EVISA AMONG THE HILLS.
Before eight o'clock next morning we were descending the gorge opposite
the house, in order to mount it on the other side, and visit the
picturesque convent.
Our coffee and dry bread had been served to us at half-past seven by
the "chamber-maid."
This important person was represented by a pretty rosy-cheeked girl
of twelve, who combined her chamber duties with those of waitress,
and who, at this stage of the morning, was attired in a déshabille of
nightdress body and coloured petticoat, with bare feet. Later on, when
we returned from our walk, she was in full dress, having added a white
head handkerchief, black jacket, white stockings, and shoes.
This Vico walk was one of the loveliest we enjoyed in the island.
The steep road that climbed up the hill-side was shaded by oak and
ilex trees; numberless sparkling streams dashed down from above and
beneath us, and brilliant cyclamen nestled everywhere lovingly amongst
the ferns--bracken, felix mas, parsley, walrue, maidenhair, and
polypodium--luxuriating on this damp hill-side.
Below us writhed the serpentine Liamone; before us rose the great brown
walls of the Monte Libbio rocks; and each corner that we turned, showed
new gorges, fresh wooded hills upon one side, and more exquisite ranges
of steepest rocks and purest snow mountains on the other.
The convent, old and grey, its walls encrusted with damp and half
hidden by clustering weeds, was a strongly built edifice, overlooking
the very edge of the precipitous slope, and bearing the usual mixed
likeness to a church and a fortress.
It looked sad, silent, and deserted now; and was a strange contrast to
a gaudy but handsome little family chapel in course of erection a few
yards off.
This was built of black and white marble, Florentine fashion, with an
enormous crucifix inside, and family shields outside the walls, with
here and there niches for the coffins of its owner's family.
A little lower down the road is a rough-looking farmhouse, where
lodgings are let in summer to those of the Ajaccio _élite_ who care to
rough it in this lovely scenery.
As we turned homewards, the shadows were retreating from the roadway,
and the sun's power was growing intense.
We were glad to rest upon the low stone bridge, where arbutus overhung
the way, and where the cool moss beneath was dripping under the spray
of the little river.
A cuckoo was calling through the tree-tops merrily, while the mother
goats, creeping into the shade, cried to their wandering kids; and
a woman, standing on a rock above us, shading her eyes from the
glaring sun, beckoned to her children playing in the valley far below,
shouting, "Maria! O Maria! O Santo!" in her sing-song, chant-like voice
across the sultry air.
By ten o'clock we were in the carriage for Evisa, a village nearly
2800 feet above the sea level, where we were to spend the next night,
and which is the best starting-point for the forests of Aïtone and
Valdoniello. The ascent to the top of the Col Sevi, 1600 feet high, was
long and steep, with grand views, lying through many a wild and rugged
hill varied by chestnut groves, through which gleamed the everlasting
snow barriers on every side.
Then through ilex woods, soft and shady, with many a sylvan glade
between their gnarled, huge, moss-hugged trunks; past the village of
Renno hanging overhead, and other hamlets, to more barren hills, and
on to the summit of the Col, where a new range of snow mountains lay
before us, glistening in the hot sun and cool puffs of sudden wind.
The descent from here into the valley of Christianiccia is singularly
wild and beautiful. Our gallop down, accomplished, as it could have
been, at such a pace, only by Corsican horses and a Corsican driver,
was all too short to drink in the beauty of varying views, of grandest
perpendicular rocks, and of graceful ilex woods interspersed with
castellated boulders, overhanging the roadside. Such a gallop, however,
is delightful and inspiriting over a soft, park-like road, with snow
cones peeping out of a blue curtain, with aromatic odours flying by,
and with beasts that never lose their footing. It is a dream of cool
enjoyment that one would willingly lengthen.
The entire population of the village of Christianiccia appears to
consist of boys; and as we drove quickly up the stony street, pursued
by scores of these yelling and hooting inhabitants, Antonio's whip was
in unaccustomed requisition, and one of Mr. Lear's grasshopper pigs,
the first we had seen in the county, narrowly escaped being ran over.
From Christianiccia to Evisa is an arduous mount, somewhat resembling
the side of a house; but now, on the left, appears the glorious blue
rock called the Capo dei Signori. On the summit of this great rocky
wall once stood a castle belonging to one of the old feudal lords of
Corsica; hence its name. But not a vestige of ruin is now visible upon
the majestic purple peak, which seems to brave the fickle elements,
looking over many an intervening mile of hill and vale to the distant
sheet of western sea.
