TO THE GOLD COAST FOR GOLD

A Personal Narrative

By Richard F. Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron

In Two Volumes—Vol. I.

TO OUR EXCELLENT FRIEND

JAMES IRVINE

(OF LIVERPOOL, F.R.G.S, F.S.A, &C.)

WE INSCRIBE THESE PAGES AS A TOKEN OF OUR APPRECIATION AND ADMIRATION FOR HIS COURAGE AND ENERGY IN OPENING AND WORKING THE GOLDEN LANDS OF WESTERN AFRICA

'Much have I travelled in the realms of gold'

SHAKESPEARE

CONTENTS

PREFACE.

The following extract from 'Wanderings in West Africa,' a book which I wrote in 1862 and published (anonymously) in 1863, will best explain the reasons which lately sent me to Western Africa:—

In several countries, for instance, Dinkira, Tueful, Wásá (Wassaw), and especially Akim, the hill-region lying north of Accra, the people are still active in digging gold. The pits, varying from two to three feet in diameter, and from twelve to fifty deep (eighty feet is the extreme), are often so near the roads that loss of life has been the result. 'Shoring up' being little known, the miners are not unfrequently buried alive. The stuff is drawn up by ropes in clay pots, or calabashes, and thus a workman at the bottom widens the pit to a pyriform shape; tunnelling, however, is unknown. The excavated earth is carried down to be washed. Besides sinking these holes, they pan in the beds of rivers, and in places collect quartz, which is roughly pounded.

They (the natives) often refuse to dig deeper than the chin, for fear of the earth 'caving in;' and, quartz-crushing and the use of quicksilver being unknown, they will not wash unless the gold 'show colour' to the naked eye.

As we advance northwards from the Gold Coast the yield becomes richer....

It is becoming evident that Africa will one day equal half-a-dozen Californias....

Will our grandsons believe in these times ... that this Ophir—that this California, where every river is a Tmolus and a Pactolus, every hillock is a gold-field—does not contain a cradle, a puddling-machine, a quartz-crusher, a pound of mercury? That half the washings are wasted because quicksilver is unknown? That whilst convict labour is attainable, not a company has been formed, not a surveyor has been sent out? I exclaim with Dominie Sampson—'Pro-di-gious!'

Western Africa was the first field that supplied the precious metal to mediaeval Europe. The French claim to have imported it from Elmina as early as A.D. 1382. In 1442 Gonçales Baldeza returned from his second voyage to the regions about Bojador, bringing with him the first gold. Presently a company was formed for the purpose of carrying on the gold-trade between Portugal and Africa. Its leading men were the navigators Lanzarote and Gilianez, and Prince Henry 'the Navigator' did not disdain to become a member. In 1471 João de Santarem and Pedro Escobar reached a place on the Gold Coast to which, from the abundance of gold found there, they gave the name of 'São Jorje da Mina,' the present Elmina. After this a flood of gold poured into the lap of Europe; and at last, cupidity having mastered terror of the Papal Bull, which assigned to Portugal an exclusive right to the Eastern Hemisphere, English, French, and Dutch adventurers hastened to share the spoils.

For long years my words fell upon flat ears. Presently the Ashanti war of 1873-74 brought the subject before the public. The Protectorate was overrun by British officers, and their reports and itineraries never failed to contain, with a marvellous unanimity of iteration, the magic word—Gold.

The fraction of country, twenty-six miles of seaboard out of two hundred, by a depth of sixty—in fact, the valley of the Ancobra River—now (early 1882) contains five working companies. Upwards of seventy concessions, to my knowledge, have been obtained from native owners, and many more are spoken of. In fact, development has at length begun, and the line of progress is clearly traced.

