There is no county in Europe whose national character is so ancient, so thoroughly peculiar, as the Island of Corsica. Imagine a vast landscape of Salvator Rosa's, with all the features which he alone was capable of depicting, and whose type he has sought in Calabria and the Abruzzi; add to this a people whose disposition is hardy and obstinate; whose affections, love, hatred, or jealousy, are perpetuated from one generation to another; whose proud and patriotic attachment to their native soil forms part of their earliest existence, and terminates only with their life; also cities cheerful as those of Tuscany, and wild, uncultivated, mountainous districts; you will still have but a feeble representation of Corsica, that picturesque and fertile island of the Mediterranean. The population is divided into two distinct races; the one comprehending the old aboriginal families, the other composed of foreign colonists, the greater part descended from refugees who were compelled to fly from revolutions in Piémont, Genoa, and Tuscany, and were successively deposited in the island, like the layers of lava around a volcano. To the first of these races belong the Paolis and the Pozzo di Borgos; to the second, the Buonapartes and the Salicettis. According to the usual custom among primitive nations, each family forms a clan, and each village a community; sentiments are inherited like the patrimony of the family--it is like ancient Rome suckled by a wolf in the time of the companions of Romulus. The family of the Pozzo di Borgos, as I have already stated, belongs to the aboriginal races; its antiquity may be ascertained by consulting the book of the statutes of Corsica, and also the history of the feudal war between the Castellans of Montechi and the city of Ajaccio, of which they even disputed the sovereignty. One of the family is mentioned in the charters as orator of the people, and at the time the island was under the dominion of Genoa, the illustrious Pozzo di Borgo is described as attorney-general for the provinces of Ajaccio and Sartene; his name, like that of the Paolis, was Pascal. His opponents, even at that period, were from the family of the Bacciochi, then merely merchants of Ajaccio; and his notary was Jerome Buonaparte, who certifies the mission of Captain Secondos Pozzo di Borgo, deputy to the republic of Genoa.[16] There is some pleasure in relating these circumstances, because the life of Count Pozzo di Borgo, during its whole course, appeared to be connected with ancient times. Nothing is forgotten on that burning soil, and we shall again meet with the Paolis, the Buonapartes, the Pozzos, the Bacciochis, and the Salicettis, engaged in the most important conflicts on the theatre of the great world, as they had formerly been in the little town of Ajaccio. [16] "Il nobile Pasquale Pozzo di Borgo, oratore dei popoli di là da' monti in Corsica...." 1584.