A Wild Sheep Chase. Notes of a little philosophic journey in Corsica. Translated from the French, etc

Introduction

The Wild Sheep Chase — On travelling — The list ofthe travellers — Colomba — Prince Roland Bonaparte — Object of the voyage — At the Caf<5 de la Paix — An impossible cutlet — M. Vincent Bonnaud — The Mouflon ! — Its zoology — The Sartene Mouflon — A strange chase — The pocket book — Wild or tame? — A good sheep dog — Nemorino and his family — Eternal friendship — A letter of invitation — Departure . Page i

Chapter I

ajaccio and its canton The Manouia — Corsica at dawn — The perfume of the island — Smoke — Ajaccio — The Inkstand — A statue imagined — Possessed — The Casa Bonaparte — Its situation — Portrait of Lætitia — The street with the red capsicums — Paris journals — The scandal of the Legion of Honour — At the Cafe du Roi Jerome — The Vendetta — A conversation on banditism— Smooth hair and curly hair — Justice — Mouflon in sight Page i 8

Chapter II

bocognano and la pintica Outlaws — Albert Glatigny — The gendarme and the lyre — Antonio Bellacoscia and Gambetta — La Pintica — Advice of the guidebooks — A notable — Corsican women — Departure for La Pintica— Martha — VI The macchia — The ascent — Cigars and a pipe — The torrent of the Gravona — Thorns without roses — The 'quadrata' — The Palais-Vert — Gorges and precipices — The domain of Bellacoscia — The bandits' houses — Madalena — The little girl — Hospitality — Brunette and blonde — The breakfast — Feat of shooting — Philosophy — Natural vengeance — Persecution — The ferocious brigadier — Beware ! — Antonio's threat — Mercy ! — I defend my hosts — The bandits in 1870 — An election story — A mayor bound — Pardon — A mouflon photographed Page 45

Chapter III Corte And Its Environs

After the mouflon — Foce di Vizzavona — The forest — Since burnt — The cyclamen inn — The old blind woman — The odour of the woods — The Corsican weed — Flight from the Monte Rotondo — Vivario, the Cats — A statue of Diana — Bells in the trees — Pope Formosus — Jean Paul Laurens — Coffee time — Serraggio di Venaco — Pozzo di Borgo — Monster chestnut - trees — Corte — Description — Situation — The two torrents — Pasquale Paoli —The true great Corsican of the Corsicans — Fountains — The young racers — The return of the ashes — Hotel de l'Europe — Peveronata, the Corsican bouillabaisse — Broccio — The Corsican Verdier — The cutler — My walking-stick ! — The Corte Club — Paoli's fool — Minuto Grosso — Palazzo di Corte — The prisoner — The prison — The leathern pipe — The college — The museum — Paoli's throne — Mouflon talk ....... Page 87

Chapter IV La Scala DI Santa Regina

La Scala di Santa Regina — Soveria — Cervoni and Pope Pius VII. — A Corsican mother — The Devil's Bridge — A legend of engineering — The Poggi saw-mill — The Golo — A mule-track — The bandit's son — Carrying arms — Philosophical reflections — The gorges, description — Albertacce — Hospitality — The bandit — Monte Cinto — The Orlandist party — A song of 1789 ...... Page T31 Contents VII

Chapter V Between Corte And Bastia

The scholar's road — Ponte Francardo — Ponte-alla-Leccia — The Lucchesi — A worthy grocer — Moonlight — A night attack — Morosaglia — No lodgings — Official intervention — Midnight — Paoli's house — Clemente the monk — Poor mothers ! — San Pietro d'Accia — Entrance to the Castagniccia — Avenues — The chestnut-tree dowry — Piedicroce — Convent of the Resistance — A fine ruin — Vandalism — Orezza — The hot springs — A local drama — Scheme for a miracle — Green Orezza — The Fium' Alto — Casinca — Folelli — The eastern coast — Marshes and malaria — Meres — Mariana — Erudition — La Canonica — Marius and Sylla were Corsicans — Mere of Biguglia . . . Page 163

