black handkerchief tied over their heads. This black handkerchief is a relic of the Genoese occupation of the island, and is only occasionally varied by the adoption of a large flat straw hat such as is worn by the peasant women of the Alpes Maritimes and no doubt comes, over in the steamer from Nice. It appears that mourning is never observed for less than five years in Corsica so that even the young women are seldom in colors, and as the men wear black or dark brown corduroys, and the children black pinafores, the general effect of a crowd is decidedly sombre. Many of these women are handsome, especially the older ones, but they are not probably as old as they look, since they are worn with the hard manual labor which falls almost exclusively to the share of their sex in Corsica, and with much exposure to sun and wind. They have a peculiar air of dignified gravity, and a very stately carriage, due to the fact that from their earliest girlhood they are trained to carry heavy weights upon their heads. The men, in Ajaccio at all events, seem to find sufficient occupation in sitting outside the café, drinking some innocuous green beverage, and talking politics. Under the stalls are wire cages filled with live poultry, and above these are laid the tiny carcases of black sucking lambs and kids, and of small ducks and chickens, near relations probably of those which are scratching in the dust below. Further along is another group of aged wrinkled crones, each squatting on the pavement behind a basket which contains some very strange-looking loaves of bread. These are flat and round and have a varying number of eggs baked into them in their shells, and on the eggs are laid crosses of crust or pastry. They are called cacavelli and are highly spiced cakes, equivalent to our hot cross buns, except that they are essentially an Easter delicacy and do not appear until Good Friday is over. Every child in Ajaccio expects to have his cacavello, which should be eaten on the rocks on Easter Monday, and the richer the child, the greater number of eggs his loaf will contain, but the poorest expects to have at least two to his portion. An indiscreet inquiry on my part leads to a friendly invitation from one of the old crones to taste her cake, and a fragment is produced from the depths of a capacious and most unclean pocket. Having been told that a gift must never be rejected in Corsica they are fond of giving presentsand being aware that the chief pleasure of the giver is to witness the enjoyment of the recipient, I nibble a corner of unspeakable nastiness from which happily the egg is absent, buy a cake to be bestowed upon the first child available, and incontinently fly. The long road which leads by the sea shore to the Punta Parata and the Iles Sanguinaires, those red rocky islets which guard the entrance to the harbor, is for some little distance a street of tombs. These curious mortuary chapels, where the well-to-do bury their dead, stand back, each in its own little walled enclosure filled with flowers. Some of these chapels are comparatively new and domed, others old and square in shape, but they are all singularly characteristic of Corsica. Two of them have been built by notabilities of a past century higher up on the hill. One of these has fallen into melancholy decay, but the other, standing on a little plateau in a field of pale purple asphodel with a grove of ilex behind it, and beyond a background of blue bay and distant snowy peaks, is suggestive both in architecture and situation of a Greek temple, and is perhaps the most beautiful spot in the neighborhood of Ajaccio. On the shore there is also the public cemetery, where those may lie who cannot afford to be exclusive. And here also is the Cappella de' Greci, the chapel devoted to the use of the Greek colony in the eighteenth century, when they were forced to abandon Paomia, their earlier settlement, and take temporary refuge in Ajaccio during the Corsican revolution against the Genoese Government. But the tombs and the chapels are soon left behind and the road is bordered by a very rich vegetation. On the one side are hedges of prickly pear, covered to an extravagant extent with the forbidding-looking fruit which nobody seems to gather, asphodel, arbutus, myrtle, and all those aromatic shrubs which go to make up the maquis, the scent of which is carried some distance out to sea. On the other side are granite boulders, seaweed-covered rocks and sand. It is here that on Easter Monday it is the custom for parties from Ajaccio to come and picnic. There are plenty of them to-day, but they seem to take their pleasures soberly, these people. Family groups are scattered about on the rocks, eating those unattractive cakes which we have seen in the mar ket. Broccio, the country dish of cheese made from goat's milk, is another favorite delicacy on this occasion, and the feast is washed down with plenty of white wine. A few of the fathers are fishing and others are making their own particular mess of bouillabaisse, which they would no doubt very courteously offer to share with the stranger who was unwary enough to enter into conversation, but we have learnt our lesson. As the afternoon wears on there is a little mild dancing, for many of the parties have brought a guitar or a mandoline. The children wander about on the shore, picking up sea-urchins which abound on this coast, pieces of cup sponge and curious round balls of varying sizes, formed, it is said, by the action of the sea on a species of seaweed peculiar to the Med2302 LIVING AGE. VOL. XLIV. iterranean. The fine silvery sand is full of delicate little shells, and here and there washed up amongst the seaweed are fragments of coral in the making. Like their elders, the children appear to be taking their Bank holiday pleasures quietly; they are no doubt less at their ease than on their native rubbish heaps, or else the older and rougher contingent have elected to remain at home. Further on is a gay little tea house, screened from the road by