Part 13

However, these are mere speculations. Pascal Paoli's retirement left his native island no resource but submission to the French, and it became once more a department of France, one and undivided. On his return to England, Paoli had a small pension from the English Government, which he shared with other exiles from his own country. Little is known of the latter years of his life. He probably resumed, as far as his advanced years admitted, the habits he had formed during his former residence in London. He died there, on the 25th of February, 1807, at the age of eighty-two, and was interred in the burial-ground of Old St. Pancras. It is ground especially hallowed in the estimation of Roman Catholics; and if any reader should chance to turn his steps in that direction, he will be surprised to see what a large proportion of the monuments and gravestones in the vast area are inscribed to the memory of foreigners of all ranks, who, during a long course of years, have ended their days in London. The little antique church, too—one of the oldest, if not the oldest, in London—is well worth a visit, as an interesting specimen of Romanesque architecture, well restored a few years ago.

In the south-western corner of the churchyard, not far from the boundary wall, he will find a rather handsome tomb marking the spot in which the remains of the great Corsican are deposited. It bears on one face a long Latin inscription, said to have been penned by one of his countrymen, and the east slab bears a coronet, on what authority we are at a loss to conceive. So also the more humble monument of Theodore of Corsica at St. Anne's, Soho, is dignified with a shadowy crown. The mock king created Giacinto Paoli, Pascal's father, and one of his first ministers of state, a marquis or count. Can it be that, under that patent, Pascal Paoli assumed the insignia of nobility in his intercourse with the courtly circles of London? Was it a weakness in the man of the people, who, simple as his general habits were, had high breeding, and, as we learn from Boswell's gossip, was not entirely free from aristocratic tendencies,—nay, is said to have aspired to a royal crown?[27] Or is the coronet on his tomb an unauthorised device of the officious friends who are said to have spent 500_l._ in giving the exile a pompous funeral?

Peace to his memory! In death, as in life, his heart was with the people he had loved and served so well. Still caring for their best interests, by a codicil to his will he appropriated the annual sum of 200_l._ to the endowment of four professors in a college he proposed to found at Corte. They were to teach—1st. The Evidences of Christianity;—2nd. Ethics and the Laws of Nations;—3rd. The Principles of Natural Philosophy;—and 4th. The Elements of Mathematics. He also bequeathed a salary of 50_l._ to a schoolmaster in his native _piève_ of Rostino, who was to instruct the children in reading, writing, and arithmetic. It appears to have been the object of Mr. Benson's journey to Corsica to carry into effect these wise and benevolent provisions, and Paoli's bequests to his poor relations.

Paoli said when dying:—“My nephews have little to expect from me; but I will bequeath to them, as a memorial and consolation, this Bible—saying, ‘I have never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread.’”

CHAP. XVIII.

_Excursion to a Forest.—Borders of the Niolo.—Adventures.—Corsican Pines.—The Pinus Maritima and Pinus Luriccio.—Government Forests._

Our excursion to the forest came off on the day before we left Corte, under the auspices of our “man of the woods.” He procured us mules, and our hostess supplied a basket of provisions and wine; for it promised to be a hard day's work, carrying us far into the heart of the mountains.

Leaving Corte by the Corso, we soon turned up a valley to the left, winding among hills of no great elevation and cultivated to their summits. Not much farther than a mile from the town, we passed a lone house, the door of which was riddled with bullets. The brigands attacked it not long before. It was an affair, I believe, of summary justice for some trespass on property.

“No one was safe,” said our conductor, “two years ago, outside the town. If you had been in the island then, you would have seen half Corsica armed to the teeth.”—

“The disarming has been complete, for since our landing we have only once seen fire-arms except in the hands of the military. Then the banditti, of whom we have heard more than enough, no longer exist?”

“No; they have been shot down, brought to justice, or driven out of the island. Many of them escaped to Sardinia; if you go there, you will find things just in the same state they were here; perhaps worse, if our outlaws are roaming there. I will tell you, some time, the story of the last of the banditti. Not far from hence they fell in a desperate conflict with the gendarmes.”

The hollows between some of the hills among which we wound were embosomed in chestnut-trees, and the husks were beginning to burst and shed the nuts on the ground.

“The harvest is approaching,” said our guide. “Soon every house will have great heaps gathered in for the winter's store.”

We were on the borders of the mountainous district of the _Niolo_, the most primitive, not only geologically, as we have lately seen, but in point of manners, of any in Corsica. This it owes to its sequestered situation, hemmed in by the southern branch of the great central chain. It is approached by difficult paths and steps hewn out of the rock, the best being the pass of the _Santa Regina_. The interior of the bason is, however, extremely fertile. We had now in view the Monte Cinto and Monte Artica, the principal summits of the Niolo group, nearly 8000 feet high; and from part of our route Monte Rotondo was seen rising, with its snowy crest, a thousand feet higher, further to the south.