Chapter VI Bastia

General aspect — Harbour quarter — The Place Saint Nicolas — The Emperor with the large feet — The theatre — A reverie — Albert Glatigny — The harbour — The museum — The Hotel de France — M. Staffe — Cardinal Fesch's collection — A sketch interrupted — The tall hat — Cafe Andreani — Louis Capazza — The navigable balloon — Tortonism ......... Page roo

Chapter VII The North Coast

: FROM BASTIA TO CALVI On the north coast — Cape Corso — A meditation at Luri — Seneca and exile — The Col di Teghime — Barbaggio — San Fiorenzo — The ' zerri ' — Isola Rossa — The monolith of Algajola — For sale — Algajola — A town of ruins — A lament — Lumio — A cathedral sheepfold — Calvi — M. Capifali — An Arab — The citadel — The street del Filo — Christopher Columbus— -The Abbe Peretti — Calenzana — Prince Pierre's fountain— A tomb Page

Chapter VIII The West Coast

Lozzi Peo — Serafino the bandit — A surprise — Philosophical sketch in water-colours — Marie's triumph — The young Calenzanese girls — The bridge of the Fango — Arquebusades — The Gulf of La Girolata — The Gulf of Porto Partinello — Les Calanches — Piana — The story of a soupe a foignon — A sham mouflon — The Saint Pierre fountain — Carghese — Stephanopoli — The Gulf of Sagona — Calcatoggio — Ajaccio ......... Page 241

Chapter IX The South Of The Island

Return to Ajaccio — The Milelli grotto — The oracle — The Campo dell' Oro — Cauro — Sampiero and Vanina — For the Odeon — Olmeto — A bunch of violets — Corsican tombs — Propriano — In sight of Sartene — Our native land — Dolmens — Sartene — The Hotel Cesar — In lions — The old quarter — King Theodore — Story of a bandit of Sartene — The mouflon yard — From Sartene to Bonifacio — The convent of the Santa Trinita — Bonifacio — The chalk rock — The King of Aragon's staircase — The Marina — The Corsican Gibraltar — In sight of Sardinia — Sardinian bandits — The house of Charles V. — The Templars' Church — Caves — Porto Vecchio — Amsterdam — The mouflon ! ! ! Page 265 CONCLUSION

INTRODUCTION.

The Wild Sheep Chase — On travelling — The list of the travellers — Colomba — Prince Roland Bonaparte — Object of the voyage — At the Cafe de la Paix — An impossible cutlet — M. Vincent Bonnaud — The Mouflon! — Its zoology — The Sartene Mouflon — A strange chase — The pocket-book — Wild or tame ? — A good sheep dog — Nemorino and his family — Eternal friendship — A letter of invitation — Departure. If in the month of August 1887 a turning table had announced to me that on the 20th September I should quit the sands of Brittany, where I usually pass the summer en famille, and should embark on the transatlantic steamer La Manouia at Marseilles to go and visit the Isle of Corsica in the company of the young Prince Roland Bonaparte, I should certainly have replied to that three-legged sibyl, ' O B trembling table, it is not the future that thou fore tellest, but a visit to Charenton.' ** Everything in heaven and earth, in fact, conspired to keep me at home, and more powerfully than any thing else my own ideas about travelling, the phil osophy of which is summed up in the famous fable of the Two Pigeons.

The search for happiness by a systematic change of place was already vain in the eyes of the wise man before the invention of railroads, but since that invention it has become altogether an illusion. Now I profess the doctrine that whoever has a nest ought to stay there with his little brood. Misfortune is a keen-eyed eagle which hovers over the forest and pounces upon defenceless little ones. And has not La Fontaine said ' L'absence est le plus grand des maux.' And yet on the 20th of September the said Manouia weighed anchor at five o'clock in the evening, carrying among her passengers Prince Roland Bonaparte, his secretary M. Vincent Bonnaud, his librarian M. Escard, and your humble servant, his poet. The little company of excursionists was completed by a photographer, M. Philippon of Versailles, armed to the teeth with his engines of 1 The French Bedlam.

