CHAPTER I.—TO ISOLA ROSSA THROUGH NEBBIO.

Crossing from Bastia the hills which form the continuation of the Serra of Cape Corso, you reach the district of Nebbio, on the other side of the island. The excellent road first ascends Monte Bello for about a league. To the left, you look down upon the plain of Biguglia and Furiani, and the large inlet into which the river Bevinco flows. On gaining the ridge, the sea becomes visible on both sides. The road now descends towards the western shore—the eastern has vanished, and the enchanting panorama of the Gulf of San Fiorenzo suddenly unfolds itself to the eye. A shore of low, reddish rocks, almost without vegetation, and singularly zigzagged, encircles the deep blue basin. The sight is grand, strange, and southern.

On the declivity of the mountain stands the gloomy village of Barbiguano; the road passes it through groves of chestnuts and olives. This road was made by Count Marbœuf, and it was here that Bernadotte worked among the other labourers. The _conducteur_ of the Diligence pointed out to me that its vast curves describe an _M_.

We were now approaching the beautiful Gulf of San Fiorenzo, which lay within its silent, monotonous, red margin, smiling the "unnumbered smile" that Æschylus speaks of, from the countless waves and wavelets that crisped its lustrous surface. And from a valley watered by a winding brook smiled gaily back to it thousands on thousands of laurel-roses or oleanders, whose red blossoms clothed its slopes far and wide. In our northern homes the brook is glad when it can clothe its margin with alder and willow; here, in the beautiful south, it decks itself with the gorgeous oleander.

The region is almost entirely uncultivated. I saw frequently, here and there, forsaken or half-ruined houses, picturesque objects in the landscape, for they were covered over and over with ivy, whose festoons obscured the very doors and windows. In such little ivy houses must the elves dwell, and titter, and twinkle their roguish eyes when a sunbeam or the moonlight steals in through the lattice of creepers to see what knavery the little wights are about. The history of those who once lived there was perhaps bloody and cruel; the Barbary Corsairs may have expelled them, or the murderous wars with Genoa, or the Vendetta.

Old Genoese towers are seen at intervals along the coast.

The country becomes more and more picturesque in the neighbourhood of San Fiorenzo. To the right stretched now the full expanse of the gulf—to the left, sweeping round it in a wide semicircle, towered far in the background the amphitheatre of the hills. They are the proud hills of Col di Tenda, at the foot of which the Romans were once defeated by the Corsicans. They encircle the little province of Nebbio—the district around the Gulf of San Fiorenzo, towards which alone the amphitheatre of mountains opens. It is a hilly province of great aridity, but rich in wine, in fruit, in olives, and chestnuts. Since the earliest times, Nebbio has been considered as a natural stronghold, and all invaders of the island, from the Romans to the French, have sought to force an entrance, and to effect a firm footing at this point—a circumstance which has made it the theatre of innumerable conflicts.

Nebbio, as at present divided, contains four cantons or pieves—San Fiorenzo, Oletta, Murato, and Santo Pietro di Tenda. San Fiorenzo is the principal place.

We reached the little town, which consists of but few houses, and has only five hundred and eighty inhabitants, at mid-day. It has a magnificent situation on one of the finest gulfs of Corsica. The only large valley of Nebbio—the valley of Aliso—traversed by a stream of the same name, lies before the town. The Aliso flows lazily through a marsh that poisons the whole region with malaria. On its margin stood a solitary fan-palm, giving, in the sultry glare of noon, a tropical character to the whole landscape. Some women and children lay idling round a cistern, their metal water-pitchers beside them—a group that harmonized admirably with the palm. The Corsican strand on the gulfs is, throughout, idyllic; its pictures have a half Homeric, half Old Testament character.

In a quarter of an hour I had walked over the town. A little fort, which, with its cupola-crowned tower, looks more like a Turkish mosque than a castle, protects the harbour, in which a few fishing-boats lay at anchor. The situation of San Fiorenzo is so singularly advantageous—the gulf, one of the finest in the Mediterranean, holds out such tempting commercial facilities, that one cannot but be astonished at the prevailing desolation. Napoleon, in Antommarchi's memoirs, mentions the place in these terms: "San Fiorenzo has one of the finest situations I have ever seen. It lies most favourably for commerce; it touches France, borders on Italy; its landing-places are safe and convenient; its roads can accommodate large fleets. I should have built there a large and beautiful city, which would have become a metropolis."

