Page:An Account of Corsica (1769).djvu/91

Rh time in heads of nails in the shoes of the mules, who travel with a flow and incessant pace along the hard roads. But a very small proportion of the great quantity of Spanish barrels, which are fold in all parts of Europe, can have this advantage. The metal of the Corsican barrels is little inferiour to that of the generality of Spanish ones, and they begin to make them very well.

An allusion has been drawn from the iron mines, and the name of Corsica, to the character of its inhabitants. Hieronymus de Marinis, a Genoese, who writes on the dominion and government of the republick, says of this island: 'Terrae viscera ferri fodinis affluunt, naturae cum ipso Corsicae nomine in uno conspirantis praejudicio, Corsi enim corde funt ferreo, adeoque ad sicam armaque prono. The bowels of the earth abound in mines of iron; nature conspiring, by a fort of prejudice, to form a similarity between the name of Corsica and the temper of the people; for the Corsicans have hearts of iron, and are therefore prone to arms and the sword.' The Marquis D'Argens applies to Corsica these lines of Crebillon: