Bastia and Ajaccio, Corsica.
By Daniel T. Bourdeau
I HAVE now been on this island seventeen days. I first held fifteen meetings at Bastia, a city of 25,000 inhabitants, where an evangelist was fully established in the truth, and ten other persons decided to walk in the light of the last merciful message to mankind. At the invitation of another evangelist, I then came to Ajaccio, by stage, a distance of one hundred and fifty kilometres—considerably over one hundred miles, and spoke five times in a hall to Roman Catholics. I also devoted from five to seven hours a day in teaching present truth to the evangelist and his wife for eight days in succession. They did all in their power to make my stay agreeable, and showed an interest in and gratitude for light and truth. May they press on with courage in the narrow way amid the moral darkness that surrounds them, and prove faithful and a blessing to others in reflecting the precious light they have received. Corsica is, for the most part, a hilly, mountainous, and barren region. Traveling here is tedious. The fertile parts of the island are very lonely, and abound with tropical fruits. Beautiful olive orchards remind one of the Mount of Olives, where the Saviour resorted so often for prayer, and inspire a desire to follow his example. Ajaccio is a beautiful city of 18,000 inhabitants. The people here are more than conscious that they occupy the birthplace of Napoleon, in whose memory they have erected two monuments, but they are unconscious of their great moral blindness and spiritual shame and poverty. Here the Catholic clergy have great sway. The people of Corsica were subject to the kingdom of Genoa, Italy, till about one hundred and twenty years ago, and are far behind the times in many respects. In an inland town the ancient Greek is still spoken.