I was told in a bookseller's shop into which I had gone in search of a Geography of the island, that there was one then in the press, and that its author was Francesco Marmocchi, a banished Florentine. I immediately sought this gentleman out, and made in him one of the most valuable of all my Italian acquaintances. I found a man of prepossessing exterior, considerably above thirty, in a little room, buried among books. Possibly the rooms of most political exiles do not present such a peaceful aspect. On the bookshelves were the best classical authors; and my eye lighted with no small pleasure on Humboldt's Cosmos; on the walls were copperplate views of Florence, and an admirable copy of a Perugino; all this told not only of the seclusion of a scholar, but of that of a highly cultivated Florentine. There are perhaps few greater contrasts than that between Florence and Corsica, and my own feelings were at first certainly peculiar, when, after six weeks' stay in Florence, I suddenly exchanged the Madonnas of Raphael for the Corsican banditti; but it is always to be remembered that Corsica is an island of enchanting beauty; and though banishment to paradise itself would remain banishment, still the student of nature may at least, as Seneca did, console himself here with the grandeur and beauty around him, in undisturbed tranquillity. All that Seneca wrote from his Corsican exile to his mother on the consolation to be found in contemplating nature, and in science, Francesco Marmocchi may fully apply to himself. This former Florentine professor seemed to me, in his dignified retirement and learned leisure, the happiest of all exiles.

Francesco Marmocchi was minister of Tuscany during the revolution, along with Guerazzi; he was afterwards secretary to the ministry: more fortunate than his political friend, he escaped from Florence to Rome, and then from Rome to Corsica, where he had already lived three years. His unwearied activity, and the stoical serenity with which he bears his exile, attest the manly vigour of his character. Francesco Marmocchi is one of the most esteemed and talented Italian geographers. Besides his great work, a Universal Geography in six quarto volumes, a new edition of which is at present publishing, he has written a special Geography of Italy in two volumes; a Historical Geography of the Ancient World, of the Middle Ages, and of Modern Times; a Natural History of Italy, and other works. I found him correcting the proof-sheets of his little Geography of Corsica, an excellent hand-book, which he has unfortunately been obliged to write in French. This book is published in Bastia, by Fabiani; it has afforded me some valuable information about Corsica.

One morning before sunrise we went into the hills round Cardo, and here, amid the fresh bloom of the Corsican landscape, if the reader will suppose himself in our company, we shall take the geographer himself for guide and interpreter, and hear what he has to say upon the island. I give almost the very words of his Geography.

Corsica owes her existence to successive conglobations of upheaved masses; during an extended period she has had three great volcanic processes, to which the bizarre and abrupt contours of her landscape are to be ascribed. These three upheavals may be readily distinguished. The first masses of Corsican land that rose were those that occupy the entire south-western side. This earliest upheaval took place in a direction from north-west to south-east; its marks are the two great ribs of mountain which run parallel, from north-east to south-west, down towards the sea, and form the most important promontories of the west coast. The axis of Corsica at that time must therefore have been different from its later one; and the islands in the channel of Bonifazio, as well as a part of the north-east of Sardinia, then stood in connexion with Corsica. The material of this first upheaval is mostly granite; consequently at the period of this primeval revolution there was no life of any sort on the island.

The direction of the second upheaval was from south-west to north-east, and the material here again consists largely of granitoids. But as we advance to the north-east, we find the granite gradually giving way to the ophiolitic (ophiolitisch) earth system. The second upheaval is, however, hardly discernible. It is clear that it destroyed most of the northern ridge of the first; but Corsican geology has preserved very few traces of it.

The undoubted effect of the third and last upheaval was the almost entire destruction of the southern portion of the first; and it was at this time the island received its present form. It occurred in a direction from north to south. So long as the masses of this last eruption have not come in contact with the masses of previous upheavals, their direction remains regular, as is shown by the mountain-chain of Cape Corso. But it had to burst its way through the towering masses of the southern ridge with a fearful shock; it broke them up, altering its direction, and sustaining interruption at many points, as is shown by the openings of the valleys, which lead from the interior to the plain of the east coast, and have become the beds of the streams that flow into the sea on this side-the Bevinco, the Golo, the Tavignano, the Fiumorbo, and others.

The rock strata of this third upheaval are primitive ophiolitic and primitive calcareous, covered at various places by secondary formations.

