Itinerary through Corsica Part 8

Solenzara to Sartene,

46 m. S.W. This forest road, No. 4, ascends the valley of the Solenzara, crosses the great S.E. range at the Col de Bavella, descends into the valley of the Rizzanese, pa.s.ses through the villages of Zonza, San Gavino, Levie, and Ste. Lucie, and joins the highroad between Ajaccio and Bonifacio at the milestone 76690 (47 m.) from Ajaccio, 3 m. from Sartene, and 42 m. from Solenzara.

The road, after pa.s.sing up by the S. side of the river through olive groves and "maquis," arrives at the Col and Maison de Cantonniers de Castelluccio, 210 ft., 4 m. from Solenzara. Two m. farther by the Pont de Ghiadole, the road crosses the Solenzara by the Calzatojo bridge, 6 m. from Solenzara, 340 ft., winds upward by the deep gully of the Fiumicello, which having crossed by the bridge 7 m. from Solenzara, ascends a steep winding road bordered with great trees to the Maison de Cantonniers de Rocchio-Pinzuto, 8 m., 1060 ft., at the foot of the great cliff of that name.

The road still winding upwards pa.s.ses the immense wall of reddish cliffs called the Rochers de Bavella before arriving at the Col de Larone 10 m., 2056 ft. The road, still winding, ascends a huge promontory between the torrents Fiumicello and S. Pietro, separating into two distinct parts the forest of Bavella, and crosses the Pont de Bocintoro, 1510 ft., 12 m. A little farther, in a wild yet beautiful situation, is the Maison de Cantonniers d'Arghiavara. From the Pont 1 m. is the better house, la maison forestiere de l'Alza, commanding superb views, situated among great trees and nursery gardens.

The ascent from this is by a steep road, almost impracticable for vehicles, through a forest of the stateliest and oldest pines in Corsica.

18 m. from Solenzara and 28 from Sartene is the Maison de Cantonniers de Bavella, 3885 ft., near the summit of the Col Bavella, 4068 ft. In this house of refuge there is generally comfortable accommodation and a supply of provisions. The surrounding huts are occupied in July and August by people from the plains about Solenzara, who come here to escape the fever-producing malaria. The house commands, even from the windows, grand views.

On the other side of the Col, 550 ft. below it and 2 m. from it, is the Maison de Cantonniers de Ballatojo, from which the road descends amidst great pines mixed with a few oaks and ilexes, in view of the Asinao forest and of the lofty granite pinnacled precipices, 10 m. long, between Mt. Colva, 4520 ft., and the Point Tintinaja, 6658 ft.

Zonza, good inn, pop. 1040, height 2582 ft., 24 m. from Solenzara and 21 m. from Sartene, hidden among chestnut trees and conveniently situated for visiting the forests of Zonza, Asinao, and Bavella.

[Headnote: S. GAVINO.]

3 m. beyond is San Gavino di Carbini, pop. 770, height 2238 ft., a poor miserable village, where there existed in 1365 a sect of socialists, with whom even the women and children were held in common, and by whom were committed frightful abominations.

[Headnote: LEVIE.]

30 m. from Solenzara and 16 m. from Sartene is Levie, consisting of various hamlets. Inn where the coach, running between this and Sartene, stops. Pop, 2040, height 2238 ft This village, easily approached, is situated among mountains abounding with game. It commands superb views, and makes in April a very pleasant residence. In winter it is rather cold. On the road between Levie and Santa Lucia di Tallano, 5 m. from the Col d'Aja Vignarsa, 2408 ft., are seen the valley of the Rizzanese and the Gulfs of Valinco and Ajaccio. On the gra.s.sy table lands of the Col d'Aja are many rare flowers, among others a species of red gladiolus.

[Headnote: S. LUCIA DI TALLANO.]

5 m. W. from Levie and 11 from Sartene is Santa Lucia di Tallano, pop.

1300, Inn where the Sartene and Levie coach stops. S. Lucia is built in terraces on the hills rising from the Fiumicicoli. Church 14th cent. The wines grown in this neighbourhood command good prices in the Corsican market.

Below, on the Fiumicicoli, is a hot sulphurous spring. On the way down to the river by the sides of the Point Campolaccia, near a place called Campolajo, is beautiful hornblende, page 27.

From Santa Lucia the road leads southwards by the Rizzanese to Sartene, p. 27.

SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF CORSICA.

It is not known who the original inhabitants of Corsica were. The Phocaeans of Ionia were the first civilised people that established settlements in Corsica. About the year 560 B.C. they landed on the island, and founded at the mouth of the Tavignano the city of Aleria, which after a short occupation they were compelled to abandon. After an interval of a few years they again returned, rebuilt Aleria, which they fortified, and endeavoured to maintain their ground against the natives.

