Wanderings in Corsica: Its History and Its Heroes. Vol. 2 of 2Gregorovius, Ferdinand
History
Wanderings in Corsica: Its History and Its Heroes. Vol. 2 of 2
Gregorovius, Ferdinand
Corsica (France) -- Description and travel; Corsica (France) -- History
I went one day with an Alsatian of the tenth regiment, which is at
present distributed over Corsica, to Monte Santa Reparata, and the paese
of the same name. It is difficult to paint in words the picture of such
a Corsican village among the hills. The reader will come nearest to it
if he imagines rows of blackish towers, divided longitudinally so as
properly to be only half towers, and furnished with windows, doors, and
loop-holes. The houses are constructed of granite stones, often totally
undressed, generally only covered with a coating of clay, from which
sometimes plants grow. Very narrow and steep stairs of stone lead up
to the door. The mountain Corsicans probably inhabited the same sort
of dwellings in the times of the Etruscans and Carthaginians. I found
everywhere poverty and a want of cleanliness; swine housing with the
human inmates in cavernous little rooms, into which the light fell
through the door. These poor people live high up on the mountains, in an
ocean of air and light, and yet their abodes are those of troglodytes.
I saw a pale young woman issue from one of these dens with a child in
her arms, and asked her if she had ever felt herself well, since she
lived constantly in the dark. She stared at me, and laughed.
In another house, I found a mother putting her three children to bed.
All three stood naked on the clay floor, and looked sickly and wasted.
The beds on which the poor things slept were very wretched little nests.
These stout-hearted mountaineers are nurtured in poverty and misery.
They are at once huntsmen, herdsmen, and husbandmen. Their sole wealth
is the olive, the oil of which they sell in the towns. But not every
one is rich in olives. Here, therefore, life is rendered miserable, not
by the evils of civilisation, but by those of a primitive condition on
which no advance has been made.
I went into the church, the black façade of which attracted me. The
white spire is new. The steeples of the Corsican churches are not
pointed, but end in a belfry, with a pierced, curving roof. The interior
of the church had a gallery and a great altar, a singularly uncouth
affair of whitened stone, with most extravagant decorations. Above
the altar stood the inscription in Latin: "Holy Reparata, pray for thy
people;" _populus_—it sounds antique and democratic. Some rude attempts
at painting were meant to adorn the walls, and there were niches with
half-projecting columns on each side, their capitals Corinthian, or
entirely fanciful. An interdict lies at present on the Church of the
Holy Reparata, and there is no mass read in it. On the death of their
priest, the people refused to accept of the successor sent by the Bishop
of Ajaccio. They split into two parties, and the feud became bloody.
The interdict which was in consequence laid upon the church, has not
yet settled the dispute.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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