Ernest Arthur Gardner and Maximilian Otto Bismarck Caspari

“ The town of Corfu stands on the broad part of a peninsula, whose termination in the citadel is cut from it by an artificial fosse formed in a natural gully, with a salt-water ditch at the bottom. Having grown up within fortifications, where every foot of ground was precious, it is mostly, in spite of recent improvements, a labyrinth of narrow, tortuous, up-and-down streets, accommodating themselves to the irregularities of the ground, few of them fit for wheel carriages. ”

“ CORFU (anc. and mod. Gr. Κέρκυρα or Κόρκυρα, Lat. Corcyra) , an island of Greece, in the Ionian Sea, off the coast of Albania or Epirus, from which it is separated by a strait varying in breadth from less than 2 to about 15 m. The name Corfu is an Italian corruption of the Byzantine Κορυφώ, which is derived from the Greek Κορυφαί (crests) . In shape it is not unlike the sickle (drepanē) , to which it was compared by the ancients,—the hollow side, with the town and harbour of Corfu in the centre, being turned towards the Albanian coast. ”

“ The Venetian feudal families pursued a mild but somewhat enervating policy towards the natives, who began to merge their nationality in that of the Latins and adopted for the island the new name of Corfu. The Corfiotes were encouraged to enrich themselves by the cultivation of the olive, but were debarred from entering into commercial competition with Venice. The island served as a refuge for Greek scholars, and in 1732 became the home of the first academy of modern Greece, but no serious impulse to Greek thought came from this quarter. ”