Introduction 3 reproduction, by M. Pascal Sinibaldi, the Prince's huntsman, and lastly by M. Charles Clement, his valet de chambre. Two guns, one belonging to M. Vincent Bonnaud, the other to M. Pascal Sinibaldi, both of whom were born in Corsica — the former at Sartene, the latter at Calvi — were to serve for our defence, and if need be for our commissariat. They threatened alike the bandits and the partridges. M. Escard had a dagger, the photographer a swordstick, true and unmistakable, to which he owed certain mis adventures. For my part I had my natural gaiety, and Charles all the umbrellas ! As for the Prince, he was sufficiently protected among the Corsicans by the name he bears, one of his great-uncles having made it rather illustrious towards the end of the last century and the be ginning of this by certain victories, of which people still talk sometimes, not only at Ajaccio, this uncle's birthplace, but in other parts of the planet.

Though, as for his Code ! But let us proceed. On the 20th of September, then, I was travelling towards this old Cyrnos of the Greeks, which I had never thought much about until I found myself on this steamer. What I was going to do I had hardly considered. Among the many paradoxical ideas of which my jovial philosophy is mother and nurse, that of being the discoverer of a French department, about which some I 500 volumes perhaps have been already published, was certainly not one which could have come to me, even from the moon. But Providence disguised as Chance often leads the dance of Destiny. Before we started I was quite content with the ethnographic notions about Corsica which Colomba supplies to the majority of civilised people. Merimee's celebrated novel is a very complete account in a pictorial form of the manners and character and physiological tendencies of the little people who have raised banditism to the dignity of an institution.

This romance of the vendetta will remain the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Batracho myomachia of these islanders whom France has annexed but not amalgamated, and flatters herself she has, if not Frenchified, at least dis-Italianised. Literature has produced nothing more lifelike than Colomba. Its accuracy is surprising even at this day ; and as the work dates from 1830 one sees at once what great progress has been realised — in fifty eight years ! — by our glorious administration in thine isle, O Napoleon ! Perhaps, my Emperor, it was the demonstration of this consoling truth which was the object of the expedition organised by thy grand-nephew. Perhaps Introduction 5 he desired to make it on the spot. ' What progress has Corsica made since Colomba ? ' said he to himself as he awoke one morning. ' I must go and see into that with a poet.' The answer is given in this book.

Corsica since the time of Colomba has progressed as far as — Colomba ! But we must not anticipate. At that time I not only was not acquainted with this amiable Prince Roland, who was to become my friend, I had never even seen him. Absolutely without interest in that class of politics which may be called domestic, I could not have told exactly what relation he bore, in that innumerable family of the Bonapartes, to the terrible phantom of St. Helena. Of course I found out all about it at once, and blessed the lucky chance which was to bring me into relations with the heir of the liberal, or rather republican, branch of the tree. What a pleasant lot it is to be courtier to a prince to whom you can say anything that comes into your head, even that Marat had good qualities, while he replies that he had some of the best.

So from the first day I became an enthusiastic Rolandist, and I strongly recommend this political party. And the voyage itself was charming. But all this does not explain how it came about that a literary artist got mixed up in an expedition of this scientific character ; and in the group, equipped as I have described them, my part is scarcely defined. Well, this is how it came about. As for Corsica, thanks to Colomba, I had nothing to learn about it except one thing, which none of the 1500 books which have been published about the island have touched upon, and that one thing was The Chase of the Mouflon. The chase of the mouflon was for me what the chase of the ' chastre ' had been for that Marseillais Mery ! You remember that wild chase which carries the hunter right into the Caucasus. The ' chastre,' an animal so exceedingly rare that it does not exist at all, was not more fascinating to the cynegetic imagi nation of Mery than the mouflon was dazzling to mine.

I believed in the mouflon. He inhabited the Corsica of my dreams. I could not call up to myself the picture of the macchia without a group of mouflons showing their corkscrew horns over the top of thc bushes. I even introduced one into Colomba ; may thc late M. Merimee forgive me ! But this book shall tell the truth respecting thc mouflon of Corsica, and alas ! it is a discouraging truth. The mouflon is a production of the Zoological Introduction 7 Gardens. They manufacture it there, perhaps by some infamous union of rams and she-goats. But more of this anon. However, I was at that time as full of faith in the mouflon as Buffon himself ; and it was with my mind full of this apocalyptic animal that one morning I entered thc Cafe de la Paix in the Boulevard des Capucines and called for breakfast.

