CHAPTER VII.

A RIDE THROUGH THE DISTRICT OF OREZZA TO MOROSAGLIA.

I wished to go from Oreto to Morosaglia, Paoli's native place, through Orezza. Marcantonio had promised to accompany me, and to provide good horses. He accordingly awoke me early in the morning, and made ready to go. He had put on his best clothes, wore a velvet jacket, and had shaved himself very smoothly. The women fortified us for the journey with a good breakfast, and we mounted our little Corsican horses, and rode proudly forth.

It makes my heart glad yet to think of that Sunday morning, and the ride through this romantic and beautiful land of Orezza--over the green hills, through cool dells, over gushing brooks, through the green oak-woods. Far as the eye can reach on every side, those shady, fragrant chestnut-groves; those giants of trees, in size such as I had never seen before. Nature has here done everything, man so little. His chestnuts are often a Corsican's entire estate; and in many instances he has only six goats and six chestnut-trees, which yield him his polleta. Government has already entertained the idea of cutting down the forests of chestnuts, in order to compel the Corsican to till the ground; but this would amount to starving him. Many of these trees have trunks twelve feet in thickness. With their full, fragrant foliage, long, broad, dark leaves, and fibred, light-green fruit-husks, they are a sight most grateful to the eye.

Beyond the paese of Casalta, we entered a singularly romantic dell, through which the Fiumalto rushes. You find everywhere here serpentine, and the exquisite marble called Verde Antico. The engineers called the little district of Orezza the elysium of geology; the waters of the stream roll the beautiful stones along with them. Through endless balsamic groves, up hill and down hill, we rode onwards to Piedicroce, the principal town of Orezza, celebrated for its medicinal springs; for Orezza, rich in minerals, is also rich in mineral waters.

Francesco Marmocchi says, in his geography of the island: "Mineral springs are the invariable characteristic of countries which have been upheaved by the interior forces. Corsica, which within a limited space presents the astonishing and varied spectacle of the thousandfold workings of this ancient struggle between the heated interior of the earth and its cooled crust, was not likely to form an exception to this general rule."

Corsica has, accordingly, its cold and its warm mineral springs; and although these, so far as they have been counted, are numerous, there can be no doubt that others still remain undiscovered.

The natural phenomena of this beautiful island, and particularly its mineralogy, have by no means as yet had sufficient attention directed to them.

Up to the present time, fourteen mineral springs, warm and cold, are accurately and fully known. The distribution of these salubrious waters over the surface of the island, more especially in respect to their temperature, is extremely unequal. The region of the primary granite possesses eight, all warm, and containing more or less sulphur, except one; while the primary ophiolitic and calcareous regions possess only six, one alone of which is warm.

The springs of Orezza, bursting forth at many spots, lie on the right bank of the Fiumalto. The main spring is the only one that is used; it is cold, acid, and contains iron. It gushes out of a hill below Piedicroce in great abundance, from a stone basin. No measures have been taken for the convenience of strangers visiting the wells; these walk or ride under their broad parasols down the hills into the green forest, where they have planted their tents. After a ride of several hours under the burning sun, and not under a parasol, I found this vehemently effervescing water most delicious.

Piedicroce lies high. Its slender church-tower looks airily down from the green hill. The Corsican churches among the mountains frequently occupy enchantingly beautiful and bold sites. Properly speaking, they stand already in the heavens; and when the door opens, the clouds and the angels might walk in along with the congregation.

A majestic thunderstorm was flaming round Piedicroce, and echoed powerfully from hill to hill. We rode into the paese to escape the torrents of rain. A young man, fashionably dressed, sprang out of a house, and invited us to enter his locanda. I found other two gentlemen within, with daintily-trimmed beard and moustache, and of very active but polished manners. They immediately wished to know my commands; and nimble they were in executing them--one whipped eggs, another brought wood and fire, the third minced meat. The eldest of them had a nobly chiselled but excessively pale face, with a long Slavonic moustache. So many cooks to a simple meal, and such extremely genteel ones, I was now for the first time honoured with. I was utterly amazed till they told me who they were. They were two fugitive Modenese, and a Hungarian. The Magyar told me, as he stewed the meat, that he had been seven years lieutenant-general. "Now I stand here and cook," he added; "but such is the way of the world, when one has come to be a poor devil in a foreign country, he must not stand on ceremony. We have set up a locanda here for the season at the wells, and have made very little by it."