After a struggle of some years they were again compelled to leave the island. The next foreign occupants of Corsica were the Tuscans, who founded the city of Nicaea, but they in their turn were compelled to give way before the growing maritime power of the Carthaginians, whose jurisdiction in the island was unquestioned till the beginning of the first Punic War. On that occasion the Romans sent out a fleet, drove the Carthaginians from the island, and exacted at least a nominal homage from the native population. They did not, however, fully establish their power here till about thirty years later, and even then rebellions and revolts were of constant occurrence.

[Headnote: ROMAN COLONIES.]

The first step made towards the real subjugation of the island was the establishment of the two colonies on its eastern coast-that of Aleria by Sulla and that of Mariana by Marius. In the time of the emperors the island had fallen into disrepute among the Romans, by whom it was used chiefly as a place of banishment for political offenders. One of the most distinguished of these sufferers was the younger Seneca, who spent in this island eight years of banishment ending with 49 A.D.

[Headnote: ARMS.] On the downfall of the Roman empire in the West, Corsica pa.s.sed into the hands of the Vandals. These barbarians were driven out by Belisarius, but after his death, 565 A.D., the resistless hordes of Attila once more gained possession of the island. Since that period it has successively owned the dominion of the Goths, the Saracens, the Pisans and the Genoese. The impress of the last is to be found in the style of the church architecture, while the armorial crest of the island, a Moor's head, with a band across the brow, dates from the expedition of the Saracen king, Sanza Ancisa.

The patroness of Corsica, the "Protectrice de la Corse," is Santa Devota; who is also the patron saint of Monaco. The Corsicans often style the Virgin Mary simply La Santa; and in their common exclamation Santa! Maria is understood.

[Headnote: SAMPIERO.]

Among the most renowned and intrepid patriots in the struggle of the Corsicans to free themselves from the Genoese was Sampiero, born of poor parents towards the end of the 15th cent, in Dominicacci, one of the hamlets which compose Bastelica. His house having been burned down by the Genoese, the inhabitants in the 18th cent. constructed a new one on the same site, on which Mr. Wyse, an Irishman, affixed a tablet with an inscription in 1855, expressing his admiration of the man. After serving with great distinction in the armies of the Italian princes and in those of Francis I., King of France, Sampiero returned to Corsica in 1547 and married the fair Vanina, heiress of Ornano, belonging to one of the oldest families in the island.

Shortly after the marriage the Corsicans, led by Sampiero, revolted against the tyranny of the Banking Company of St. George of Genoa, and, a.s.sisted by the French, under General Thermes, overthrew them after six years of hard fighting and much bloodshed, in which Sampiero and his peasant army bore by far the greatest share. All, however, they had gained at such immense sacrifice was completely lost to them by the treaty of Chateau Cambresis, 1559, by which France agreed to restore Corsica to Genoa. Sampiero and his family had to leave the island. Such was the virulent and implacable hatred Sampiero bore to the Genoese, that he with his own hand, in cold blood, strangled mercilessly his trembling wife three years after (1562) in Ma.r.s.eilles, for having allowed herself, in his absence, to be persuaded to make an arrangement with the Genoese to save the patrimony of her children. Sampiero escaped with impunity, although he buried his murdered wife publicly, and with pomp, in the church of St. Francis at Ma.r.s.eilles.

Antonio Francesco, the younger son, who was, when a mere child, with his mother when she was murdered, was afterwards a.s.sa.s.sinated at Rome by a Frenchman, whom he had insulted while playing at cards.

On the 12th June 1564 Sampiero landed at the Gulf of Valinco with a band of 20 Corsicans and 25 Frenchmen, to make another desperate attempt to free Corsica from the hated yoke. After a five years' life-and-death struggle, fired by a feverish thirst for revenge, the Corsicans had to yield to the might of Genoa, supported by well-drilled Italian, German and Spanish mercenaries, commanded by their greatest generals, Doria, Centurione and Spinola, and aided by a powerful fleet.

On the 17th January 1567 Sampiero was slain in an ambuscade laid for him in the defile of Cauro, into which he had been led by forged letters brought him by the monk Ambrosius of Bastelica.

His elder son Alfonso d'Ornano continued the struggle after his father's death, till the exhausted state of Corsica compelled him to desist and to accept a general amnesty proclaimed by the Genoese governor George Doria in 1569. Alfonso d'Ornano was afterwards created "Marechal de France."

[Headnote: PASCAL PAOLI.]

From 1755 the Corsicans, led by the brave Pascal Paoli, carried on the struggle for their independence against the Genoese, who were occasionally a.s.sisted by the French. On the 15th May 1768 the former sold their presumed claims to the island to the French, who ended this war of subjugation by the terrible battle of Ponte Nuovo, 9th May 1769.

On the llth of June Paoli left Porto-Vecchio for London; where, at the instance of the Duke of Grafton, then prime minister of England, he received an annual pension of 1200.