The waiters of the Cafe de Ia Paix are most attentive to their customers, and always inquire immediately what they will be pleased to take, for they have everything. ' Some mouflon,' I said at once, without stopping to think. They turned pale. And after a crossfire of glances, silent but eloquent, between my table and the counter, one of the superintendents came forward and informed me solemnly, ' We have none left.' That is the canonical expression for such a short coming ; a waiter of the highest style would use it on the raft of the Medusa. But my appetite was so keen that I understood him literally. ' What could they have left if they had no mouflon left, a thing which nobody asks for ? ' The logic of this thought, uttered half aloud, seemed forcibly to strike a gentleman who was breakfasting at a neighbouring table, and even drew from him one of those frank and contagious laughs which denote the boulevardier with his keen sense of the ridiculous.

He was a man of about fifty, with regular, refined features, a pleasant expression, an air of good breeding, without any stiffness and with a courteous manner, in whom I recognised a French officer in the guise of a civilian. The uniform, like the cassock, models after one and the same type, all who wear or have worn epaulettes, and have served their country. ' Excuse me, sir,' he said, ' for interfering between the waiter and you, but I am a Corsican, and your idea of asking for a cutlet of mouflon for breakfast sent me back in imagination to my own country, which I have not visited for thirty years. I saw the light first at Sartene where the mouflon abounds — and even exists ! I have eaten it ! You may be sure that if there were any to be had at the Cafe de la Paix I should have some at this moment on my plate.

In default of mouflon I advise you to try some Seine gudgeon ; it is excellent here, worthy even of the fork of — Caliban.' 1 ' What ! ' I began, blushing up ; ' you know ? ' ' Why, who else, in these gloomy times, would 1 The author's pseudonym in the Figaro. Introduction 9 think of wanting to taste mouflon on the boulevards of Paris ? You have betrayed yourself ! ' And this was how I made acquaintance with my friend M. Vincent Bonnaud, whom I shall love (as Jean des Entommeures loved Panurge) all my life. Is it necessary to add that in a moment we were sitting side by side, breakfasting together ? So I had got hold of a man who had seen mouflons, one even of their fellow-countrymen, for there are none left except in Corsica — and in Greece, they say. But I do not believe in Greece, since reading Edmond About's Roi des Montagues.

My new friend told me the whole history of the mouflon *. he described it from life ; he opened up to me its habits, its instincts, its character ; he sketched its spiral horns, and imitated its ferocious bleat. At four o'clock I was still listening to him. ' The mouflon,' he said, ' is a very stupid and very intelligent animal — very wild and very easily domesticated — very pretty and remarkably ugly — just as you read one author or another and believe them for the moment. He has a great deal of the goat in him, and as much of the sheep, and in fact very little of either. If he were clothed in wool he would be almost a ram ; but he plays naturalists the trick of dressing in hair and thereby approaches closely to the goat, without however being like him, for he has the other's head, as Buffon remarks. ' As for his manners, there is very little known about them.

Those whom the hunters kill have no time to be studied. Those whom they miss don't come to tell us. They walk about on inaccessible peaks — that is the goat side of their character ; and they stay there to graze — that is the sheep side. You are following me ? ' ' As well as I can,' I said, with a doubtful cough. ' But what is your own opinion about them, you, their fellow-countryman ? ' ' In my opinion he is a sheep, a wild sheep, but still a sheep.' And the facetious Corsican started off again. ' One day at Sartene — I am talking of thirty years ago — they told me there was one of these doubtful beasts on the mountain. I am, without any vanity, the best hunter I know — after you, of course ; but at that time I should have been ready to give Nimrod ten points out of eleven. Well, I took my gun, and whistling to the first dog that passed I set off to climb the macchia.

