THE STRAIT.
In the evening, a little before twilight, I love to go through the old
fortress-gate, and sit down on some point of the high coast. Here I
have around me no common picture,—Bonifazio on its beetling cliff hard
by, at a giddy height above the sea; the beautiful strait, and the near
Sardinia. There is an old book which reckons this rock of Bonifazio
as the seventy-second wonder of the world. My good friend Lorenzo has
read it. If I look down upon the sea-border from my little bench of
stone, I have a complete view of the path of steps which leads down to
the Marina. There I see people continually passing out and in through
the gate; and from below they ride up the declivity mounted on their
little asses, or drive them before them laden with melons, crossing
and recrossing the path to make the ascent easier. I do not remember
having seen such small donkeys as those of Bonifazio, and it was
incomprehensible to me how a man could ride on so diminutive a creature.
I saw no one with the fucile; fire-arms are here, comparatively
speaking, unknown.
When at any time I sat down on the bench by the little Chapel of San
Rocco, I was soon surrounded by the curious, who would frequently take
a place beside me with a kind of simple confidence, and ask me whence I
came, what I came for, and whether or not my fatherland was civilized.
This last question was very frequently addressed to me when I said that
I came from Prussia. A very gentlemanly person sat down beside me one
evening, and when we had fallen into a political conversation regarding
the present king of Prussia, he suddenly expressed his surprise that
Prussians should speak Italian. I have frequently, on other occasions,
and in all earnest, been asked whether Italian was spoken in Prussia.
My good friend then inquired whether I spoke Latin. When I replied
that I understood it, he said that he also was acquainted with it, and
immediately began: "_Multos annos jam ierunt, che io non habeo parlato
il latinum._" When on the point of replying to him in the same language,
I suddenly made the discovery that my Latin insisted on slipping into
Italian, and that I was just about to express myself with greater
elegance than even my Bonifazian friend. Two cognate languages are
very apt to be mingled on the tongue if we are in the habit of daily
expressing ourselves only in one of them.
This gentleman accurately quoted Rousseau's prediction on Corsica, which
it is impossible to escape hearing when in conversation with educated
Corsicans.
The strait becomes more and more beautiful as the sun-set light begins
to fall upon it. Sailing-boats flit past, breasting the waves; they
pass into the distance with the golden gleam of the setting sun upon
them; isolated rocks tower darkly out of the water, and the mountains of
Sardinia are tinged with violet. Directly opposite stand the fair hills
of Tempio and Limbara; yonder the heights which conceal Sassari; on the
left, a magnificent mountain-cone, the name of which I cannot discover.
The evening sun falls brightly on the neighbouring coasts, but with
full effulgence on the nearest Sardinian town of Longo Sardo. A tower
is visible at its entrance. I clearly discern the houses, and would
willingly imagine those flickering lines of shadow to be Sardinians
promenading. In a calm night, they tell me that the beating of drums
in Longo Sardo may be heard. I counted six towers along the coast;
Castello Sando, and Porto Torres, the nearest towns in the direction
of Sassari, were invisible. My hospitable Lorenzo had studied three
years in Sassari, knew the Sardinian dialect, and could give me much
information about the people.
Long silent sat we on the hill together,
And gazed upon the foam-fringed coasts the while;
And on the deep-blue of the narrow waters
That part Sardinia from her sister isle.
How passing beautiful art thou, Sardegna!
Whom the luxuriant myrtles fondly crown,
And sparkling zones of snowy shell engirdle,
Corsica's sun-burnt sister, wild and brown.
Red reefs and craggy islets round thee hanging,
Rude capes that cleave the sea with zig-zag line,
—Their crimson cliffs thou wearest in thy beauty,
Like blood-red necklace of the coral fine.
My friend Lorenzo, yonder purple mountains
They beckon in their gracious calm to me—
They stir my bosom with a fiery longing,
And my heart leaps to cross that narrow sea.
Whereto my good Lorenzo thus made answer,
And spoke low to himself, with doubting air:
"Ah! the fair mountains of Limbara yonder—
The pictured lies—only afar are fair.
"They seem like sapphires in the magic distance—
Like wondrous crystal domes they kiss the sky;
But when the weary, spell-drawn wanderer nears them,
They throw the purple and the glitter by.
"They offer you their gray sides, rude and naked,
Save where the tangling briers harsh cov'ring lend;
With tempests threaten you, and with abysses,
—Like life—too like the cheats of life, my friend."
—Yon leaden level stretching to the margin,
Laughs to me, winsome in its hue of gold,
How the Sardinian lives, my friend Lorenzo,
In his fair island, fain would I be told.
"Wooded the highlands as you travel inland,
The little yellow towns in verdure hide,
The Catalonian drives—their bells low tinkling—
His train of mules along the mountain side.
"O'er his swart face he slouches the sombrero,
Pistols and dagger in his belt he wears;
In his old Latin tongue he hums a ballad,
And onwards to its time he slowly fares.
"But if far southward to the strand you wander,
Where Cagliari lies, 'mid rocky bays,
There, in the hamlets, chants the darker Moro,
To castanet and tambourine his lays.
"From Algesiras comes the Moorish pagan,
His falt'ring accent tells the distant land,
He shakes his tabour, dances round the fan-palm,
The brown Sardinian maiden in his hand."
How perceptible in Bonifazio is the vicinity of the third great Romanic
nation, Spain! My room is covered with pictures about Columbus,
which have long Spanish explanations, and now and then one meets a
Sardinian who speaks the Catalonian dialect. Both islands—in former
epochs connected, but now torn asunder—are conveniently situated for
the smuggling trade. The very favourable position of Bonifazio would
undoubtedly have raised it to early prosperity had trade been free. The
surveillance is extremely strict, as even the bandits of both islands
maintain communication with each other, although it seldom happens that
Sardinians seek an asylum in the little Corsica, as it does not afford
means of support. Many Corsican avengers, on the contrary, take refuge
among the Sardinian hills. The police in Bonifazio are very vigilant.
