Isola

“ The most charming contrasts of foliage, the rarest trees, long valleys, and prospects the most picturesque that could be brought from abroad, Borromean islands floating on clear eddying streams like so many rays, which concentrate their various lustres on a single point, on an Isola Bella, from which the enchanted eye takes in each detail at its leisure, or on an island in the bosom of which is a little house concealed under the drooping foliage of a century-old ash, an island fringed with irises, rose-bushes, and flowers which appears like an emerald richly set. ”

“ Leaving Stresa, famous as the home of Cavour, when that great statesman was planning the creation of a united Italy, we soon came in sight of Isola Bella. As it lay there in the bright sunlight, its green terraces and tropical foliage, its white towers and arcaded walls reflected in the blue waters of the lake, the snowy mountains forming a distant background and a cloudless blue sky surmounting the whole, we thought it beautiful. ”

“ As we approached the steps which ascend to Isola Madre, I saw that the stone girdle which surrounds the green island was fastened by a door; but scarcely had we touched the land at the foot of the steps, before the door was opened by a young man, who welcomed the solitary stranger with evident pleasure. ”

“ My companions were tired out by sightseeing, and declined. I do not minutely describe: these islands are well known. Islands in a lake have a peculiar charm; they are rare too. Three only exist on this lake: Isola Madre; Isola Bella, on which stands the mansion of the Borromeo family, with its terraced grounds; and 130one other, covered by a town inhabited by fishermen. They are at some little distance from shore. An island all to one’s self is ever flattering to the imagination. No one to intrude unknown; the whole rule of the demesne in one’s sovereign hands ”

“ Nor is it difficult to forget unsightly objects here, when we have only to raise our eyes to behold a scene of surpassing beauty,—Isola Madre and Isola dei Pescatori look but a stone's throw from us across the shining water, and beyond a girdle of snow mountains seems to encircle the lake, our beloved Monte Rosa, white as a swan's breast, dominating them all. ”

“ He was the young warder of this little earthly paradise,—for Isola Madre is an actual little paradise, where a number of beautiful and rare plants have been collected from many countries of the world, and grouped here with such beautiful art, that you merely seem conscious of the loveliness of nature. Aloes, which blossom every century, grow here with the pine trees of the north. One wanders through the most charming groves of laurels and camelias; cedars stretch forth their shadowy branches over the soft, flowery turf; tea-trees grow amongst roses ”

“ The town consists of two parts, Isola Superiore and Isola Inferiore; as its name implies it is situated between two arms of the Liri. The many waterfalls of this river and of the Fibreno afford motive power for several important paper-mills. Two of the falls, 80 ft. in height, are especially fine. ”

“ III FERRANTE'S JEST The career of Ferrante da Isola—or, to be particular, the sudden cessation of all record of it—is a matter that must have intrigued many a student of history. In a blaze of military glory he comes into its pages; flashes across them like a meteor, leaving a trail of fiery deeds in his wake; and is gone into an extinction as utter as it is abrupt. ”

“ BORROMEAN ISLANDS, a group of four islands on the W. side of Lago Maggiore off Baveno and Stresa. The southernmost, the Isola Bella, is famous for its château and terraced gardens, constructed by Count Vitaliano Borromeo (d. 1690) . ”

“ The island is one of those paradisiacal isolations which facilitate civilization in its early stages, and preserve it from the encroachments of progress in the later. Its low latitude secures it against cold in winter, and its insular position against extreme heat, while the range of high mountains running longitudinally through it gives its climate a salubrity possessed by no section of the world's surface so near the sun. ”

“ In 1758 Paoli renewed the attack on the Genoese, founding the new port of Isola Rossa as a centre whence the Corsican ships could attack the trading vessels of Genoa. The republic, indeed, was now too weak to attempt seriously to reassert its sway over the island, which, with the exception of the coast towns, Paoli ruled with absolute authority and with conspicuous wisdom. In the intervals of fighting he was occupied in reducing Corsican anarchy into some sort of civilized order. The vendetta was put down, partly by religious influence, partly with a stern hand ”