I must tell you I had only one cartridge with me. Why should I have two, as there was only one mouflon ? As for the dog, I invited him for the sake of having somebody to chat Introduction 11 with on the road and also to second me after wards. So having arrived after an hour or two's clambering at the cavern where the mouflon of Sartene resided, we began proceedings, the dog and I, by taking a little rest. Nothing was stirring yet. I light a cigarette and lie down flat on my face, and make a sign to the dog to do the same. This I do for the purpose of taking observations. Thc rascal ! If you had seen that mouflon turning round and round in the cavern. In front you would have called him a ram, and from behind a goat. But I must first get him out of his lair. I kill only in the open air and at five hundred paces ; in a room, never !

So I addressed myself to the dog and intimated my desire that he should dislodge the game. He understood me, started off, and I saw him arrive at the entrance to the cavern, when he sat down, began to thump the ground with his tail, and look at me queerly. Far from thinking of violating the mouflon's domicile, he seemed to have established himself there as its guardian.' ' What ! ' I said stupidly, ' as its guardian ? Thc guardian of the mouflon ? ' ' Yes ! it was only then I discovered that in the distraction of the moment I had brought out hunting a dog who did not belong to the business — in fact, a sheep-dog.' Well ! ' I stammered. ' Well, the sheep-dog does not hunt sheep ; quite the contrary.' ' And therefore ? ' ' Therefore, the mouflon is a sheep, a wild sheep but a sheep ! ' ' Evidently,' I concluded. ' And yet they have none at the Cafe de la Paix, where they have every thing.' My partner at the game of knife and fork looked at me. ' Have you really set your heart on eating it?' he said.

A sigh was my only response. The mouflon hunter took out of the pocket of his greatcoat an elegant Russia leather pocket-book and turned over the leaves without speaking. He seemed to be looking for some memorandum. When he had found it he asked me to give him my address, and wrote it with a gold pencil by the side of the memorandum. Then having put away the pocket book he called for two glasses of chartreuse, and took up his story again in these words : ' When I returned to Sartene with my mouflon — ' What ! ' I said, interrupting him. ' You did kill the mouflon ? ' Introduction 13 ' People don't kill the mouflon. It is not game, it is merely a wild animal.' ' You said it was a sheep.' ' A wild sheep, my dear sir ! Besides, there is no part of it except the horns that is good for anything.

The rest is worth nothing, musty goat ! So it is only taken alive.' ' You had your gun with you, however ? ' ' Like every good Corsican, of course. But for this kind of chase the gun is only used for making a noise among the hills ! ' ' Go on,' I said ; ' I will not interrupt again ; I resign myself.' ' All naturalists will tell you that the mouflon is afraid of thunder. I will not swear that he makes the sign of the cross when it thunders, but certainly he runs away. ' The mouflon hunt is based upon this discovery. His cowardice is quite invincible, and although he is a most excellent head of a family, a faithful husband and good father, as soon as he hears the tempest rage he leaves all his belongings and runs away. The female, the mouflonne, follows his example immediately and disappears after him. ' The consequence is that the little sucklings are found deserted, and you can take them with your hand.

The gun therefore, is used to produce an ■4 imitation of the thunder which frightens them so. Now you know what a reverberation the discharge of a gun in the mountain gorges produces, and what formidable echoes it awakens. I therefore had no thing to do but to fire off my single cartridge among the echoing cliffs, and the mouflon rushed out of the cavern. ' He dashed headlong across the maccliia by a way which seemed none the less giddy that the sheep dog, still mistaking his species, had set off in pursuit, seeking to bring him back to some imaginary flock. They vanished together in this manner, one biting, the other butting, and I was quit of them. ' It was the will of Nimrod that my mouflon should be a mouflonne. She was a widow. She had three children. I entered the cavern, and the charming little beasts came round me at once with the utmost confidence. ' I had brought some pink ribbon with me.

The eldest had already two delicious little horns sprout ing, like sea-shells, and his ash-coloured hairy coat curled charmingly. I attached a favour to his neck and christened him Nemorino. He followed me to Sartene. ' Perhaps you will be curious to know why I left the other two behind ? Well, I left them because they were females.' Introduction 15 ' Ah ! ' I said with fresh interest, feeling that I was on the track of some curious thing in the natural history of the mouflon. ' In fact, I was sure that I should see the two lady mouflons again some day or other, grown up and beautiful ! You will see I was not mistaken. ' Nemorino lived with me for a year at Sartene. He became a child of the house. His gentleness was a proverb. I used to fasten some coppers between his horns and send him to the shop to buy me my tobacco. ' Spring came round, and it became impossible to keep Nemorino.

