CHAP. XXXII.

Expedition to the Mountains.—Environs of Ozieri.—First View of the Peaks of Genargentu.—Forests.—Value of the Oak Timber.—Cork Trees; their Produce, and Statistics of the Trade.—Hunting the Wild Boar, &c.—The Hunters' Feast.—A Bivouac in the Woods.—Notices of the Province of Barbagia.—Independence of the Mountaineers.

The hunting excursion in the mountains south of Ozieri was in the order of the day, the expedition being on a much larger scale than that arranged by our honest Tempiese friends at the Caffè de la Costituzione. We were to camp out; and the party consisted of upwards of thirty horsemen, well mounted and armed, with the Conte di T—— and some other Oziese gentlemen for leaders. We had also a large pack of dogs, some of them fine animals, almost equal to bloodhounds.

Our route from the town led us over a succession of scraggy hills, with cultivation in the bottoms, and some straggling vineyards, not very flourishing. The walnut trees in the glens, and small inclosures mixed with copse wood, reminded us more of English or Welsh scenery than anything we had before seen in either of the Mediterranean islands. After passing a village standing on high ground, there was a long ascent, and in about an hour and a half from our leaving Ozieri, on gaining the summit of a ridge of hills outlying from the Goceano range, we opened on a magnificent view of the great central chain of mountains, stretching away to the south-east in giant limbs and folds, with Genargentu and other summits shrouded in a grey silvery haze. A broad valley was spread out beneath our point of view, and the mountain range immediately opposite, the lower regions of which, as far as the eye could command the view, right and left, were clothed with dense forests, straggling down in broken masses and detached clumps to the edge of the intervening valley.

Into the depths of these forests we were to penetrate in pursuit of our game, and finer covers to be stocked with cingale and capriole, or bolder scenery for the theatre of our sylvan sport, can scarcely be imagined. It was spirit-stirring when, full in view of these grand natural features, our numerous cavalcade wound down the hill in scattered groups to the plain beneath, among pollard cork trees, just now shedding their acorns. There was deep ploughing in the rich vale watered by the upper streams of the Tirso, which winds through the valley at the foot of the Goceano range. After crossing the holms, we were on slopes of greensward, lightly feathered with the red fern, and dotted with trees, like a park.

And now we touched the verge of the forest, rough with brakes of giant heaths, such underwood alternating with grassy glades wherever the woods opened. This part of the forest consists of an unbroken mass of primitive cork trees of great size. The rugged bark, the strangely-angular growth of the limbs, hung with grey lichens in fantastic combs, and the thick olive-green foliage almost excluding the light of heaven, with the roar of the wind through the trees,—for it was a dull, cold day, the coldest we spent in Sardinia,—with all this, a Scandinavian forest could not be more dreary and savage. After tracking the gloomy depths of shade for a considerable distance, it was an agreeable change to quit the forest and warm our blood by cantering up a slope of scrub. Then, after crossing a grassy hollow, we came among scattered woods of the most magnificent oaks, both evergreen and deciduous, I ever saw. Some of the trees were of enormous size, and if the quality of the timber be equal to the scantling, Sardinia would supply materials of great value for naval purposes.

The forests of the Barbagia, into which we now penetrated, like those of the Gallura, are principally virgin forests; the want of roads, of navigable rivers, and even of flottage, presenting formidable obstacles to the conveyance of the timber to the seaboard for exportation, though the first is not insurmountable. The forests of the Marghine and Goceano ranges round Macomer, having the little port of Boso on the western coast for an outlet, are felled to some extent. The contracts are mostly in the hands of foreigners, who obtain them on such low terms that their profits are enormous. Mr. Tyndale gives the details of a contract obtained by a Frenchman for 18,000 oak trees, at fifteen lire nove, 12s. each, the trees being said to realise from 200 to 300 francs (8l. to 12l.) each at Toulon or Marseilles. In England, we pay from 1s. 6d. to 2s. 3d. per cubic foot for very indifferent American oak, and from 1s. 9d. to 2s. 6d. for Baltic oak, perhaps superior to the Sardinian.

In the course of the Corsican notices in this volume, it was mentioned that after my return to England, I had some communications with a government department respecting the pine forests of Corsica.[69] On my taking occasion also to represent the great abundance of oak timber of large dimensions standing in Sardinia, I learnt that a valuable report on the subject had been made to the Admiralty by Mr. Craig, Her Majesty's excellent Consul-General in the island. It did not, however, appear that any steps had been taken in consequence.