“ Quando l’uomo si parte dell’isola di Petam, e l’uomo va per isciroc da c miglia, trova l’isola di Iava la Minore, ma ella non è si piccola ch’ella non giri ii. M miglia: e di questa isola vi conterò tutto il vero. ”

“ Landulf, a German to whom the see was granted by Henry II., was driven out in 1022, and his palace destroyed, but other Germans were invested with the see afterwards. The commune of Cremona is first mentioned in a document of 1098, recording its investiture by the countess Matilda with the territory known as Isola Fulcheria. It had to sustain many wars with its neighbours in order to maintain itself in its new possessions. ”

“ Isola Dering series:—
1. Painter of souls.
2. What is love?
[Little, Frances.]
1. The lady of the decoration.
2. The lady married. Same as The lady and Sada San.
London, J.
1. Jerry.
2. Michael, brother of Jerry. ”

“ But with its imposing groves of oak, its golden wealth of orange-trees, its odorous lanes of oleander.
its broad grazing-meadows yellow-starred with wild camomile, Grande Isle remains the prettiest island of the Gulf; and its loveliness is exceptional. For the bleakness of Grand Terre is reiterated by most of the other islands,—Caillou, Cassetete, Calumet, Wine Island, the twin Timbaliers, Gull Island, and the many islets haunted by the gray pelican,—all of which are little more than sand-bars covered with wiry grasses, prairie-cane, and scrub-timber. ”

“ FAR Eastward, where the sea, with thundering tides,
Sicilian shores from Afric's soil divides;
Not far from where high Etna flames with dread,
A little Island rears its rocky head.
Its broken cliffs allure the fresh'ning gales,
And flowers and fruitage clothe the verdant vales;
Mild breathes the air, as if to wake delight,
And orange groves to soft repose invite,
But still the rocky coast, with firmness proud,
Repels the dashing surge, and billows loud. ”

“ Last Island has gone! How it went I first heard from the lips of a veteran pilot, while we sat one evening together on the trunk of a drifted cypress which some high tide had pressed deeply into the Grande Isle beach. The day had been tropically warm; we had sought the shore for a breath of living air. Sunset came, and with it the ponderous heat lifted,—a sudden breeze blew,—lightnings flickered in the darkening horizon,—wind and water began to strive together,—and soon all the low coast boomed. Then my companion began his story; perhaps the coming of the storm inspired him to speak! ”

“ To the south the bare peaks of Desolation Island, beginning from Cape Pilar, rose with terrific boldness, unscaleable shafts and towers of rock that recalled the shapes of the Coolin hills in Skye or the still loftier summits of the Lofoten Isles in Norway. To the north a mysterious fringe of islands and foam-girt reefs, grey and dim among their mists, hid the entrance to Smyth's Channel and the labyrinth of almost unexplored sounds and inlets along the Chilean coast beyond. ”

“ There being no earth for it to dry into, it poured over the level slabs, sweeping from slab to slab almost as the sea swept over the rocks between the tide-marks. Watching it at such moments, it would have seemed to you as if the whole island would shortly become one great waterfall, or scarcely perceptible reef for the Atlantic to roll over, the water, as it descended upon the slabs, falling into the troughs or tunnels laid ready for it, and out of them again until it found rest in the final trough awaiting it at the bottom. ”

“ Wise men have written volumes over less. I do not know but here are groups of the South Sea Isles in miniature. For example, separated from us by a narrow gulf of water, and such clear, bright water, is an islet with a ridge, a kind of half-moon crest, carpeted with olive-tinted moss, over which the lone sun pours a stream of almost blinding light. ”

“ What is it that attracts strangers from every part of the world into this distant land, and has more than compensated a remote situation and a churlish soil, and given to our own Northern Isle a splendour unknown to the regions of the sun? What is it which has brought together this mighty assemblage, and united the ardent and the generous from every part of the world, from the Ural mountains to the banks of the Mississippi, on the shores of an island in the Atlantic? ”