And as we turned the abrupt corner of the road to enter Evisa, other
glorious blood-red rocks came in view, only half hidden by the nearer
hillocks--the rocks of Porto.
The situation of Evisa is bleak and unprotected, and in winter it must
be bitterly cold.
Bare rocky mountains surround it on every side, and not even a
chestnut-tree relieves its wild nakedness.
Even now, a cold frosty air was blowing, and, although the sun was hot,
a thick jacket was agreeable.
M. Carrara's house is still the resort of travellers. He is a polite
wood-merchant, and it is supposed to be a private house; but, except
for the fact that there is rather less to eat and a little more to pay
than elsewhere, it is the same as other inns.
Praise, however, be given where praise is due. We could get neither
butter, honey, nor soup for lunch, and the fare altogether was
economic; but the young lady of the house, who condescended to wait
upon us, was both pleasant to talk to and to look upon, and spotless
cleanliness reigned in the little bedrooms.
As soon as we had eaten our omelette, supplied to our hungry appetites
on the principle of the acute preacher, who always stopped before he
had satisfied his audience, we strolled out down the road towards the
rocks of Porto.
About three quarters of a mile from the village, we came to a little
break in the road, where a pathway had been beaten down over the brow
of the hill.
This pathway led over an old cemetery, lying close beside the road,
without palings or protection of any sort. A little rough stone
building, a few yards from the road, and not more pretentious than an
ordinary cottage, was the now disused cemetery chapel; and numberless
little wooden crosses, black and white, but none laying claim to any
artistic value, were scattered all about--some standing, and some
ruthlessly uprooted and crushed beneath the cart wheels--to mark the
now desecrated resting-places of the poor villagers of Evisa.
The church of Evisa stood below, half a mile away, and no doubt was now
the fashionable burial-place; but had I been a native of the village,
I would have chosen this exquisite hill-side for my last resting-place.
Of all the beautiful scenes witnessed in Corsica, perhaps this was the
wildest and the grandest. On one side, the grey and purple rocks of the
Capo dei Signori; in front, twelve miles away by road, the wide stretch
of blue sea, casting up a thousand sparkling dew-drops to the bluer
sky; and, on the other side, rising up from a fathomless gorge just
below us, the blood-red rocks of Porto. These rocks are impossible to
describe; their grandeur can only be felt, as--from many a shuddering
abyss, where the lonely sea-gull circles with faint shrill calls
among misty horrors--they rise almost perpendicularly to their fearful
height, seamed and notched by many a primeval tempest, but calm, and
cruel, and forsaken-looking in their homeless inaccessible solitudes.
Leaving the little path, we clambered down the rocks a short way, and
sat in the silence opposite these glorious, fearful rocks.
Not a sound was to be heard but the gulls' cries, and the stream
far away, and, close to, the gentle rustling of the countless little
lizards among the green rocks beside us.
We sat so still that they grew quite tame, and played around us
unsuspectingly. One couple especially amused us. They had a lizard game
of romps, chasing each other round our rock with incredible swiftness,
whisking out of each other's way, and gently biting each other's tail
when caught.
Rain at last drove us home; and we were glad of a good wood fire to
sit over in the chilly evening, whilst the clouds dropped below the
village, hanging in thick white opaque swathes across the hills before
us, or chased each other, far beneath, hiding the valley in rain,
whilst we were enjoying a passing gleam of sunshine.
The evening was clear again; and, for the first time in Corsica, we
heard the national singing, which continued long after we had retired.
It was not musical, nor beautiful, but was the weirdest, strangest
vocalism I ever heard. For more than an hour, a party of young men
slowly paraded the village street, singing the same melancholy-sounding
chant, sometimes in unison and sometimes in parts, but always ending in
the same prolonged note.
The tune, such as it was, seemed always to be in a minor key, and would
well have suited one of the national _voceri_, or dirges, but I have no
idea of the words accompanying it.
This final note is a characteristic of Corsican singing, and rarely
omitted; and it is wonderful to what an extent they will prolong it.
Even mothers, singing lullabys to their babes, indulge in it, and its
effect is wild and uncommon.