccio, where also the Council-general of Corsica, now forming a
department of France, holds its sessions. Bastia, however, is still the
_Quartier-général_ of the military in the island, and the seat of the
_Cour de Cassation_ and _Cour d'Appel_, tribunals exercising superior
jurisdiction over all the other courts. It is also the most populous
town in Corsica (14,000 souls being the return of the last census), and
has by far the largest commerce, exporting olive-oil and wine, fruits
and fish; and importing _corn_, groceries, tobacco, and manufactured
articles of all kinds.
Bastia was the standing point from which the old division of Corsica
into the _di quà_ and the _di là dei monti_—the country on this side and
the country on the other side of the mountains—was made; the line of
intersection commencing at the point of Gargalo, below Aleria, on the
eastern coast, and following a range of mountains westward to the
_Marino_ of Solenzara. The division was by no means equal; the country
_di quà_, including the present arrondissements of Bastia, Corte, and
Calve, being one-third larger than the _di là_, comprising the
arrondissements of Ajaccio and Sartene.
Another ancient division of Corsica was into _pieves_, originally
ecclesiastical districts,—and _paeses_, which, I imagine, are equivalent
to parishes, including the village and the hamlets belonging to them. A
detached farm-house, such as are scattered everywhere in England, is
hardly to be seen in Corsica, the inhabitants being gathered in these
villages and hamlets, invariably built, as already observed, on elevated
points. By what corruption these were called _paeses_, _countries_, one
does not understand; but it sounds rather droll to a stranger, when he
is told in Corsica, that he may travel many miles, _senza vedère uno
paése_, without seeing a country.
Bastia must, doubtless, from the circumstances mentioned, have good
society; but we thought Ajaccio a much pleasanter place, and Corte, in
its rudeness, has a nobler aspect than either, and is associated with
glorious recollections. We were for escaping the _di quà_ of Bastia and
the _littorale_, and getting as soon as possible _di là_ the mountains,
not, however, according to the old political division of the island, but
in the sense of crossing the central chain by one of the nearest passes.