At Madeira I was joined (January 8, 1882) by Captain Cameron, R.N., C.B., &c. Our object was to explore the so-called Kong Mountains, which of late years have become quasi-mythical. He came out admirably equipped; nor was I less prepared. But inevitable business had delayed us both, and we landed on the Gold Coast at the end of January instead of early October. The hot-dry season had set in with a heat and a drought unknown for years; the climate was exceptionally trying, and all experts predicted early and violent rains. Finally, we found so much to do upon the Ancobra River that we had no time for exploration. Geography is good, but Gold is better.

In this joint book my energetic and hard-working friend and fellow-traveller has described the five working mines which I was unable to visit. He has also made an excellent route-survey of the country, corrected by many and careful astronomical observations. It is curious to compare his work with the sketches of previous observers, Jeekel, Wyatt, Bonnat, and Dahse. To my companion's industry also are mainly due our collections of natural history.

We are answerable only for our own, not for each other's statements. As regards my part, I have described the Gold-land as minutely as possible, despite the many and obvious disadvantages of the 'photographic style.' Indeed, we travellers often find ourselves in a serious dilemma. If we do not draw our landscapes somewhat in pre-Raphaelite fashion, they do not impress the reader; if we do, critics tell us that they are wearisome longueurs, and that the half would be better than the whole. The latter alternative must often be risked, especially in writing about a country where many at home have friends and relatives. Of course they desire to have as much detail about it as possible; hence the reader will probably pardon my 'curiosity.'

The Appendix discusses at some length the various objections made to the Gold Coast mines by the public, which suffers equally from the 'bull' and the 'bear' and from the wild rumours set afloat by those not interested in the speculation. I first dispose of the dangers menaced by Ashanti invasions. The second number notices the threatened labour-famine, and shows how immigration of Chinese, of coolies, and of Zanzibar-men will, when wanted, supply not only the Gold Coast, but also the whole of our unhappy West African stations, miscalled colonies, which are now starving for lack of hands. The third briefly sketches the history of the Gold-trade in the north-western section of the Dark Continent, discusses the position and the connections of the auriferous Kong Mountains, and suggests the easiest system of 'getting' the precious metal. This is by shallow working, by washing, and by the 'hydraulicking' which I had studied in California. The earlier miners have, it is believed, begun at the wrong end with deep workings, shafts, and tunnels; with quartz-crushers, stamps, and heavy and expensive machinery, when flumes and force-pumps would have cost less and brought more. Our observations and deductions, drawn from a section of coast, will apply if true, as I believe they are, to the whole region between the Assini and the Volta Rivers.

I went to the Gold Coast with small expectations. I found the Wásá (Wassaw) country, Ancobra section, far richer than the most glowing descriptions had represented it. Gold and other metals are there in abundance, and there are good signs of diamond, ruby, and sapphire.

Remains to be seen if England has still honesty and public spirit enough to work this old-new California as it should be worked. I will answer for its success if the workers will avoid over-exclusiveness, undue jealousy and rivalry, stockjobbing, and the rings of 'guinea-pigs' and 'guinea-worms.'

RICHARD F. BURTON.

TO THE GOLD COAST FOR GOLD.

CHAPTER I. — PRELIMINARY: TRIESTE TO LISBON.

The glory of an explorer, I need hardly say, results not so much from the extent, or the marvels of his explorations, as from the consequences to which they lead. Judged by this test, my little list of discoveries has not been unfavoured of fortune. Where two purblind fever-stricken men plodded painfully through fetid swamp and fiery thorn-bush over the Zanzibar-Tanganyika track, mission-houses and schools may now be numbered by the dozen. Missionaries bring consuls, and consuls bring commerce and colonisation. On the Gold Coast of Western Africa, whence came the good old 'guinea,' not a washing-cradle, not a pound of quicksilver was to be found in 1862; in 1882 five mining companies are at work; and in 1892 there will be as many score.