The country now assumed a wilder and more rugged character, cultivation disappeared, and the surface was either rocky or thickly covered with the natural shrubbery so often mentioned. Once more we were in the _Macchia_, threading it by a rough and narrow path. Flocks of sheep and goats were browsing among the bushes; and the sight of rude shepherds' huts, with their blazing fires, gave us to understand that we had reached the wilds beyond human habitation. At last, a steep ascent through the thickets by a slippery path surmounted a ridge commanding the prospect of one flank of a mountain, the forest property of our “man of the woods.” A furious torrent, its natural boundary, tumbled and dashed in its rocky channel far beneath. Our mules slid down the almost precipitous descent clothed with dense underwood; we forded the stream, and met our friend's forester, who was expecting our arrival, and had shouted to us as we crossed the ridge.

A storm of rain poured down in torrents while we were clambering up the opposite heights, making for shelter with as much speed as such an ascent permitted. Our place of refuge was a well-known haunt of the shepherds and banditti. It could not be called a cave, but was a hollow under a mass of insulated rock, worn away in the disintegrated granite, the harder shell of which formed an umbrella-shaped canopy, protecting us from the rain. It was miserably cold; but there were no dry materials at hand for lighting a fire, though the blackened rock and heaps of ashes and half-burnt logs looked very tempting.

Under such circumstances, the best thing to be done was to apply ourselves to the contents of Madame ——'s basket, as we had still harder work before us. The contents were just displayed when my fellow-traveller made his appearance. I had lost sight of him in the bush while hurrying on, he having dismounted, and left his mule to be led up by a shepherd. He, too, had sought shelter in the nearest rock he could find. It had a cavity with a low aperture, into which he thrust himself head-foremost. What was his surprise at beholding a pair of eyes glaring at him through the gloom! The thing—whether it were man or beast he could not at the moment distinguish—shrunk back. He, too, recoiled and made a sudden exit. Presently he saw a pair of legs protruding on the further side of the rock, which it appeared was perforated from both extremities, and the thing, serpent-like, gradually wriggled itself out. Then stood erect, shaggy and rough as a wild beast startled from its lair, one of the shepherd boys, who had also crept into the cavity for refuge from the storm. He cast one look of astonishment at the intruder, turned round, and, leaping into the bush, disappeared without uttering a word.

“Perhaps he took you for a detective in plain clothes, conscience-struck for having assisted to harbour the proscribed brigands!”

Our meal despatched, and the weather clearing, we began clambering up a mountain side, as steep as the ridge of a house; and the mules, being useless, were sent down in charge of the muleteer to the ford of the torrent. Signor F——'s forest spread over the whole face of the mountain, and how much further he best knew. We understood that he had a larger tract in another direction.

Trackless pine forests—some belonging to the communes, others to private individuals,—clothe the lower ranges of the mountains through all this part of the island. Vizzavona, which we crossed on our way to Ajaccio, and Aitona, lying to the south-west of the Niolo, belong to the State, and the French Admiralty draw from them large supplies of timber shipped to Toulon; especially the finest masts used in their navy. The Corsican pine-forests have been famous from early times. Theophrastus[28] mentions a ship built by the Romans with this timber, of such large dimensions as to carry fifty sails; and Sextus Pompeius, seizing this island as well as Sicily and Sardinia, drew from its forests the means of maintaining his naval supremacy.

Our “man of the woods” appeared to have hardly earned, and well to merit, the noble property in the possession of which he rejoiced. Yet he described himself as poor in the midst of his seeming wealth, impoverished to get together vast tracts of country, from which, at present, he received no return. His object was to obtain a market for sale of his timber, which he said could be floated down the rivers to the sea-coast at a moderate expense. Having seen, as we had, the Norwegian timber floating down rivers, precipitated over rapids, and rafted over immense lakes, during a _flottage_ to the sea which it sometimes takes two years to accomplish[29], we could find no difficulty in believing that advantage might be taken of the rivers on either watershed of the central chain in Corsica, to bear this, the only wealth of these elevated regions, to the coast, which is nowhere more than about fifty miles distant. Of the anchorage and depth of water at the mouths of the rivers, I have no precise information, except so far that Signor F—— assured us there would be no difficulty in shipping his timber.

I had not counted on such an exhausting effort as climbing a thousand feet nearly perpendicular on the rocky and rugged surface of a mountain forest in Corsica demanded. Accustomed to traverse some of the finest pine-forests of Norway in a light _carriole_ on excellent roads, or to canter along their avenues on little spirited horses, its native breed, without any feeling of fatigue, I had imagined our present enterprise to be much easier than it proved. Indeed, had it not been that the tangled roots of the pines, forming a network on the denuded surface of the rocks, afforded secure footing and a firm hold, and that, clasping the giant stems, one could take breath on the edge of the shelving cliffs, I should never have scrambled, and pulled myself, up to the summit.