My pass was never asked throughout the whole of Corsica, except in the
southerly-lying Sartene, and in Bonifazio. A land-owner had been my
fellow-traveller from Cape Corso to Bonifazio; and as he very kindly
offered me his boat, which lay at Propriano, in which to return to
Bastia, and also put his house at Cape Corso at my service, I invited
him to share my spacious room, which was much superior to his own
miserable lodging. This man had now the honour to pass for a bandit,
who, under some good pretext, was desirous to pass over to Sardinia.
When the evening sets in, the lighthouse of Bonifazio shows its light.
The Sardinian coast is wrapt in darkness; but soon, from Longo Sardo, a
red light replies, and so these two sister islands, as well by night as
by day, maintain a friendly intercourse with their beacons. The warders
on either side lead a lonely life. Each is the first or last inhabitant
of his island. He of Bonifazio is the most southerly Corsican I have
ever met with; and he of the cape opposite the most northerly Sardinian.
They have never seen each other or conversed; but daily they interchange
a beautiful good-evening—_felicissima notte_, as they say in Italy when
the mistress brings in the light. The warder of Corsica is the first to
bring out his light into the darkening night, and to say _felicissima
notte_; then his brother warder of Sardinia comes to meet him, and also
says his _felicissima notte_; and so they go on night after night, and
will go on while life lasts, till some evening the beacon shall remain
for a time unlighted. Then will the warder on this side know that his
old friend on the other is dead; and with a tear perchance that night,
he will say _felicissima notte_!
I visited this most southerly of Corsicans in his turret. It lies a
league from Bonifazio, on the low Cape Pertusato. The south of Corsica
runs out here into an obtuse triangle, at whose western extremity Cape
Pertusato, and at whose eastern Cape Sprono lies—the latter a small
rocky point, standing nearer to Sardinia than any other part of Corsica.
With a favourable wind, one could be in Sardinia in half an hour. The
little lighthouse is surrounded by a white wall, and resembles a fort.
The keeper received me kindly, and set before me a glass of goat's milk.
He lives like Æolus, in the wind. There is something strange in the
thought, that the long years of a man's life all turn round an oil-lamp,
and that it is a human being's sole destiny to burn a lamp-wick
on a lonely cliff by night. There can be nothing apparently more
unsatisfactory, and nothing more unpretending than such an existence.
The warder led me to the parapet of the lighthouse, where the violence
of the wind compelled me to hold fast by the railing. From his roof-top
he pointed out all his island domain and sovereignty, which consisted
of thirty head of goats and a vineyard; and as I perceived that he was
contented and possessed sufficient of the goods of the earth, I at once
esteemed him happy, even before his death. He directed my attention
to the majestic beauty of Sardinia, the islands and islets which swarm
round it, Santa Maria and Santa Maddalena, the island Caprara, Reparata,
and many more. The western mouth of the strait is strewn with insular
rocks; the eastern is broader; and over against the Sardinian Cape
Falcone lies the island Asènara, a picturesque ridge of hill.
To Corsica belong a few little island-reefs of the most irregular form,
which lie scattered in the strait quite near, and are called San Bainzo,
Cavallo, and Lavezzi. They consist of granite. The Romans had worked
quarries on them, to procure pillars for their temples and palaces. The
positions occupied by their workshops are still easily discernible; even
the coals in the old Roman smithies have left their traces. Enormous,
half-hewn pillars still lie on these rocks—two of them on San Bainzo—and
other blocks of stone shaped by Roman chisels. It is impossible now to
say for what building in Rome they may have been destined; no one can
tell what terrible panic it was which suddenly drove the quarrymen and
masons from their solitary workshop on the sea, leaving the labour of
their hands unfinished. It may be that the sea overwhelmed them; it
may be that they were massacred by the wild Corsican, or the fierce
Sardinian. It surprises me that there is no legend current of a ghostly
Roman workshop; for I myself have seen in the moonlight the dead workmen
rise out of the sea, clad in Roman togas—grave men, broad-browed, with
aquiline noses, and deep-set eyes. Silently they applied themselves to
the two pillars, and after a ghostly fashion began to beat and chisel
them. One stood erect among them, and, with outstretched finger, gave
directions. I heard him say in Latin—"This pillar will be one of the
fairest in the golden palace of Nero. Quick, comrades, make haste; for
if you are not ready within forty days, we shall all be cast to the wild
beasts." Fain would I have called out to him, "O Artemion, and you other
dead men! the palace of Nero has long since vanished from the face of
the earth—why hew pillars for it still? Go, sleep in your graves!" But
just as I was about to utter this, the Latin words became Italian, and I
could not. And it is owing to this circumstance alone, that the spirits
of those old Romans still busy themselves unceasingly with the pillars
in that ghostly workshop; and night after night they rise up out of the
water, and strike and chisel with restless haste; but as soon as the
cocks crow in Bonifazio, the pale and shadowy forms spring back into
the sea.
I threw again one long last look on the wide-extended Sardinian coast,
on the land of Gallura, and thought of the beautiful Enzius, the
Emperor Frederick's son. He, too, once was, and was moreover a king. A
few months ago, I stood one evening in his prison at Bologna. A puppet
theatre was erected near it, and across the still, large square sounded
loudly the voice of Pulcinella.
The world is round, and history a circle like the individual life of men.