I had long and curiously watched from afar the movement of the Golden Land, our long-neglected El Dorado, before the opportunity of a revisit presented itself. At last, in the autumn of 1881, Mr. James Irvine, of Liverpool, formerly of the West African 'Oil-rivers,' and now a large mine-owner in the Gulf of Guinea, proposed to me a tour with the object of inspecting his concessions, and I proposed to myself a journey of exploration inland. The Foreign Office liberally gave me leave to escape the winter of Trieste, where the ferocious Bora (nor'-nor'-easter) wages eternal war with the depressing and distressing Scirocco, or south-easter. Some One marvelled aloud and said, 'You are certainly the first that ever applied to seek health in the "genial and congenial climate" of the West African Coast.' But then Some One had not realised the horrors of January and February at the storm-beaten head of the ever unquiet Adriatic.

Thus it happened that on November 18,1881, after many adieux and au revoirs, I found myself on board the Cunard s.s. Demerara (Captain C. Jones), bound for 'Gib.' My wife was to accompany me as far as Hungarian Fiume.

The Cunard route to 'Gib' is decidedly roundabout. We began with a run to Venice, usually six hours from the Vice-Queen of the Adriatic: it was prolonged to double by the thick and clinging mist-fog. The sea-city was enjoying her usual lethargy of repose after the excitement of the 'geographical Carnival,' as we called the farcical Congress of last September. She is essentially a summering place. Her winter is miserable, neither city nor houses being built for any but the finest of fine weather; her 'society'-season lasts only four months from St. Stephen's Day; her traveller-seasons are spring and autumn. We found all our friends either in bed with bad colds, or on the wing for England and elsewhere; we inhaled a quant. suff. of choking vapour, even in the comfortable Britannia Hotel; and, on the morning of the 23rd, we awoke to find ourselves moored alongside of the new warehouses on the new port of Hungarian, or rather Croatian, Fiume.

Fiume had made prodigious strides since I last saw her in 1878; and she is gradually taking the wind out of the sails of her sister-rival. While old Tergeste wastes time and trouble upon futile questions of policy, and angry contrasts between Germans and Slavs, and Italians and Triestines, Fiume looks to the main chance. The neat, clean, and well-watered little harbour-city may be called a two-dinner-a-day place, so profuse is her hospitality to strangers. Here, too, we once more enjoyed her glorious outlook, the warm winter sun gilding the snowy-silvery head of Monte Maggiore and raining light and life upon the indigo-tinted waters of Fiume Bay. Next to Naples, I know nothing in Europe more beautiful than this ill-named Quarnero. We saw a shot or so of the far-famed Whitehead torpedo, which now makes twenty-one miles an hour; and on Nov. 25 we began to run down the Gulf en route for Patras.

It was a pleasure to emerge from the stern and gloomy Adriatic; and nothing could be more lovely than the first evening amongst the Ionian Islands. To port, backed by the bold heights of the Grecian sea-range, lay the hoary mount, and the red cliffs, 780 feet high, of Sappho's Leap, a never-forgotten memory. Starboard rose bleak Ithaca, fronting the black mountain of Cephalonia, now bald and bare, but clothed with dark forests till these were burnt down by some mischievous malignant. Whatever of sterility deformed the scene lay robed under a glory of colour painted with perfect beauty by the last smile of the sun. Earth and air and sea showed every variety of the chromatic scale, especially of rose-tints, from the tenderest morning blush of virgin snow to the vinous evening flush upon the lowlands washed by the purple wave. The pure translucent vault never ceased to shift its chameleon-like hues, that ranged between the diaphanous azure of the zenith and the faintest rainbow green, a border-land where blue and yellow met and parted. The air felt soft and balmy; a holy calm was on the face of creation; all looked delicious after the rude north, and we acknowledged once more that life was worth living.

Patras also has greatly improved since I last saw her in 1872. The malaria-swamps to the north and south of the town have been drained and are being warped up: the 'never-failing succession of aguish fevers' will presently fade out of the guide-books. A macadamised boulevard has been built, and a breakwater is building. The once desert square, 'Georgios A',' has been planted with trees, which should be Eucalyptus; and adorned with two French statues of bronze which harmonise admirably with the surroundings. The thoroughfares are still Sloughs of Despond after rain, and gridirons of St. Laurence in dusty summer; but there are incipient symptoms of trottoirs. And throughout there is a disappearance of the hovels which resembled Port Sa'id in her younger day, and a notable substitution of tall solid houses.

