THE SANGUINARY ISLANDS.

Bush Advocate, Volume XXI, Issue 285, 5 June 1909, Page 2

THE SANGUINARY ISLANDS.

(By a Banker). The birthplace -of the "Scourge of Europe," of the mam responsible for a greater immolation of the human race, more widespread havoc and devastation, and more pitiable and appalling misery than perhaps almost any man who ever lived, Corsica, that lovely gem of the ocean, is indeed a nature-favored spot upon which her bounty has been bestowed with lavish hand. The drive for instance from Ajaccio along the shore road to the promontory .opposite "The Sanguinary Islands" — presumably so named from the heavy death toll they exact from incautious or storm-driven mariners j — is in parts lovely beyond description. ' Near the town, on each side palm-adorned gardens, perfumed with the seent — though 'tis winter — of roses and luxuriantly flowering mimosas and hibiscus or other flowering shrub, and ornamented with cycas, castor-oil, or other subtropical tree or plant; while the handsome villas, many wreathed and festooned with that luxuriantly flowering beauty of Nature, the Bougainvillia, a dense mass of deep purple-red, or light pink, or orange floriage, which in the bright rays of the sun are a sheeen of vivid splendour. Farther out the road is bordered with cactus hedges, which later on must be a blaze of scarlet bloom ; while the hillsides in many places are covered with a plant, apparently the conser T vatory "diplacus," which in summer would be a mass of bright orange bloom. Still higher, rows of larches uplift their lofty heads; while in the distance the pyramids and peaks of a range of snow-cloud mountains ax*e up reared against tile azure of the sky. Seawards innumerable picturesque creeks and inlets indent the shore ; though on the coasts of this tideless, but beautiful sea, except perhaps for a narrow strip, the hard, sparkling sandy shore is never seen. And now the great promontory is reached; a jagged mass of granite jutting out into the great ocean, which for ages past has futilely ventod- its wrath against those craigs, and escarpments, and beetling cliffs, and now with the sound of thunder is impotently hurling itself in great volumes of foam and' spume against the iron-boimd rocks. And beyond are the Sanguinary Islands. Aye, and well may they bear that terrible name. For from time to time many a storm-tossed gallant ship, helplessly driven on the rocks, has sunk down into the depths, transformed from the home of brave j seamen into their mausoleum. And there will their whitened bones rest until on tho morn of the resurrection j the sea shall give up her dead. Then ( shall tho righteous, they who hare lived a. godly life, and whoso transgressions are atoned for by the sacrifice of the Saviour of the world, who Himself horo tho retribution due, ■ then shall those happy ones be wo:l- --! corned with glory. But, alas, not for' j all shall be this welcome!