by extravagance, he himself might one day be obliged to have recourse to the fame expedient.
The commissary general had his residence at Bastia. There were alio other commissaries at Calvi, Ajaccio and Bonifaccio; and Lieutenants, and inferiour officers, dispersed over the island; who all in their several stations, contributed to rob, and to ruin the country; while they triumphed in a mean security, that as Corsica was overlooked, and, as it were, hid in a corner of Europe, their injurious proceedings were not known to the world.
During this period of secret, and cruel oppression, there happened a very curious event, the establishment of a colony of Greeks in Corsica; of which I shall now give an account.
After Mahomet and his successours had subdued almost the whole of ancient Greece, and Scanderbeg, who so gloriously defended his country, was dead; there still remained a few brave souls who inhabited a part of Peloponnesus of old, now the kingdom of Morea. This part was, what is called a branch of the Maina, the very spot where Lacedemon flood.
Here, covered by impassable mountains, with only a small entrance, they resisted the Ottoman empire, as Leonidas formerly resisted the millions of Xerxes,
F 2