He would go. When he saw his own reflection in the glass he would bleat piteously. One day he rushed at his own image in a mirror and shattered it. I let him go. He returned to the mountain and I heard no more of him. ' But at the end of the following autumn I was awakened one night by a drumming at my door. It was Nemorino at the head of a smalaJi of mouflons. He had married his two sisters, and was come back with them and their little ones to take up his winter quarters with me ! ' *- 1 ' Vou find (in Corsica) a species of little goat called " mouffoli " about the size of a roebuck : it is a charming little creature with a well formed body, a finely-marked coat, vivacious and very agile. This animal has horns like a ram and a very thick skin ; he is very shy and lives on the higher mountains ; he is so agile that it is difficult to get t Now one does not listen to a narrative like this without retaining a lifelong recollection of it, and without conceiving for the narrator a friendship which nothing on earth can dissolve : that was what happened to me.

M. Vincent Bonnaud became from that time necessary to me, and we met as often as possible at that Cafe de la Paix, where the last boulevardiers of the decadence are wont to breakfast, men who have no illusions, and who know that the whole of life is hyperbole and paradox. Then the sea-bathing season separated us. I set out for my favourite little lonely beach, and had forgotten the fallacious poem of Nemorino, when I received a letter from my sporting naturalist, inviting me to accompany him on a wild sheep chase which he was organising in Corsica. ' My notebook,' he said, ' bears witness to the desire you feel to make the acquaintance of, study closely, and perhaps immortalise that fabulous animal, the pride of our mountains. He is waiting for you ! Come ! Prince Roland Bonaparte, whose near him.

He leaps great distances from rock to rock, and if he is pursued to the edge of a rock from which he cannot spring to another, he throws himself down and has the address to fall on his horns. However, you can easily tame him if you take him young. M. de Marbœuf, the commander of the French troops in Corsica, had one at his house.' — Description de Tile de Corse, by the Sieur Bellin, naval engineer, 1769. Introduction ■7 secretary I am, is charmed at the opportunity I am procuring him of climbing the Corsican Alps in your company ; and I am congratulating myself on the chance of being able to introduce you to one of the most intelligent, the most learned, and the most amiable men of that party which is the least cause of division amongst us.' There was but one answer to make, and I made it. I set out on a wild sheep chase. c

Chapter I Ajaccio And Its Canton

The Manouia — Corsica at dawn — The perfume of the island — Smoke — Ajaccio — The Inkstand — A statue imagined — Possessed — The Casa Bonaparte — Its situation — Portrait of Lcetitia — The street with the red capsicums — Paris journals — The scandal of the Legion of Honour — At the Cafe* du Roi Jerome — The Vendetta — A conversation on banditism — Smooth hair and curly hair — Justice — Mouflon in sight. There are three ways of going to Corsica and also of returning ; I mean three services of steamers will take you there. One from Nice to Calvi which makes the passage once a week ; the boats are second-rate. Another, the Italian line, connects Bastia and Leghorn. The third, which is the most used, starts from Marseilles every day, I think, at five o'clock in the evening, and reaches Ajaccio about seven in the morning.

It is under the control of the Compagnie des Transatlantiques, which runs superb boats, com manded by excellent captains. The Manouia is one of these boats. I passed the night of the 20th September 1887 in it, and slept as one would sleep in Paradise — that is to say, if the saints do sleep, which as yet we do not know. However that may be, I was up in the morning at six o'clock, fresh, cheerful, and with all my senses on the stretch to see and hear and breathe Corsica. It soon came in view, a faint shadow on the sea, a rosy cloud, jagged above, and like one of those sugar cakes which you see melting in the heat of the lamps and running down into the silver dish. All the gulfs on the western coast — the Gulf of Galeria, the Gulf of Porto overhung by the Monte Rotondo, the Gulf of Sagona which reveals the Monte d'Oro — one by one spread themselves out in the floating mists of sunrise, and the promontories thrust out their red beaks between the lapis lazuli sky and the turquoise waters.