As I looked at his pale face--he had caught fever at Aleria--I felt touched.

We sat down together, Magyar, Lombard, Corsican, and German, and talked of old times, and named many names of modern celebrity or notoriety. How silent many of these become before the one great name, Paoli! I dare not mention them beside him; the noble citizen, the man of intellect and action, will not endure their company.

The storm was nearly over, but the mountains still stood plunged in mist. We mounted our horses in order to cross the hills of San Pietro and reach Ampugnani. Thunder growled and rolled among the misty summits, and clouds hung on every side. A wild and dreary sadness lay heavily on the hills; now and then still a flash of lightning; mountains as if sunk in a sea of cloud, others stretching themselves upwards like giants; wherever the veil rends, a rich landscape, green groves, black villages--all this, as it seemed, flying past the rider; valley and summit, cloister and tower, hill after hill, like dream-pictures hanging among clouds. The wild elemental powers, that sleep fettered in the soul of man, are ready at such moments to burst their bonds, and rush madly forth. Who has not experienced this mood on a wild sea, or when wandering through the storm? and what we are then conscious of is the same elemental power of nature that men call passion, when it takes a determinate form. Forward, Antonio! Gallop the little red horses along this misty hill, fast! faster! till clouds, hills, cloisters, towers, fly with horse and rider. Hark! yonder hangs a black church-tower, high up among the mists, and the bells peal and peal Ave Maria--signal for the soul to calm itself.

The villages are here small, picturesquely scattered everywhere among the hills, lying high or in beautiful green valleys. I counted from one point so many as seventeen, with as many slender black church-towers. We passed numbers of people on the road; men of the old historic land of Orezza and Rostino, noble and powerful forms; their fathers once formed the guard of Paoli.

At Polveroso, we had a magnificent glimpse of a deep valley, in the middle of which lies Porta, the principal town of the little district of Ampugnani, embosomed in chestnuts, now dripping with the thunder-shower. Here stood formerly the ancient Accia, a bishopric, not a trace of which remains. Porta is an unusually handsome place, and many of its little houses resemble elegant villas. The small yellow church has a pretty façade, and a surprisingly graceful tower stands, in Tuscan fashion, as isolated campanile or belfry by its side. From the hill of San Pietro, you look down into the rows of houses, and the narrow streets that group themselves about the church, as into a trim little theatre. Porta is the birthplace of Sebastiani.

The mountains now become balder, and more severe in form, losing the chestnuts that previously adorned them. I found huge thistles growing by the roadside, large almost as trees, with magnificent, broad, finely-cut leaves, and hard woody stem. Marcantonio had sunk into complete silence. The Corsicans speak little, like the Spartans; my host of Oreto was dumb as Harpocrates. I had ridden with him a whole day through the mountains, and, from morning till evening had never been able to draw him into conversation. Only now and then he threw out some _naïve_ question: "Have you cannons? Have you hells in your country? Do fruits grow with you? Are you wealthy?"

After Ave Maria, we at length reached the canton of Rostino or Morosaglia, the country of Paoli, the most illustrious of all the localities celebrated in Corsican history, and the central point of the old democratic Terra del Commune. We were still upon the Campagna, when Marcantonio took leave of me; he was going to pass the night in a house at some distance, and return home with the horses on the morrow. He gave me a brotherly kiss, and turned away grave and silent; and I, happy to find myself in this land of heroes and free men, wandered on alone towards the convent of Morosaglia. I have still an hour on the solitary plain, and, before entering Paoli's house, I shall continue the history of his people and himself at the point where I left off.