[Illustration: PINUS MARITIMA.]

[Illustration: PINUS LARICCIO.]

[Illustration: CONE OF THE PINUS LARICCIO.]

Our “man of the woods,” notwithstanding his great bulk, was agile as a mountain-goat, leaping from crag to crag, and striking off in every direction where he could show us trees of the largest growth. Marmocchi mentions four species of the pine in his catalogue of the indigenous trees growing in Corsica. Of two of these, _Pinus Pinea_ (the stone pine), and _Pinus Sylvestris_ (our common Scotch fir), I did not remark any specimens in the forests we had an opportunity of examining, nor do they equal the others in grandeur and value. But both the _Pinus Lariccio_ and the _Pinus Maritima_ are magnificent trees. They were mingled in the forest I am now describing, the _Lariccio_ prevailing.

The _Pinus Maritima_, so well known to all travellers in Italy and Greece, and to others by its picturesque effect in the landscapes of Claude, has often its trunk clear of boughs till near the top, which spreads out in an umbrella-shaped head, with a dense mass of foliage; and, where the stem is not so denuded, the tree has the same rounded contour of boughs. Both are figured and described in Lambert's magnificent work on the GENUS PINUS; but, unfortunately, from very insignificant specimens; those of the Pinus Maritima being taken from a tree at Sion House, only twenty feet high. The spines of the Pinus Maritima are longer than those of the Pinus Lariccio, and the branches more pensile. The engravings for the present work are from specimens brought from Corsica. Mr. Lambert's description, however, coincides with my own observations in the Corsican forests. He says:—“The branches are very numerous, and bear long filiform leaves. The cones are nearly the same size as Pinus Rigida. They are so remarkably smooth and glossy, that they at once distinguish their species. In shedding their seeds, they seem to expand very little.”[30] Mr. Lambert considers it to be the same species as the πεύκος, _Pinus Picea_ of Greece, which grow on the high mountains, Olympus, Pindus, Parnassus, &c.; and quotes an extract from Dr. Sibthorp's papers, published in Walpole's _Turkey_, remarking that the πεύκος furnished a useful resin, used in Attica to preserve wine from becoming acid, and supplying tar and pitch for shipping. “The resinous parts of the wood,” he says, “are cut into small pieces, and serve for candles.”

The _Pinus Lariccio_ is more disposed to retain its lower branches than the Pinus Maritima, and has a more angular character both in the boughs and the footstalks of its tassels. The spines are shorter. The boughs slightly droop, but by no means in the degree of the spruce fir or the _larch_. From this circumstance, however, it probably derives its name, though it has nothing else in the slightest degree common with the larch; and writers who speak of the “Corsican larch” betray their readers into serious error. The Pinus Lariccio is figured in Mr. Lambert's work from two specimens in the Jardin des Plantes at Paris, about thirty feet high and three feet in girth, in 1823. Their age is not mentioned. Don, quoted in this work, remarks that “this pine is totally distinct from all the varieties of Pinus Sylvestris, with which, however, it in some respects agrees. It differs in the branches being shorter and more regularly verticellate. The leaves are one-third longer; cones shorter, ovate, and quite straight, with depressed scales, opening freely to shed the seed. The wood is more weighty, resinous, and, consequently, more compact, stronger, and more flexible than Pinus Sylvestris. Its bark is finer and much more entire.” The Pinus Lariccio is also at once distinguishable from the Pinus Maritima growing in the same forest, by the bark alone. Drawings are here given of (1) the exterior and (2) interior coats, from specimens brought from Corsica. They are very thick, and peel off in large flakes, the inner layer being most delicately veined, and of a rich crimson hue.

[Illustration: BARK OF THE PINUS LARICCIO.]

“I observed,” says Mr. Hawkins, quoted by Lambert, “on Cyllene, Taygetus, and the mountains of Thasos, a sort of fir, which, though called πεύκος by the inhabitants, and resembling that of the lower regions, has the foliage much darker, and the growth of the tree more regular and straight. The elevated region on which it grew leads me to suspect it must be different from the common πεύκος.”[31] Mr. Lambert adds:—“The Pinus Lariccio is, I have no doubt, the tree here mentioned, especially as it is known to grow in Greece, and has been found by Mr. Webb near the summit of Mount Ida, in Phrygia.”[32] We are inclined, however, to think that this remark requires confirmation by more exact details.

The Pinus Lariccio grows to a greater height than the Pinus Maritima. In this forest Signor F—— estimated some of the finest specimens of the latter at from sixty to seventy feet in length, while those of the Lariccio could not be less than 120 feet, and perhaps more, with an average circumference of about nine feet. Some little experience enabled us to confirm this estimate.

