BOCOGNANO BUGBEARS.
After an affectionate farewell to Hôtel Germania, its comforts and its
cleanliness, bearing each of us a sweet-smelling bouquet of rosebuds,
geraniums, and heliotrope, presented by the young waiter to his last
customers with a mournful air, we left sunny little Ajaccio for the
last time, accompanied by our old friend Antonio, for whom we had been
careful to bargain.
It was a heavy thundery-looking day, though rainless, and, underneath
their white snow caps, the shadows of Monte Nebbio and Monte d'Oro
loomed purple before us as we drove up the flat Bastia road.
After three hours' driving, we reached the little village of Fiasco,
where we baited and lunched; and Antonio, who had many friends but few
intimates, and who generally preferred gravely listening to answering
the remarks of his acquaintances, retired to the stables for a good
gossip with his particular confidant, young Bella Coschia.
Meanwhile, No. 3 stood, leaning her back against the wall of the
little inn, taking the portrait of a charrette mule outside; and, by
degrees, a little group of five or six men and women sat down on the
neighbouring doorsteps, watching with curious eyes.
By-and-by, the tidily-dressed, grey-haired landlord of the inn, with a
twinkle in his eye, approached, and opened conversation. "If you would
like to buy that mule, mademoiselle, the owner says he will sell him
for a fair price."
"Thank you," returned No. 3; "but he would be rather a troublesome
piece of goods to take to England, I am afraid."
"Oh, you are English, mademoiselle?"
"I am."
"Perhaps you would like to buy some of my land hereabouts?"
"Why should I want to buy your land?"
"Oh, because all the English are so rich; they don't know what to do
with their money."
"I am not rich."
"Oh yes, you are, mademoiselle. You know you have lots of property in
England. Why not buy a little of my land? It is very good land, and I
have a great deal to sell round these parts."
The wink the old fellow again gave his companions roused the
indignation of No. 3.
"How very rich _you_ must be, monsieur!" she exclaimed sardonically.
"I, mademoiselle? Why so? I am a poor Corsican."
"To have so much good property to sell. Whereas _I_ do not possess a
rood."
The old fellow grunted, and passed on to the carriage, to continue his
inquiries of No. 2; whilst his companions laughed good-humouredly at
his discomfiture.
At half-past two, we started again, up the steep ascent to Bocognano,
through wooded hills and fine crags, every minute more closely
enwrapped in the grand overhanging mountains, and Monte d'Oro growing
steeper, bluer, and more furrowed on our left.
The diligence to Corte was not far behind us, lumbering up the dusty
ascent slowly; and a few miles from Bocognano, we passed a woman lying
on the grass by the roadside with a harnessed horse cropping beside
her.
At the sound of our carriage wheels she raised herself up, and smiled
and nodded to Antonio with some laughing remark in a deep bass voice,
to which Antonio returned his usual grave nod, without response. She
was a huge bony woman, with a rough, coarse face, and manly gait and
voice, and, Antonio told us, had, until the last few years, been one of
the regular coachmen on this diligence route, driving her horses from
here to Bocognano, of which village she was a native. Now, however,
male coachmen having become fashionable upon the public diligences, she
was degraded to her present occupation, which consisted in bringing
an extra horse to this spot for the last and steepest pull up to
Bocognano, and undertaking the post of additional whipper and shouter
to the exhausted horses. As she was a drunkard, a great swearer, and
a most violent character, the change was, perhaps, as well for the
diligence passengers; and when at the entrance to the village Antonio
pointed out to us a little crippled man as the father of this Zantippe,
we glanced at the diminutive little fellow with pitying eyes.
"He looks frightened," I said. "How often does his amiable daughter
beat him?"
"Pretty often, mademoiselle. But he drinks, too, and they are always
quarrelling. All the family are coachmen; the old man used to drive the
diligence, then his daughter took it, and now his son goes on the same
stage."
We turned our heads once more, and, at the last turn of the road behind
us, could see this female postilion standing on one of the _shafts_,
brandishing her long whip, and displaying a wonderful dexterity in
preserving her lofty and difficult position.
"Are there many drunkards in Corsica?" asked No. 3.
"The love of drink is growing, mademoiselle. There are many more now
than there used to be a few years ago."
"What are the causes?"
"Idleness, and the fashion of strangers, and the cheapness of drink."
"What do they drink? Nothing but the country wines?"
"Little else but red wine. It takes a good deal to make a man drunk on
that: but again, it costs little."
It does indeed. Good claret was often put before us in the village
inns, charged fivepence a bottle.
"Is it true, mademoiselle," asked Antonio presently, "that the English
are a nation of drunkards? I have heard it said."
