[wrong] ELBA, A HUNDRED YEARS AFTER 209 



berry tree and men must be brought to the island who knew how to 

 cultivate it; her fisheries should be developed; she should revive her 

 production of coral and anchovy. Rio needed a harbour and should 

 have it; Napoleon himself went out in a boat, made soundings with 

 the lead, and came back drenched to the skin. 



He was not less zealous in regard to military defence. His 

 thoughts dwelt perpetually, indeed, on problems of war. In the end 

 he had in Elba an army of sixteen hundred men. As the total popu- 

 lation was only twelve thousand it is clear that about one-half of the 

 adult males of the island were in the army. Most of the men were old 

 soldiers who had come to serve still under Napoleon; but three or four 

 hundred were recruited in Elba. Napoleon would spend five or six 

 hours at a time at the .barracks. He talked to the men familiarly, 

 tasted their soup and enquired about their comfort. He had not only 

 an army but also a small navy of five ships. He believed that if 

 attacked in Elba he could retire to the mountains and hold out for 

 two years. 



Sir Neil Campbell says that Napoleon seemed like the incarnation 

 of perpetual motion. Lord Ebrington spent an evening with Napoleon 

 alone and the Emperor kept his guest walking up and down in the 

 salle for hours while he talked. When he gave an order he expected 

 it to be carried out instantly. If a road was being built he required 

 to know each day how much had been achieved. He was up often at 

 three o^lock in the morning and he showed little consideration in 

 requiring others to adjust themselves to his own rapid and eccentric 

 movements. "He did what he wished, as he wished, and when he 

 wished" says Pons, one of those in Elba who were driven by this rest- 

 less master. He wrote little in Elba but read insatiably and 

 complained of the inadequacy of his library. He was always ordering 

 books to replenish it. 



It would hardly be accurate to say that Elba still preserves any 

 vivid memory of this imperious master. Napoleon is, indeed, not 

 much in evidence in the island. There is, it is true, one little street 

 in Porte Ferraio with Napoleon's name. But, after all, his sojourn 

 here was brief and the heart of Elba is Italian not French; it is the 

 heroesofmodern Italy, Victor Emmanuel, Garibaldi and Cavour, whom 

 Elba loves to commemorate. Some streets in Porto Ferraio are named 

 after Italian literary men — Manzoni and Carducci for example. The 

 names one sees are Italian or, in some cases, Spanish. There are still 

 families in Elba who bear the honoured name of Dante, and some with 

 that dishonoured one which came from Spain, Borgia. It was at 

 Porto Longone on the south coast that the Spanish chiefly settled 

 and there to this day are found such names as Perez, Lopez and Rodri- 



Sec. I and II, 1915—14 



