Beyond Boswell

All I knew about Corsica before going there last week for a touring holiday was that it is a French possession, that Napoleon hailed from there and that James Boswell visited there once. Exactly where Corsica was in the Mediterranean sea, I was uncertain about. I remembered Boswell was there because not long ago I found a scrap of paper on which I’d copied out a paragraph from his Corsica journal. It’s a mystery to me why I’d taken the trouble to do this. But before last week virtually my entire knowledge of the island was based on this one short paragraph, which goes:

19 October 1765. While I stopped to refresh my mules at a little village, the inhabitants came crowding about me. When they were informed of my country, a strong, black fellow said, ‘English! They are barbarians; they don’t believe in the great God.’ I told him, ‘We do believe in the great God, and in Jesus Christ too.’