a magnificent hedge of pink geranium, whilst bushes of marguerites and clumps of · white iris have broken loose from the confines of the garden and have strayed out upon the shore. Here we encounter Frère Jacques, for by no other name do I know him. He has been on a private plundering expedition, and his hands are full of yellow mimosa tassels which an old and twisted tree in the garden hangs temptingly over the hedge. Jacques' mother is scolding him vociferously, for whilst a man may murder his neighbor in cold blood for some real or fancied insult in his own or a previous generation, thieving is regarded as an unpardonable offence in Corsica. She is easily diverted, however, to more cheerful topics. Yes, he had been very contented on Saturday, the little one. But he would like to play at Judas every day. He had spent the sou ces dames had given him. on a ribbon for his neck-the vanity! Frère Jacques meantime smiles at us. with kindly recognition, but is not to be drawn into conversation. He is occupied in seeing how near he can stand to the little waves without allowing them to break over any point higher than the tops of his new boots. His mother pursues the conversation: with the gentle and persistent flow of questions with which a Corsican of her class may usually be trusted to entertain a stranger. Our nationality,. our social status, our reasons for com ing to Corsica, form as usual the opening clauses of a quite polite but relentless catechism. We are Continentales? Ah! we are English. The English are good people, but always adventurous. We are travelling alone? We have no messieurs with us? Bien! Ces dames are very wise. Les ménages ne sont pas toujours heureux, and gentlemen do not content themselves so easily en voyage. We are agreeing with the wisdom of the last observation, when madame's stream of interrogation is abruptly checked. Jacques has apparently got tired of unconsciously playing the rôle of Canute, and now uttering loud war cries of fury, he dashes past us waving a torch of blazing paper above his head. He is in pursuit of another little boy of his own size who is dragging a toddling girl by the hand. It is the prevailing fashion in Corsica at present for children to play with fire whenever paper and a match can be brought together, and that there are not perpetual tragedies must be due to a special intervention of Providence. ance. Before we have time to interpose, the other boy turns and flings himself upon Jacques, who drops the burning paper in alarming proximity to the little girl's skirts, and the two roll over in the sand together kicking and scratching and biting like a couple of young tigers. To our amazement Jacques' mother remains quite unmoved except by admiration of her offspring's latest perform "Ah, he is brave, le petit," she says, turning to us for sympathy which is not forthcoming. "Yesterday they insulted him, those malheureux; they told him that he was a traitor, that he would be beaten, that he would burn in fire. To-day it is they who may burn." Indeed, had it not been for the prompt intervention of a fisherman who has stamped on the paper and shaken the boys apart, it is not improbable that her suggestion might have been fulfilled. "Bah! That is only a game," she adds, observing our lack of appreciation; "the ladies must not be frightened," and she captures and shakes the culprit for our benefit, who with his blazing eyes and ruffied hair and scarlet cheeks is hardly recognizable as the gentle be-ribboned, flowercrowned little Judas of Saturday. The baby girl seems in no way alarmed, and toddles cheerfully in between the combatants to add her voice to the duet of abusive epithets which still continues. After all she is a Corsican baby, and some day she will no doubt be equally upset if her little son steals a handful of blossom from his neighbor's garden, and equally callous if in an access of passion he tries to set fire to his neighbor's children! In his small person Frère Jacques may be regarded as an epitome of the national characteristics. From the cradle to the grave, the Corsican temperament seems to be one of gentle dignified gravity, disturbed on оссаsions by outbreaks of unbridled violence. Of gaiety, of mere lightness of heart, there are few symptoms. Tonight as they go home some of these sober, well-conducted merrymakers are singing a melancholy dirge in a minor key. The majority, however, are silent. Some are driving, packed into public conveyances, or their own carts. Others are walking; the children, their arms full of treasures from the shore; the fathers, carrying their fishing rods and tackle; and the mothers, of course, laden with the heaviest burden of cooking utensils and baskets. Behind them the sun is setting in a lurid glow over the Iles Sanguinaires, and turning the placid waters of the bay to a glory of gold and blue and purple. But their faces are set towards the mountains which stand round about Ajaccio, scenes of violent deeds and of brave ones, the battlefields and the defences of Corsica. Dark, forbidding, and magnificent these mountains look in the evening light; but they have been values above everything-his independpowerless through the ages to pre- ence. serve for the islander that which he The Nineteenth Century and After. Rose M. Bradley. XXI. SALEH: A SEQUEL. Facilis descensus Averni. At the end of five years, dating from the time of his return to Pelesu, there had been evolved a Saleh-the Saleh of the exterior darkness-very different to the sweet-tempered, light-hearted, careless youngster whom his friends in England had known and loved. The old Saleh had been full of health and boyish spirits, a bit lazy, it was true, but withal as "decent" a little fellow as one could wish to find in a long day's tramp. The new Saleh was prematurely aged by frequent attacks of fever and by an irregular life in a climate to whose eccentricities long years of absence had unaccustomed him. The easy good temper and the high spirits also had deserted him, for he felt himself