But these dimensions are often exceeded. In the neighbouring forest of Valdianello, which, again, abuts on that of Aitona, the chief of the government reserves, there lately stood a Pinus Lariccio, called by the Corsicans “_Le Roi des Arbres_.” At five feet from the ground its girth was upwards of nineteen feet. The height of the tree is not mentioned. The king of the forest is dead, but it boasts a successor worthy of its honours, the girth being, as Marmocchi relates on report, twenty-six feet at one mètre (three feet three inches) from the ground, and only reduced to twenty-one feet where the trunk is fifty-eight feet high. Its entire height is 150 feet, and its branches cover a circumference nearly 100 feet in diameter.

These dimensions are large for European pines, about averaging those of the Norwegian. Growing in a rocky soil, I can easily believe that the timber is, as represented, extremely durable. It was surprising to see in Signor F——'s forest trees of such magnitude springing from fissures in the granite cliffs, and from ledges of rocks having only a scanty covering of barren soil. The growth must be slow; by counting the rings in some of the fallen trees, I calculated that they had stood about two centuries. The choicest specimens were usually grouped on some platform, or in hollows of the precipitous cliffs. In these positions they are often exposed to the worst of enemies, such spots being the haunts of the brigands and shepherds; and it was lamentable to observe the destruction caused by their fires in all parts of the wood. Huge half-burnt logs lay at the foot of some of the finest pines, and the flames had not only scorched all vegetation within reach, but eaten into the heart of the trees.

This may be considered as one of the few virgin forests remaining in Corsica. The vast consumption by the Genoese, and afterwards by the French, governments, has greatly exhausted the forests; and it is only in the inaccessible parts of the country, where there are no roads, that timber of large dimensions is found. Even here they were felling the smaller trees, sawing them into planks, and carrying them away on mules, one plank balancing another on each side of the pack-saddle. We ventured to suggest to our “man of the woods” the advantages of sawmills, a machinery of the simplest possible construction, adopted in North America, Norway, and all forest countries, where, as here, there is abundant water-power. All such industrial resources are wanting in Corsica, but our friend was too shrewd not to be alive to the value of the suggestion.

Our course through the forest had led us round to the flank of the mountain, shelving down to the torrent we forded on our arrival. A descent is generally considered an easy affair: so we found this in comparison with the ascent; but the declivity was formidable, there being no sort of path, and we had to work our way over and amongst huge masses of rock and slippery boulders, and jumping from crag to crag, sliding, rolling, and tumbling, not without some severe falls, we at last reached the bottom.

Remounting our mules, a very pleasant change—active, light-stepping beasts as they were,—we rode slowly on our return to Corte, often looking back at the broad forest-clad mountains, with the snowy dome of Monte Rotondo in the distance. Signor F——, anxious to supply us with all the information we required, lost no opportunity of pointing out remarkable objects.

“Do you see that _paése_?” he said, pointing to some grey buildings about five miles off, on the right bank of the Golo; “that is Soveria, the birth-place of Cervione, one of Napoleon's best generals. He fell in the battle of Ratisbon. His last words to the emperor, when ordered on a desperate attack,” said our friend, with Corsican feeling “were, ‘_Je vous recommande ma famille_.’”

Valery relates an amusing anecdote of this General Cervione. Having the command at Rome, which he exercised with great severity, it became his duty to convey the order to Pope Pius VII. for abdicating his temporal power and being sent away, which he executed harshly. When Pius VII. was afterwards at the Tuileries, Cervione, with other generals, came to pay him his respects. The pope, struck by his pure Italian pronunciation, complimented him on it. “_Santo Padre_,” said Cervione, “_sono quasi Italiano._”—“_Come?_”—“_Sono Corso._”—“_Oh! oh!_”—“_Sono Cervione._”—“_Oh! oh! oh!_” At this terrible recollection the pope shrank aghast, hastily retreating to the fireside.

“Further on,” said our conductor, “I see it plainly, there is an old grey house on the top of a rock; a poor place, but the birthplace of Pascal Paoli. He resided there after he became our chief, but would not have the home of his fathers altered.”

Near Soveria is Alando, the native place of Sambuccio, the patriot leader in the first insurrection against the Genoese. All the neighbourhood of Corte is classic ground in Corsican history.

We returned there to a late dinner.

CHAP. XIX.

_The Forest of Asco.—Corsican Beasts of Chase.—The Moufflon.—Increase of Wild Animals.—The last of the Banditti._

Our good “man of the woods” joined us at dinner. It was a just source of pride to him that he had shown his magnificent forest to foreigners as enthusiastic as himself, and who might, perhaps, forward his designs for making it profitable. In this view he now wrote the subjoined particulars.[33]