Great damage is done to the forests by the herdsmen and shepherds, who are permitted, under certain restrictions, to burn down portions of underwood, such as the lentiscus, daphne, and cistus, to allow the pasturage to grow for their flocks. But though this is not legal before the eighth of September, when the intense heat of the summer has passed away, and the periodical autumnal rains are necessary for the young herbage, the law is broken, and not only accidental but wilful conflagrations have been the destruction of numerous forests. What with this waste, the injury done to the growing timber by the contractors, and the indolence of the natives, the noble forests of Sardinia are of little account. Even the government, it is said, purchase most of the oak used in the dockyards of Genoa at the French ports before mentioned.

Similar observations apply to cork, though capable of easier transport, and said to be as fine as any in the world. The Sardinian forests would supply large quantities; but it enters little into the exports of the island. We saw a great many trees stripped by the peasants for domestic uses, naked and miserable skeletons; with them it is indiscriminate slaughter, doing irreparable injury to the trees. There now lie before me the specimens I collected of the successive layers of the bark. The spongy external cuticle, swelling into excrescences, is only used for floats of the fishermen's nets in the island. Beneath lies a coating of more compact, but cellular, tissue, of a beautiful rich colour—a sort of red umber. This layer, called la camicia (the shift), covers the good or “female” bark, with which every one is acquainted in the shape of corks.

The bark will bear cutting every ten years, commencing when the trees are about that age; but it should not be cut till the inner bark is an inch or an inch and a quarter thick. I consider that the bark of old trees is less valuable. Some of those we saw in the forests of the Gallura and Barbagia must have been the growth of many centuries. It is calculated that each tree, on an average, produces upwards of 30 lbs. of bark at a cutting; there are about 220 lbs. in a quintal, worth, at Marseilles, 20 francs; and a quintal of cork makes from 4500 to 5000 bottle-corks.

The woods are generally leased at an annual rent, proportioned to the number of trees; but this rent, with the cost of stripping the bark, and even the transport to the coast, form but small items in the lessee's account of profit and loss. The heaviest charges are the export duty from Sardinia, the freight, and the import duties in France, to which country, I understand, the greatest part of the cork cut in the island is shipped. The French customs' duty is 2frs. 20 cents. the quintal. England imports no cork in its rough state from the island of Sardinia; but probably a considerable part of the manufactured corks we import from France (upwards of 226,000 lbs. in 1855[70]) grew in Sardinian forests. Our principal imports of unmanufactured cork bark are from Portugal, the quantity in the year just mentioned being 3300 tons and upwards. From Spain we only received 300 tons, and about 100 from Tuscany and other parts; the official value being from 32l. to 35l. per ton. It appears extraordinary that we should draw so considerable a portion of our supplies of this valuable commodity from France in a manufactured state, and subject to a heavy customs' duty and other double charges, when the raw material might be imported direct from Sardinia, subject only to an export duty of 1fr. 20 cents. per quintal. This arises, I imagine, from the trade being left by the apathy of the islanders mostly in the hands of French houses, who take leases of the forests and conduct the whole operations.

These details, though they smack of woodcraft, have led us away from our sylvan sports. We had reached the point where the dogs were thrown into the covers with a party detached to drive the woods. Having given a description in a former chapter of the caccia clamorosa, as wild boar hunting is well termed by the Sardes, repetition would be wearisome. It was conducted precisely as on the former occasion, except that the proceedings were on a more extended scale, and led us far among wilder and more varied scenery. As before, the stations of the hunters were assigned at about seventy or eighty paces apart, with the horses tethered in the rear. The line of shooters was first formed among the heather on the easy slope of a glen, lightly sprinkled with wood. The exhilarating sounds of the men and dogs breaking the silence of the woods as they drove the game before them, the minutes of eager expectation, the sharp look-out, the ringing shots, may now be easily imagined.

My fellow-traveller was fortunate enough to knock over the first wild boar that ran the gauntlet of the cordon, when the Count's gun had missed fire from the cap having become damp. Our next position was in an open piece of forest, where luck planted me in a notched cork tree, standing on a wooded knoll, at which several avenues met, so that I had not only a good chance of a shot, but the command of the champ de bataille on all sides. Wild boars were plentiful, roebucks not so, hares innumerable in some of our battues. I confess, however, that the incident in the day's sport in which I felt most interest was when a wild boar, slightly wounded, rushed by one of my posts, pursued by some of the dogs. Throwing myself on my spirited barb, I led the chase, followed by my neighbours, right and left, and was lucky enough to be in at the death, after a sharp run. Under such circumstances the wild boar, standing at bay with his formidable tusks, becomes dangerous to the dogs, if not to the hunters. Then the sharp steel is wanting. Oh, for a boar spear! instead of having to despatch the rabid animal by a shot.