After Corsica had been made one of the departments of France he was invited in 1790, by the National a.s.sembly, to take the supreme command in the island. On his arrival at Paris (3d April 1790), on his way to Corsica, he was feted as the Washington of Europe, and Lafayette was constantly by his side; while, on his arrival at Ma.r.s.eilles, he was received by a deputation, among whom was Napoleon. In July 1790 he landed at Macinaggio, on the east side of Cap Corse.

The execution of the king and the cruelties and excesses of the Convention having shocked the philanthropic spirit of Paoli and alienated his sympathies, he organised a revolt to separate Corsica from France, and succeeded by the aid of the English fleet, 20th July 1794, when Calvi, the last of the forts, surrendered. On the 10th of June 1794 the Corsicans declared that they would unite their country to Great Britain, but that it was to remain independent, and to be governed by a viceroy according to their own const.i.tution.

The English, from ignorance, managed the affairs of the island so badly, that when in 1796 Napoleon sent troops against them, they were joined by the Corsicans, who together forced the English to leave the island. Not only had a certain Gilbert Elliot been named viceroy instead of Paoli, but this same man having written to the Government that it was necessary for the safety of the English to remove Paoli from the island, George III. wrote Paoli a letter inviting him to return to England and to his court. It is suspected that Andrea Pozzo di Borgo, president of the Council of State, under the short viceroyship of Elliot, influenced, for his own ends or from jealousy, the English in Corsica against Paoli.

Paoli lived twelve years more in London, died peacefully on 5th February 1807 at the age of 82, was buried in St. Pancras churchyard, and a small monument to his memory was placed in Westminster Abbey. He bequeathed to four professors of the intended Corte University salaries of 50 a year each, but as it was never established the money was given to the Ecole Paoli in Corte, attended by 120 pupils.

Since the expulsion of the English, the French have remained in undisturbed possession of Corsica. The English occupation lasted from 1794 to 1796.

[Headnote: CHARACTER.]

The Corsicans look to the Government for the improvement of their island far more than to their own efforts, for they themselves are neither industrious nor enterprising. The roads, railways, bridges and other public works are constructed chiefly by Italian labourers. The women do the drudgery both in their homes and on the fields, carrying great loads on their heads, as the mules do on their backs; but bestow little labour on the cleanliness of their children and dwellings, and do not make good domestic servants. In many small towns women are the bread bakers and a.s.sistant butchers. The villages, excepting in Cape Corse, are untidy.

The use of the bath is almost unknown to young and old, rich and poor.

[Headnote: VENDETTA.]

The tendency to take summary vengeance, called vendetta, still exists in the villages; where the people having no social amus.e.m.e.nts, nothing to read, nor any other resource than cards during the winter nights, are apt to quarrel over trifles; which, fanned by their local petty jealousies, a.s.sisted often by the generous nature of their wine, ripen into deadly feuds.

[Headnote: OAKS.]

The staple food of the majority of the inhabitants, as well as of the horses and mules, during a great part of the year, is the chestnut. For domestic purposes it is mostly ground, when it costs only about half the price of wheat flour, which is procured chiefly from Ma.r.s.eilles, Corsica itself producing very little. The ease with which the harvest of chestnuts is annually obtained tends to foster indolence and deaden enterprise among the peasantry. The one great danger to which the generous chestnut trees are exposed is a conflagration. Besides olives, pines, beeches and chestnuts, there are also important forests of evergreen oaks, the Quercus Ilex, called also the holm oak. It has abundance of dark-green ovate leaves, mostly p.r.i.c.kly at the margin; the acorns are oblong on short stalks; the stem grows to the height of 80 ft.; the wood is dark-brown and hard, weighing 70 lbs. the cubic foot, while the same of the Quercus ruber or British oak weighs only 55 lbs., and the tree attains a vast age. The cork oak, Quercus suber, grows either singly among other trees or in groups, princ.i.p.ally in the southern parts of the island. The bark is of little commercial importance.

[Headnote: AGRICULTURE.]

The inhabitants do not a.s.sist nature. Their seed potatoes are of an inferior cla.s.s, their fruit trees receive little attention, very few of the vineyards are carefully cultivated, and their sheep, goats and pigs are of poor breeds. Of late years many have taken to the growing of lemons and citrons; which in a good year yield a very handsome profit; but the harvest, through untimely frosts, is precarious. The headquarters of this culture is Cape Corse. The olive trees yield a more secure though less remunerative harvest.

That terrible scourge the phylloxera has got among the vineyards, where it is committing its usual havoc.

The drives and pedestrian excursions about Corsica are superb, especially along the east side and up the centre by Sartene, Zicavo and Ghisoni (p. 27), and the road between Calvi and Ponte alla Leccia (p. 20). There are inns in all the large villages, though the only good and comfortable hotels are in Ajaccio.

[Headnote: FORESTHOUSES.]