"It is horribly true," said No. 3. And it was impossible not to feel
a sense of humiliation in the discovery that the national disgrace
had even reached the ears of this little out-of-the-way island in the
Mediterranean. "But in England, too, there is now a large band of total
abstainers, formed for the sake of helping the drunkards. Have you any
in Corsica?"
"No," said Antonio, thoughtfully; "we have not heard of that in our
country. But we see that many of the English who come over to Corsica
are great drinkers." He then spoke of an English gentleman, with
whose name we were well acquainted, whose passion for drink was the
astonishment of Corsicans since he came to live amongst them. "Poor
man," he said, "he is no man's enemy but his own; he is kind and
amiable, but, voila! he will go on now till he kills himself. The
English are terrible people to drink when they begin. They drink more
than our people do; and they drink brandy. I remember, a short time
ago, taking an English party several tours. There were a lady and a
gentleman, both quite young, and a little boy; and we drove about to
see some of the forests. All the time he was drinking: he never stopped
it. Once we stayed a day or two at a village up amongst the hills; and
he could not walk in the evenings when he came out of the public-house.
I drove him at last to Ajaccio. I knew he could not live long, for he
had chest disease, and could not stand the drink. I was only away a few
days with another party into the country, and when I returned I asked
after the Anglais, but he was already dead."
About a mile before reaching Bocognano we passed a rough pile of broken
wood, lying by the road-side. This was where yesterday, a charrette,
laden with forest trunks, had upset and broken upon the sharp turn,
fortunately, however, without killing either mules or drivers, as is
too often the case in these waggon accidents.
Often during our drives we noticed that, in the most precipitous
places, at the most awkward turns of a mountain road or of a narrow
bridge, the slight protecting parapet had been knocked down and
destroyed by the heavy wheels or long timbers of these over-loaded
carts.
It is said that the Corsicans know much better how to load a waggon
than we English. But certainly, the number and size of the pine-trunks
carried down in these charrettes from the mountain-side, drawn by the
four or six mules, looked appalling to our eyes.
The charrettiers, or drivers, of the waggons, who work for some
contractor on the plains, are badly paid and hardly worked, and their
occupation is one of considerable danger. Accidents are frequent upon
the narrow bad roads, some of which are made so slightly, of planks
jutting out from the steep hill-side, that you can see daylight through
to the precipice underneath.
These, of course, often break down. But a still more common misfortune
is the upsetting of the charrette at a corner, by the long pieces of
timber catching the side of the hill, or by the simple overbalancing of
the waggon on the uneven road. In either case, immediate destruction to
both waggons and horses is the infallible consequence, as they lurch
over into the descending precipice. In some cases, of course, the
drivers, walking along beside their waggons, are saved; but, as they
are nearly always stretched on the top of their timber, and sometimes
have so far forgotten prudence as to fall asleep, they constantly share
the fate of their horses, and are hurried to a speedy and certain
death. Antonio pointed out to us, near Ghisoni further on, a little
awkward wooden bridge at a precipitous turn, where, the last few years,
no fewer than five charrettes have fallen over, in every case killing
the poor beasts, and in many cases, their drivers.
Bocognano is in a most exquisite situation, completely under the lee
of Monte d'Oro, stupendous and purple,--and surrounded on every side
by groves of delicate chestnuts, and by picturesque hill and ravine;
but it is a hopelessly dirty village, and looked as uninviting in that
respect in to-day's sunshine, as it did in the mud and mist of our
former visit.
Hôtel Mouvrages, a filthy-looking broken-down tenement in the centre
of the village, was the worst in appearance of any we had yet seen.
The staircase, dark and ruinous, was redolent of various horrid smells,
and both the greasy little salle à manger upstairs, and the two stuffy
bedrooms, were most unpleasant to view.
"This is dreadful, Antonio," said I, as he followed, laden with our
wraps, into the small foul sitting-room, where a few half-washed
garments hung out of the grimy window-sills and assisted to import a
general richness to the atmosphere; "we can never stop here. What shall
we do?"
"I know not where else you can go, mademoiselle," he replied, raising
a grave disturbed face; "the horses are done up, and there is no inn
within many kilomètres of this."
"Well, then, I suppose we must abide."
And Antonio withdrew with a distressed countenance; for, although
eloquence was not his forte, it was a cause of dejection to him to
think that the ladies under his care should be uncomfortable.
As for us, leaving our belongings behind us, we hurried out of the
inn as fast as possible, and into the village street, to hunt for the
telegraph office, which exists in every little village in Corsica.
Having at last, followed by the eyes of a quantity of lounging,
velveteened men, and can-carrying busy women, and the feet of a little
crowd of excited children, found it up a stone entrance a little
further down the street, we made our way up the wooden ladder (which
did duty for staircase) from the ground floor to the first story,
where, imprisoned in a sort of wooden cage, a young woman transmitted
our telegram to Ghisoni, at which place we were to spend the next
night.