Having had a long morning's ride, our first day's battue was closed early. The party defiled in loose order among the trees in the open forest, cantered over springy turf, and brushed through patches of fern to a sheltered dell in which we were to bivouac, and where the sumpter horses had already halted. Then followed such a rude feast as in all my rambles I had never before chanced to witness. Imagine the grassy margin of a rivulet, surrounded by thick bushes, which spread in brakes throughout the glen under scattered oaks, intermingled with crags and detached masses of rock, covered with white lichens. On the grass are piles of flat bread, which served for plates, loads of sausages, hams, cheeses, bundles of radishes, and heaps of apples, pears, grapes, and chestnuts, strewed about in the happiest confusion, with no lack of flasks and runlets of various sorts of wines. Our contribution to the pic-nic, a basket of signor Juliani's best cold dishes and larded fowls, seemed perfectly insignificant. Add to all this, the game we had bagged,—wild boar and roebuck, to say nothing of hares,—and the general stock might seem inexhaustible, if one glance at the crowd of hungry hunters did not banish the thought.

Eager for the attack, they were busily employed in preparations for it. Horses were unsaddled and tethered among the bushes, guns piled or rested against the boughs, wood collected, fires lighted, and dagger-knives whetted, ready to rip open and quarter the game. The leaders only stood apart, under a spreading tree. They had a grave duty to perform in apportioning the spoils among those who had been successful in the day's sport. This was done with great exactness and the perfect equality existing among all ranks on these occasions. It was Robin Hood and his merry men all through; or might have been taken for an episode of Sarde banditti life, except that, our party being all honest fellows, there was no plunder to divide. By the laws of the chase in Sardinia, the hunter to whose gun an animal falls is entitled exclusively to some distinct portion, varying with the species of the game,—sometimes to the skin, sometimes to the choicest parts of the roba interiora, the intestines; the rest falls into the common stock. The award being made, such choice morsels, with rashers of hog and venison steaks, were grilled over the embers on skewers of sweet wood, and handed round, filled each pause in the attack on the cold provisions, portions being detached by the formidable couteaux de chasse with which every man was armed; nor did English steel fail of doing its duty.

Though the party distributed themselves indiscriminately on the grass, they naturally fell into familiar messes, perfect harmony and good fellowship prevailing. But at times there was great confusion. Now, the horses, kicking and fighting, got free from their tethers, and there was a rush of the hunters to restore order; while the ravenous hounds, not content with the bones and fragments thrown to them, were making perpetual inroads on the circle of guests, and snatching at the morsels they were appropriating to themselves. The feast was drawing to a close, when Count T—— proposed the health of the foreigners associated in their sports, and the toast, with the reply, which, if not eloquent, was short and feeling,—“Agli nobili cacciatori della Sardegna, e di noi forestieri li sozii amicissimi, benevolentissimi,” &c., &c., &c., drew forth ev-vivas which made the old woods ring to the echo. And now all started on their legs, and there was a rush to the guns as if scouts had suddenly announced that the woods were filled with enemies. As an hour or two of daylight still remained, a bersaglio, or match of shooting at a mark, had been arranged during the feast.

The bersaglio is a favourite amusement of the Sardes, forming part of most of their festivities; and constant practice on these occasions, and in the field, makes them expert shots. Our party now addressed themselves to this exercise of skill with passionate eagerness. Some ran to fix a small card against the bole of a tree, eighty or a hundred yards distant, the rest gathered round the point of sight, loading their guns or applying caps, all talking rapidly, in sharp tones, as if they were quarrelling. They formed picturesque groups, in all attitudes—those mountain rangers, with their semi-Moorish costume, embroidered pouches, and bright ornamented arms, their dark-olive complexions and bushy hair, in strong contrast with their visitors from the north, in gray plaid and brown felt, unmistakable in their physiognomy, though almost as hairy and sunburnt as the children of the soil. The match was well contested, the card being often hit; which, as the Sarde guns are not rifled, may be considered good shooting, at the distance stated. The firing was continued till it was almost dark with eager zest, but much irregularity, and almost as great an expenditure of animal spirits in vociferation, as of powder and bullets.

An hour after sunset, when night came on, fresh wood was heaped on the smouldering fires, and after sitting round them, smoking and chatting, the party gradually broke up, some stretching themselves near the embers, and the rest seeking some shelter for the night, about which a Sarde mountaineer is not fastidious, any bush or hollow in a rock serving his purpose. For ourselves, after exchanging the “felice notte” with the Count and his friends, we lingered over a scene so singular in civilised Europe, though with such I had been familiar in other hemispheres. The smouldering fires cast fitful gleams on piled arms and the hardy men sleeping around in their sheepskins or shaggy cloaks; the deep silence of the woods was only broken by a neighing horse or the bay of a hound, and presently the stars shone out from the vault of heaven with a lustre unknown in northern climes. We, too, lay down ensconced in a brake, the younger traveller disdaining any other wrapping than his plaid, and the elder luxuriously enveloped in a couple of blankets which formed part of his equipments, having his saddle for a pillow. With sound sleep, the rivulet for our ablutions, and a hot cup of coffee, bread, cheese, and fruit for the collazione,—what more could be wanting?

