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
As soon as the doctor saw the great fly, he began to spread a plaster,
and spread 6000 Spanish fly-plasters, and rolled 100,000 pills. And the
6000 fly-plasters he laid on the fly, and the 100,000 pills he gave it
to swallow. Thereupon the fly became always smaller and smaller, and
when it had become as small as a right fly, it died. Then took they
a great bier and covered it with a snow-white cloth, and on the cloth
they laid the corpse of the fly. And all the women came together and
tore their hair and wept bitterly, because so proper a fly was dead; and
twelve men carried the fly on the bier to the churchyard, and gave it
a Christian burial. Thereafter they were delivered from the evil.—This
fine legend I have related in the words of the Corsican chronicler, up
to the appearance of the miracle-doctor on the scene, who is brought
from Pisa, and who simply kills the fly. The rest I have added.
Porto Vecchio is a little unwalled town, of about two thousand
inhabitants, lying on a gulf of the same name, the last which occurs on
the east coast. It is large and beautiful, and, as it lies opposite the
mainland of Italy, might be made of the highest importance. The Genoese
founded Porto Vecchio in order to ward off the piratical attacks of the
Saracens. They granted many privileges to colonists, to induce people to
settle there; but as the numerous marshes made the locality unhealthy,
fever began to rage, and Porto Vecchio was three times forsaken and left
desolate. Even at the present day, the whole of this large district is
one of the most uncultivated and most thinly peopled in all Corsica, and
is chiefly inhabited by deer and wild swine. Yet the soil is uncommonly
fertile. The surrounding country is rich in olives and vines. Porto
Vecchio itself is built on porphyritic rocks, which are visible on the
surface. I found it almost deserted, as it was August and half of the
inhabitants had fled to the hills.
Northward from this beautiful gulf, the coast runs in straight lines;
the mountain-chain is still visible on the left, till it recedes into
the interior in the district of Salenzara, and leaves behind it those
extensive plains which give to the east coast of Corsica an aspect so
different from that of the west. The whole west of the island is an
uninterrupted series of parallel valleys; the mountain-chains run into
the sea, terminating in promontories and enclosing splendid gulfs. The
east has none of this protending valley-structure; the land loses itself
in flats. The west of Corsica is romantic, picturesque, grand; the east
smooth, monotonous, melancholy. The eye here sweeps over leagues of
level country, seeking for villages, men, life, and discovers nothing
but heaths, dotted here and there with clumps of wild bushes, and
covered with morasses and ponds, extending far along the shore and the
land with gloom.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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