The primitive masses, which occupy, therefore, the south and west of the island, consist almost entirely of granite. At their extremities they include some layers of gneiss and slate. The granite is almost everywhere covered-a clear proof that it was elevated at a period antecedent to that during which the covering masses were forming in the bosom of the ocean, to be deposited in horizontal strata on the crystalline granite masses. Strata of porphyry and eurite pierce the granite; a decided porphyritic formation crowns Mounts Cinto, Vagliorba, and Perturato, the highest summits of Niolo, overlying the granite. From two to three feet of mighty greenstone penetrate these porphyritic rocks.

The intermediary masses occupy the whole of Cape Corso, and the east of the island. They consist of bluish gray limestone, huge masses of talc, stalactites, serpentine, euphotides, quartz, felspar, and porphyries.

The tertiary formations appear only in isolated strips, as at San Fiorenzo, Volpajola, Aleria, and Bonifazio. They exhibit numerous fossils of marine animals of subordinate species-sea-urchins, polypi, and many other petrifactions in the limestone layers.

In regard to the plains of the east coast of Corsica, as the plains Biguglia, Mariana, and Aleria, they are diluvial deposits of the period when the floods destroyed vast numbers of animal species. Among the diluvial fossils in the neighbourhood of Bastia, the head of a lagomys has been found-a small hare without tail, existing at the present day in Siberia.

There is no volcano in Corsica; but traces of extinct volcanoes may be seen near Porto Vecchio, Aleria, Balistro, San Manza, and at other points.

It seems almost incredible that an island like Corsica, so close to Sardinia and Tuscany, and, above all, so near the iron island of Elba, should be so poor in metals as it really is. Numerous indications of metallic veins are, it is true, to be found everywhere, now of iron or copper, now of lead, antimony, manganese, quicksilver, cobalt, gold and silver, but these, as the engineer Gueymard has shown in his work on the geology and mineralogy of Corsica, are illusory.

The only metal mines of importance that can be wrought, are, at present, the iron mines of Olmeta and Farinole in Cape Corso, an iron mine near Venzolasca, the copper mine of Linguizzetta, the antimony mine of Ersa in Cape Corso, and the manganese mine near Alesani.

On the other hand, Corsica is an inexhaustible treasury of the rarest and most valuable stones, an elysium of the geologist. But they lie unused; no one digs the treasure.

It may not be out of place here to give a detail of these beautiful stones, arranged in the usual geological order.

1. Granites.-Red granite, resembling the Oriental granite, between Orto and the lake of Ereno; coral-red granite at Olmiccia; rose-red granite at Cargese; red granite, tending to purple, at Aitone; rosy granite of Carbuccia; rosy granite of Porto; rose-red granite at Algajola; granite with garnets (the bigness of a nut) at Vizzavona.

2. Porphyries.-Variegated porphyry in Niolo; black porphyry with rosy spots at Porto Vecchio; pale yellow porphyry, with rosy felspar at Porto Vecchio; grayish green porphyry, with amethyst, on the Restonica.

3. Serpentines.-Green, very hard serpentines; also transparent serpentines at Corte, Matra, and Bastia.

4. Eurites, amphibolites, and euphotides; globular eurite at Curso and Girolata, in Niolo, and elsewhere; globular amphibolite, commonly termed orbicular granite (the nodules consist of felspar and amphiboles in concentric layers) in isolated blocks at Sollucaro, on the Taravo, in the valley of Campolaggio and elsewhere; amphibolite, with crystals of black hornblende in white felspar at Olmeto, Levie, and Mela; euphotides, called also Verde of Corsica, and Verde d'Orezza, in the bed of the Fiumalto, and in the valley of Bevinco.

5. Jasper and Agates.-Jasper (in granites and porphyries) in Niolo, and the valley of Stagno; agates (also in the granites and porphyries) in the same localities.

6. Marble and Alabaster.-White statuary marble of dazzling splendour at Ortiporio, Casacconi, Borgo de Cavignano, and elsewhere; bluish gray marble at Corte; yellow alabaster in the valley of S. Lucia, near Bastia; white alabaster, semi-transparent, foliated and fibrous, in a grotto behind Tuara, in the gulf of Girolata.

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Chapter 4 FRANCESCO MARMOCCHI OF FLORENCE-THE GEOLOGY OF CORSICA.

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