But as, contrary to custom, she either could not or would not
understand French, and required a great many directions regarding our
message, a bearded man or two and another young woman were all called
in to interview us, under the excuse of explaining matters. These
desired to know where we came from, how long we were stopping, and
whither we intended going, taking the greatest interest in our answers,
and evidently mentally making a detailed inventory of every article of
our dress and feature on our face.
When at length we escaped, they all pursued us to the top of the wooden
ladder, and put out three or four curious heads to peer after us;
whilst our juvenile friends waited for us at the bottom.
We soon shook them off, however, walking briskly up the Corte road,--as
beautiful a walk as one could well take.
After going about two miles, we came to a sharp turn in the hill-side,
from which Monte d'Oro rises in its grandest, steepest, closest
proximity.
Tremendous heavy blue thunder-clouds hung over our heads and glowered
over the purple shadows and white snows of the great Alp, rising from
the gorge just beside us; on the other side were steep maquis-covered
and craggy hills.
All along the road, and upon each hillside, we had passed the great
chestnut trunks, gnarled, knotted, and twisted; some splendid ruins,
black and mossy, some in the prime of life; and now, looking back upon
the village, it seemed embosomed in chestnuts, part of it hid by the
richness of the pale green leaves, just in leaf.
Bocognano is a very straggling village, there being four or five
distinct little hamlets straying among the embowered hills.
It is famous for being the abode of chestnut trees and of bandits.
A fine stone bridge spanned the wide torrent of the Gravona river about
a mile from the village, shaded by trees; and here we sat and rested,
watching the passers-by.
They were all shy and retiring, wanting village audacity, even the
boys.
Two pretty little fellows were catching lizards, and talked in whispers
until we were some yards beyond them, regarding us with awe-struck
eyes; and some little girls, laden each with a basket of wood from
the hill-side, and who sat likewise to rest upon the stone coping,
utterly refused to be sketched, dodging my pencil successfully, and
occasionally covering their faces with their hands.
Then came past a group of bare-footed merry-voiced women, strong as
horses, and upright as poplars, each carrying her load of wood upon
her head, and hurrying on to the village with only a glance in our
direction; and lastly, a sweet-faced girl of about fifteen, with a look
of patient depression upon her olive-coloured face touching to see.
She was carrying a heavy load of wood upon her head; her dress was
neat, and tucked up almost to her knees, showing the pretty brown legs
and round feet; and the white handkerchief over her shoulders, as well
as the one upon her head, was clean and tidy. She seemed very tired,
and flung down her load beside the bridge hastily, sitting down; but
immediately her busy fingers took some knitting out of her pocket, not
allowed for a moment to be idle. She had no objection to our trying to
sketch her, but when we spoke to her, raised her serious pathetic brown
eyes to ours with a puzzled shake of the head; and it was impossible to
hold a conversation with her.
The thunder was rolling grandly overhead as we turned homewards,
passing on our way a small cottage, before the door of which stood a
sulky, evil-faced boy. Apparently this youth objected to the intrusion
of foreigners on his native soil, or the storm had soured his temper;
for we had not gone many yards further, before a good-sized stone
came after us, hitting No. 3 pretty sharply on the shoulder. As might
have been expected, our assailant was a coward, and retired within his
doorway on our looking back.
The next day as we passed the cottage I related the incident to Antonio
with some indignation.
"Que voulez vous?" he said, with the usual shrug. "Voila, mademoiselle,
there are forty boys in this village. Among so many, must there not be
one vaurien anywhere?"
And sundry visions of refractory ragamuffins, and hours of anguish
spent in Sunday schools, forced us to admit that, even in our own land,
the percentage of vauriens was probably no less.
It was dusk in the salle à manger when we re-entered for our dinner,
which, to give every one their due, was far from a bad one.
As soon as it was accomplished we blew out the lights, and leaning out
of the windows, whence we had previously had the family linen removed,
found plenty of amusement in watching village life in the little street
below.
It was lively in the extreme, and swarmed with men and women, children
and animals. Little groups of three or four men lounged slowly up and
down, whilst women stood at the doors knitting,--or hanging their heads
out of an upper window. The children chased each other shouting, across
the narrow street, tumbling over innumerable pigs, dogs, and kids.
Cows and mules occasionally strolled in and out with a reflective air,
as being quite at their ease, and accustomed to the liberty of their
evening saunter; and some magnificent goats, one coal black and the
other snow white, lay on the pavement beneath our window, regarding
the merry scene calmly, whilst chewing the cud of contemplation,
and receiving the caresses of many of the passers-by with a proud
indifference.
Occasionally, a couple of dogs got up a fight for the general
amusement; and as it grew darker the kids became more lively, standing
on their hind legs to waltz with each other.
