Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume V.djvu/388

384 CORSICA CORTE quality. The principal minerals are lead, iron, black manganese, asbestos, granite, marble, emeralds, and pipe clay. Iron is mined in sev- eral places, and the product is sufficient to sup- ply 10 forges, which are situated at Catalane. The most valuable domestic animals are the mule and goat; the sheep are small, with coarse black wool, and four or even six horns, but are prized for their delicate flesh. Among the wild animals are the moufflon, or wild sheep, fox, wild boar, deer, hare, and various kinds of game. The coasts afford valuable fisheries of tunny, pilchards, and anchovies. The manufactures are few and of little value, consisting mainly of woollen for domestic con- sumption, glass, leather, tobacco pipes, and soap. Timber is exported, many fine pines being taken to France for masts. The other exports are wines, the red of Sara and the white of Cape Corso, oil, silk, dried fruits, and leather. The Corsicans are hospitable, temperate, and brave, but indolent, impetuous, and vindictive ; human life, although more se- cure than in former times, is still frequently sacrificed in the heat of passion or revenge. The predominant religion is the Roman Catho- lic, and the principal language Italian. The cottages, built chiefly on steep hillsides, are often little more than four bare walls, with a single opening, which serves for both door and window, and occasionally a second story, the ascent to which is by a ladder. They have no fireplaces, and the furniture is as rough as the building. The roads in the interior are generally poor, but there are four good roads across the island, made by the French, and there is com- munication by steam with Marseilles, Toulon, and Leghorn. There is a submarine telegraph from the north of the island to Spezia on the Italian coast, one from near Ajaccio on the W. coast to Toulon, and one under the strait of Bonifacio to Sardinia. Corsica is divided into the arrondissements of Ajaccio, Sartena, Bas- tia, Calvi, and Corte. Capital, Ajaccio. Prin- cipal seaport, Bastia. The other chief towns are Calvi on the N". W. coast, Corte in the interior, Sartena, Porto Vecchio, and Bonifacio in the south. Corsica seems to have been first settled by Ligurians. It was held suc- cessively by the Ligurians, Etruscans, and Car- thaginians; was ravaged by the Romans in 259 B. C., and was subjugated by them about 230. On the dismemberment of the empire it fell into the hands of the Goths. It became subject to the Franks in the 8th century, to the Saracens in the 9th, and to Pisa in the llth; was annexed to the Papal States by Gregory VII. ; passed again under the power of Pisa, af- terward of Genoa, then of Aragon ; and finally became in the 14th century a possession of the Genoese, who held it till the 18th, when it became a scene of revolutions, during which a German adventurer, Theodor von Neuhof, was proclaimed king of the island. After his fall the Corsicans under Gen. Paoli achieved their independence, but in 1769 they were sub- dued by the French. (See PAOLI.) In 1793 Paoli, assisted by the English, drove out the new masters, and the island was placed under the protection of the British crown; but in 1796 the patriots were again subdued, and in 1814 the island was secured to France by the treaty of Paris. Corsica has produced several eminent men, and above all Napoleon. See Jacobi's Histoire generate de la Corse (Paris, 1835), and Gregorovius's Corsica (2 vols., Stuttgart, 1854 ; English ed., London and Phil- adelphia, 1855). CORT, Cornells, a Dutch painter and engraver, born at Hoorn in 1530, died in Rome in 1578. He studied under Hieronymus Cock, and went to Venice in 1566, where he became an en- graver, and reproduced in copperplate many of the paintings of Titian, who seems to have employed him. He afterward engraved for Tintoretto and other Venetian painters. From Venice he went to Rome, where he established a school for engraving. Among his pupils was Agostino Carracci. Of his works, the " Trans- figuration of Raphael" and the "Massacre of the Innocents," after Tintoretto, have been most admired. CORT, Henry, an English inventor, born at Lancaster in 1740, died in 1800. He estab- lished himself as an iron merchant at Gosport, and afterward erected iron works at Fontley, near that town, where he expended upward of 20,000 in perfecting processes for puddling and rolling iron. His experiments were suc- cessful, in spite of the opposition of the most powerful iron masters of England, and on June 17, 1783, a patent was granted to him "for machinery, furnace, and apparatus, for pre- paring, welding, and working various sorts of iron;" and a second patent on Feb. 14, 1784, "for shingling, welding, and manufacturing iron and steel into bars, plates, and rods of purer quality and in larger quantity than here- tofore, by a more effectual application of fire and machinery." He took into partnership Adam Jellicoe, chief clerk in the office of the paymaster of the navy, and for some time, by contracts with the government, and by other extensive operations, the iron works were placed in a highly flourishing condition. But after his partner's death the navy board seized the works for claims against Jellicoe, involving Cort in onerous lawsuits, and eventually in total ruin. He was compelled to accept em- ployment as superintendent of the works of the same iron masters whom he had enriched by his life-long labors, who secured his services under the promise of aiding him in the re- covery of his own establishment ; but these promises were never redeemed, and the only compensation which he received was a pension of 200 granted to him by the government in 1794. He has been called the "father of the British iron trade." CORTE, a town of Corsica, on the Tavignano, 35 m. N". E. of Ajaccio; pop. in 1866, 6,094. It has a court, a communal college, and the