to be the victim of a whole series of injustices, and the memory thereof made him sullen. He was beset, too, by cares and anxieties. His allowance, judged by British standards, was handsome, but those who fixed it had not taken into account the appetites of the parasites, male and female, who battened upon Saleh, the frequent calls upon his purse made by the borrowings of his mother and other relatives, the possibility of heavy gambling losses in Che' Jebah's house or the King's audience-hall, and the innate improvidence of a Malayan raja. He was up to his ears in debt, and was harassed and humiliated by the duns who, though they could not take civil action against him for the recovery of their money, made matters hot for him by petitions to the Resident, and subjected him to insults which, in the good old days, would have been punished by a violent death. Yet all the while the revenues of the state were enormous, and in Saleh's eyes these moneys were the property, not of the Government, but of his House. It was one injustice the more that, when the public treasuries were overflowing with wealth, he should be in daily difficulties about money matters. The white men shook their heads over him. He was a hopeless young waster, they declared. He had been given every chance, had been trained and educated in England at great expense, had been set to learn in his own country the business of practical administration, had been afforded every opportunity of showing what capabilities he might possess, and in every direction he had signally and notoriously failed. There was not even a trace, they averred, that he repaid his teachers by exerting a salutary influence over his father or over any of his fellow countrymen. After the manner of the English, they judged by results, making no very diligent search after causes, and did not attempt to look at things from Saleh's point of view, or to consider the enormous weight of the inherited tendencies and the shackling traditions wherewith the lad was handicapped. To them, given the initial fact of an English education, it was quite natural that young Saleh should be prepared to take up official life on the same low rung of the ladder as that which contented any other newly imported cadet. Also, the education aforesaid should, in their opinion, have fitted him for such work. They forgot that every one of the boys with whom he was expected to compete had generation upon generation of hard workers behind him to stiffen his character and steel his energies, while Saleh had for his forebears as many generations of indolent, pleasure-loving, selfindulgent, dissipated Malayan royalties. They forgot that the English youngsters had made a deliberate choice of the profession to which they were apprenticed, while Saleh's life had been ordered for him without any regard paid to his predilections or capabilities. They forgot, too, that while the last joined cadet could hope some day to become a British Resident, whose power and authority is wellnigh autocratic, Saleh could look forward only to filling the empty office of a Merovingian king. This was a closing of the gates upon ambition to one in whose veins ran the hot blood of hundreds of absolute rulers. All these things the white men forgot, and so doing wrote Saleh down a "hopeless young waster"; but Saleh remembered, pondered them in his heart, brooded over them constantly, and finding scant contentment in the present, fumed against the alien rule which had robbed the country of all that had made its history picturesque, his father of his sovereign power, and him of his birthright. And all this while subtle influences were at work upon him. In Malayan lands we English have wrought some wonderful changes, have increased the wealth and well-being of the people enormously, have relieved them from evils and oppressions in number past all counting; but, given the character of the natives, it were vain to hope that our rule will ever be universally popular. To begin with, it must be remembered that our hatred of injustice is largely a sentiment bred of training and hereditary transmission, that it is not shared in anything approaching equal measure by the Orientals whom we make it our business to relieve from grinding tyranny. A Malay will accept gross ill-treatment from his own chiefs: with a philosophic calm quite baffling to the understanding of the average. European. In nine cases out of ten, far more indignation is excited in the white man who hears a tale of cruel wrong than in the Malay who chances: to be the victim of such oppression.. Similarly, the white man attaches far more importance to the fact that our rule has relieved a people of unbearable oppression than is credited to it by the people themselves. Also, the East is at once the land of very short and of very long memories. The good' that men have wrought does not wait to be interred with their bones: it usually passes into oblivion during their lifetime. Men who have lived under the old régime, and under that which we have estabished, speedily forget that life for them was ever other in material security than it is to-day. On the other hand, in a land where a discussion is decided, not by the production of a new argument, but by the quotation of an old wise saw, the Past ever seems to overshadow the Present. Even those who knew and suffered many evil things under native rule, dream fondly of the days that are gone,. which, after all, were the brave days when they and all the world were young. Tales of those lawless times are for ever on their lips, and the young men, shackled by the monotony which the coming of the white men has imposed, chafe and fume because their world has been marred for them, and fall to dreaming dreams that the past may be made to live again. There lies: the danger. The old men forget, and looking backward see all things: through the glamor that hovers about the youth of every one of us: the young men, chafing at restraint, see through the old men's eyes, and know nought |