We were sorry when darkness and late hours compelled us to close
the windows, and retire to our uninviting chambers. But we scarcely
anticipated the miseries of that horrible night. In point of
discomfort, the rooms were much the same as at the other smaller inns.
An old wine-bottle and pudding-basin again did duty for washing
apparatus; soap, of course, there was none, and the one towel was a bit
of coarse canvas about a foot square. The luxury of a looking-glass we
had almost forgotten, and its want distressed us but little.
But what afflicted us chiefly was the number of old chests and boxes,
and of family petticoats, hung up in every direction; and the general
dirt of the wooden floors and plaster walls.
The good woman of the house explained to me that they had but one
guests' room, and that mine had been vacated by herself and spouse for
my use. When I heard that dreadful piece of intelligence, I knew what
to expect.
The horrors of that night are not to be described. Animated nature
of every description abounded in all the rooms; and, although No.
3 had her window open all night, it was necessary to burn incense
(fortunately taken out from England) every half-hour or so; whilst No.
2 never retired to rest at all, but spent the dark hours in pacing up
and down, reflecting on the humbug of fine scenery combined with filthy
inns, and registering a vow never again to set foot in this wretched
village, or any like it, for the sake of any natural beauties whatever.
In this nocturnal pacing she was accompanied by a regiment of rats
overhead, who played high jinks in the men's attic, undismayed by the
occasional boot flung at them by some disturbed sleeper.
Bocognano is situated at some height amongst the hills, and its
nights are no doubt considered cold by the inhabitants. This doubtless
accounted for the fact that, after instituting a search (to explain
the extraordinary warmth of the bed) No. 3 found two large fur rugs,
or rather undressed sheepskins, carefully laid upon the top of the
mattress, wool upwards.
With an inward groan, these receptacles for fleas were dragged across
the room, and transferred to the window, whence, in company with the
dirty quilt and the only strip of carpet in the room, they hung outside
for an unaccustomed airing.
But enough of such like tortures, which are but described for the
edification of future travellers, who are warned that they had far
better sit the night out in their carriage, if a miserable fate brings
them to Bocognano, than spend it (for I will not use the ironical word
"sleep") at Hôtel Mouvrages.
I would warn them, too, to beware of printer's errors.
In Mr. Roden Noel's account of Corsica, given in a late _Temple
Bar_ number, he mentions a filthy place called Bo_r_ognano, warning
travellers to avoid it.
This account we studied carefully, but, unfortunately, were induced,
by the differing letter, to imagine it a distinct place, or we should
scarcely have had courage to go thither. I have no doubt now that Mr.
Noel's Borognano was our Bocognano.
"With quaking hearts we watched them come,
From curtain, carpet, rug,
In countless hordes, half-famished brutes--
That Bocognano B----!
"Another room we sought in haste,
And thought to rest now, snug;
But lo! again those marching troops--
The universal B----!
"The bed-legs next we seized, and placed
Each in a water-jug;
But then he dropped down from above--
That persevering B----!
"With Keating's dust we covered us,
And many a nauseous drug;
But never turned that army back--
Th' indomitable B----!
"We pulled the bedclothes round our ears
With many a hasty tug;
But quick he burrowed underneath--
Each enterprising B----!
"In vain to turn and twist us round
With many a frantic shrug;
We failed to ease the throbbing pang,
Caused by each busy B----!
"O traveller in Corsica,
Flee this domestic Thug;
Brigands are myths; but, sure as death,
Is Bocognano's B----!"
Travellers who have visited Bocognano will hear with sympathetic
interest of a legend found amongst a certain tribe of Kurds living on
Mount Sindshar.
Noah's ark, say these worthies, having struck upon a rock in this
neighbourhood, and he and his large family being in danger of drowning,
the serpent came to the rescue, craftily promising assistance in return
for Noah's pledge, thenceforth (that is to say, after the cessation
of the deluge) to feed him upon human flesh. According to the Kurdish
opinion, Noah's faith, at this period of his life, was not strong.
Either he doubted any ultimate cessation of the flood, and so thought
to evade his promise; or present necessities made him close his eyes
to the future. Anyhow, he acceded to the proposition, and the serpent,
coiling himself up promptly, filled up the hole, and stopped the leak.
At the abatement of the deluge, the serpent demanded his promised
reward. Noah, in despair, acted upon the advice of the angel Gabriel,
and flung the serpent into the fire.
Then, casting forth its ashes, from them rose up immediately a swarm
of bugs, fleas, and all such noxious vermin, which hastened to fulfil
their destiny by the enjoyment of that unnatural food which the
patriarch had so rashly pledged to allow their progenitor.
Such is the Kurdish legend; but the English transcriber adds that, no
sooner had this been done, than Noah prayed for a return of the deluge!