“ In the eyes of those to whom the past furnishes a perspective more fascinating even than the promise of the future, the little isle adjacent, which is itself a finely marked basaltic cone, rising over a thousand feet high and well called “Holy Island,” is even more worthy of the visits of the reflecting scholar. It holds an attraction even greater, in human interest, at least, than the wonders of geology, or the numerous witnesses to antiquity in the form of upreared stones. ”

“ The most tantalizing archeological puzzle of the Pacific is Easter Island, with its strange images of stone, ancient dwellings and antediluvian caves. Dropped at haphazard in the sea, a thousand miles from anywhere, and owing a passive allegiance to the Chilean Government, Easter Island is one of the wonders of the world, and holds a secret that no man has yet read. ”

“ The island lies in a lonely position, at the extreme west of the South Pacific series, and measures but thirteen miles in length and about seven in width. The hues of the land are sand and tawny; the sea is a faithful mirror of the turquoise sky; the dreamy heat of Polynesia endures throughout the year. Easter Island is lonely, lazy, unproductive, a little speck upon the broad breast of the Pacific. ”

“ From Cape Elizabeth on the west to Quoddy Head on the east, there are over a thousand large and small islands, nearly all of which are of bold formation and most of them wholly or in part covered with a growth of spruce and fir. The shores of these islands, as well as the mainland, are mainly rock-ribbed, with many high cliffs, at the foot of which the ocean surges beat unceasingly. Deep fissures and sea caverns into which the green water, changed to yeasty foam, ever churns and rushes by day and night, are common; and when storms arise it bellows and roars like an angry bull. ”

“ A ring-island? How can an island be made in the shape of a ring?
Ah! it was a long time before men found out that riddle. Mr. Darwin was the first to guess the answer, as he has guessed many an answer beside. These islands are each a ring, or nearly a ring of coral, with smooth shallow water inside: but their outsides run down, like a mountain wall, sheer into seas hundreds of fathoms deep. People used to believe, and reasonably enough, that the coral polypes began to build up the islands from the very bottom of the deep sea. ”

“ Exquisitely moulded islands are scattered about in the most enchanting way, all shapes and sizes, with now and then a little garden patch, and ever verdant with native woods and grasses and charming rockeries. As far out as the eye can reach the beautiful isles break the cold sea into bewitching inlets and lure the mariner to shelter from evil outside waves. ”

“ Whoever has read the history of those isles, will remember the wonders told of another island, still more beautiful, seen occasionally from their shores, stretching away in the clear bright west, with long shadowy promontories, and high, sun-gilt peaks. Numerous expeditions, both in ancient and modern days, have launched forth from the Canaries in quest of that island; but, on their approach, mountain and promontory have gradually faded away, until nothing has remained but the blue sky above, and the deep blue water below. ”

“ In the first place he is one of the most skilful pilots on the coast; when hard pressed, he does not hesitate to use even the Isles des Rochers as a place of refuge."
"The Isles des Rochers?" queried the nobleman.
"A chevaux-de-frise on the sea, my Lord!" continued the commandant; "where fifty barren isles are fortified by a thousand rocks; frothing fangs when the tide is low; sharp teeth that lie in wait to bite when the smiling lips of the treacherous waters have closed above! ”

“ In the morning, being within three miles of the shore, we discovered it to be a long low island, with a white beach, of a pleasant appearance, full of cocoa-nut and other trees, and surrounded with a rock of red coral. We stood along the north-east side of it, within half a mile of the shore; and the savages, as soon as they saw us, made great fires, as we supposed, to alarm the distant inhabitants of the island, and ran along the beach, abreast of the ship, in great numbers, armed in the same manner as the natives of the Islands of Disappointment. ”

“ Indeed, not a curl of smoke anywhere betrayed the presence of mankind. Had it not been for depressions on the top of the wall here and there, which were filled with vegetation, one [182] might have supposed the island to be nothing but a desolate and arid rock, but this reassured me. I thought it strange that there was no mountain or hill rising from beyond the top of the wall, but I was yet to see how strange the island was. Indeed, I think there can be no other like it in the world. ”