In this expedition one day was like another, except in the ever-varying scenery, interesting enough to the traveller, but wearisome in description. Suffice it to say, that on the third morning, the provisions being exhausted, and no fresh supplies to be had in that wild country, our leaders decided on returning to Ozieri. It then became a question with us whether we should return with them, or pursue the mountain tracks to Nuoro, whence it was only two days' journey to the foot of Monte Genargentu, on the higher regions of which it had been our intention to hunt the moufflon, proceeding then, along byroads, through a chain of mountain villages to Cagliari. Nuoro, a poor place, though dignified with the title of “città,” and a large ecclesiastical establishment, stands high on a great table-land in the heart of the central chain, answering, in many respects, to the Corte of the sister island. This ancient capital of Barbagia is still the chief place of a province containing a population of 54,000 souls, very much scattered through an extensive and mountainous district, but containing many large villages, such as Fonni, Tonara, and Aritzu already mentioned.

The mountaineers of Barbagia have been distinguished from the earliest times for their indomitable courage and spirit of independence. Some of the best ancient writers relate that Iolaus, son of Iphicles, king of Thessaly, and nephew of Hercules, settled Greek colonies in this part of the island. The expedition, in which he was joined by the Thespiadæ, was undertaken in obedience to the oracle of Delphi; and it declared that, on their establishing themselves in Sardinia, they would never be conquered. Iolaus is said to have been buried in this district, after founding many cities; and, the Greek colonists intermingling with the native Sardes, their descendants, deriving their name of Iolaese or Iliese from their founder, became the most powerful race in the island,—just as the Roumains of Wallachia, boasting their descent from Trajan's Dacian colonists, long proved their right to the proud patronymic.

The Iolaese offered a determined resistance to the Carthaginian invaders, and, on the decline of their power in Sardinia, maintained, during a long series of years, an unequal contest with the Roman legions; for, though often worsted in pitched battles, they found a safe and impregnable retreat in their mountain fastnesses. The triumphs of the Romans figure in history; but the traditions of the Sardes do justice to the heroic and patriarchal chiefs who fought in defence of their country. In after times, the Barbaricini (the Barbari of the Romans, whence Barbagia) exhibited their hereditary warlike spirit in resisting the invasions of the Moors; and, when Sardinia passed to the crown of Arragon, they refused to acknowledge Alfonso's rights and authority, resisting all claims of homage, tribute, or service. A sullen submission of three centuries to their Spanish sovereigns had not effaced their spirit of independence, and the Barbaricini were in arms against an unjust tax, and, moving their wives, children, and valuables to the mountains, kept the Spaniards entirely at bay, when, in 1719, Sardinia was ceded to the house of Savoy. The demand being prudently withdrawn, they returned to their villages, and their allegiance to the present dynasty has not been broken by any open revolt. But the indomitable spirit of their race has still been exhibited in sullen or violent resistance to the Piedmontese authorities. Driven by the corrupt administration of the laws to take a wild and summary justice, every man's hand has been against his neighbours' and the government officials. Mr. Tyndale states “that upwards of 100 (or one in every 279) annually fall victims to vendetta, in contest with their enemies, or with the authorities. Those openly known to live in the mountains as fuorusciti, of some kind, are more than 300; and to them may be added another 300 unknown to the Government, so that, on an average, there is nearly one in every 46 an outcast from society, a fugitive from his hearth.” I was happy to learn, on a second visit to the island of Sardinia, in 1857, that the numbers of these unhappy men were decreasing, outrages had diminished, and the system of vendetta was gradually dying out. This, it was stated, principally resulted from the Barbaricini beginning to feel that the government is able and willing to afford them the redress of their private wrongs, and the personal protection which, as individuals or banded together, they have so long asserted by the red hand in defiance of the authorities.

Thus the independence predicted by the oracle of Delphi to the race of Iolaus, preserved for untold centuries and through all political changes, has been maintained to the last by their direct descendants, the fuorusciti of Barbagia. They were in arms as late as our travels in 1853, and we were officially warned against venturing into the mountains without due precautions. It was not, however, this state of affairs which interfered with the prosecution of our journey, as we did not doubt being able to establish, as foreigners, amicable relations with their chiefs. Such a state of society could not be without interest, the scenery is represented as most romantic, the shooting excellent; but our time was limited, and, reserving the expedition to Barbagia for a future opportunity, we reluctantly retraced our steps to Ozieri, in company with our friendly hunters.