According to Ptolemy, the old city of Cersunum must have stood in the neighbourhood of the gulf. The considerable town of Nebbio lay here in the Middle Ages, and its ruins are still visible half a mile from the present San Fiorenzo. On an eminence rises still the old Cathedral of the Bishops of Nebbio, very much dilapidated, but still imposing. It exhibits the style of the Pisan Basilica, and was probably built in the eleventh or twelfth century. The church was dedicated to Santa Maria dell' Assunta. Beside it stand the ruins of the bishop's residence. The bishops who lived here were no less warlike than the most turbulent of the Corsican seigniors. They gave themselves the title of Counts of Nebbio, and it is related that they appeared in the popular assembly of the Terra del Commune with their swords by their side; and that when they read mass, they had always a pair of loaded pistols lying on the altar. The city fell into decay like Accia and Sagone, two other considerable cities and bishoprics of Corsica. At the present day many Roman coins are found in that quarter, and many urns have been dug out of Roman tombs there.

The more modern town of San Fiorenzo was one of the first places which gave its adherence to the Bank of Genoa, in consequence of which the city enjoyed many rights and privileges. The Bank sent over a Castellano and a Podestà yearly, who conducted affairs along with four consuls. In later wars, the Castle of San Fiorenzo was frequently of importance.

The fresh-caught fish with which our table was here supplied, were excellent. Scarcely had we despatched them when we resumed our journey. The road now for some distance leaves the shore, and ascends a range of hills which sometimes shut out the view of the sea. This coast country continues mountainous and barren into the province of Balagna, and as far as Isola Rossa. The Plutonic forces have scattered large fragments of rock on every side. They cover the declivities in gigantic blocks or shattered into debris; slate, limestone, granite, are everywhere visible.

The olive and the chestnut are no longer so abundant; but the wild olive-shrub (oleastro) covers the hills, with the arbutus, rosemary, myrtle, and erica. All this shrubbery had suffered from the sun; the reddish brown tinge of the twigs, the gray of the olive-bushes, and the weather-worn stones, gave the region, as far as the eye reached, a melancholy tone. The glimmering of the heated air is the only motion in this desert stillness; not a bird sings, only the grasshopper chirps. Sometimes you see a flock of black goats lying under an olive-tree, or scouring over the rocks, seized with the panic-terror.

From time to time we passed little lonely wayside taverns, where the mules of the _diligenza_ were changed, or we stopped where a spring filled a stone trough, at which man and beast were equally glad to slake their thirst.

I saw in some places little fields of grain—barley and rye. The grain had been already cut down, and was being threshed upon the field. The arrangement for this is very simple. In the middle of the field is a little round threshing-floor, built of stone, and upon this the Corsican throws down his sheaves, and has them trodden out by oxen, which drag a heavy stone behind them. I observed that, contrary to the scriptural injunction, the ox was always muzzled. Innumerable threshing-floors of this description were scattered over the fields, yet no village was in sight. Near the threshing-floors stood little barns, four square erections of stone, with flat roofs. The circular threshing-floors, and these little gray houses, dotting the fields far and wide, had a most singular appearance; they seemed the dwellings of gnomes. The Corsican laughs when you tell him how the husbandman of the north swings the flail with his own arms; such galley-slave toil he would submit to at no price.

During the whole journey I saw no wheeled vehicle but our own. Now and again a Corsican met us on horseback; his double-barrel slung behind him, and his parasol over his head.

At length, after crossing the little river Ostriconi, we again approached the shore. The coast has frequently only an elevation of a hundred feet; then it again shoots upwards in the steepest and rudest forms. The mountains grow more and more imposing as you approach Isola Rossa. They are the romantic summits of Balagna—the Promised Land of the Corsicans, for it literally flows with honey and oil. Some of the mountains wore snow-caps, and glittered with crystalline splendour.

Yonder lies Isola Rossa before us on the strand! yonder the two gray towers of the Pisans! yonder the blood-red islet-cliffs that give the town its name! What an exquisite little idyl of the sea-shore and the sunset! Silent mountains bending over a silent sea, gray olives holding out to the pilgrim their branches of peace, a hospitable smoke ascending from the hearths—verily, I swear that I am come to the enchanted shore of the Lotus-eaters.