All this has been brought about by 'fruit,' which in Patras means currants; that is, 'Corinthian grapes.' The export this year is unusual, 110,000 tons, including the Morea and the Islands; and of this total only 20,000 go to France for wine-making. It gives a surprising idea of the Christmas plum-pudding manufacture. Patras also imports for all the small adjacent places, inhabited by 'shaggy capotes.' And she will have a fine time when that talented and energetic soldier, General Türr, whom we last met at Venice, begins the 'piercing of the Isthmus.' À propos of which, one might suggest to Patras, with due respect, that (politically speaking) 'honesty is the best policy.'

Being at Patras on St. Andrew's Day, with a Scotch demoiselle on board, we could hardly but pilgrimage to the place of the Apostle's martyrdom. Mrs. Wood kindly sent her daughters to do the honours. Aghyos Andreas lies at the extreme south of the town on the system of ruts, called a road, which conducts down-coast. The church is a long yellow barn, fronting a cypress-grown cemetery, whose contents are being transferred to the new extramural. A little finger of the holy man reposes under a dwarf canopy in the south-eastern angle: his left arm is preserved at Mount Athos in a silver reliquary, set with gems. Outside, near the south-western corner, is the old well of Demeter (Ceres), which has not lost its curative virtues by being baptised. You descend a dwarf flight of brick steps to a mean shrine and portrait of the saint, and remark the solid bases and the rude rubble arch of the pagan temple. A fig-tree, under which the martyrdom took place, grew in the adjacent court; it has long been cut down, probably for fuel.

The population of Patras still affords a fine study of the 'dirty picturesque,' with clothes mostly home-made; sheepskin cloaks; fustanellas or kilts, which contain a whole piece of calico; red leggings, and the rudest of sandals; Turkish caps, and an occasional pistol-belt. The Palikar still struts about in all his old bravery; and the bourgeois humbly imitates the dingy garb of Southern Italy. The people have no taste for music, no regard for art, no respect for antiquities, except for just as much as these will bring. They own two, and only two, objects in life: firstly, to make money, and secondly, to keep and not to spend it. But this dark picture has a bright side. No race that I know is so greedy of education; the small boys, instead of wending unwillingly to school, crowd the doors before they are opened. Where this exceptional feeling is universal we may hope for much.

The last evening at Patras showed us a beautiful view of what is here called Parnassus (Parnassó), the tall bluff mountain up the Gulf, whose snows at sunset glowed like a balass ruby. We left the Morea at 2 A.M. (December 2), and covered the fifty-two miles to Zante before breakfast. There is, and ever has been, something peculiarly sympathetic to me in the 'flower of the Levant.' 'Eh! 'tis a bonny, bonny place,' repeatedly ejaculated our demoiselle. The city lies at the foot of the grey cliffs, whose northern prolongation extends to the Akroteri, or Lighthouse Point. A fine quay, the Strada Marina, has been opened during the last six years along the northern sea-front, where the arcades suggest those of Chester. It is being prolonged southwards to the old quarantine-ground and the modern prison, which rests upon the skirts of the remarkable Skopo, the Prospect Mountain, 1,489 feet high. This feature, which first shows itself to mariners approaching Zakynthos from north or from south, has a saddle-back sky-line, with a knob of limestone shaped like a Turkish pommel and sheltering its monastery, Panaghia of Skopo, alias Our Lady of the Look-out. Below it appears another and a similar outcrop near a white patch which has suggested marble-quarrying; and the northern flank is dotted with farmhouses and villas. The dwarf breakwater, so easily prolonged over the shallows, has not been improved; but at its base rises a brand-new opera-house, big enough for a first-rate city. Similarly at Barletta they raised a loan to build a mole and they built a theatre. Unlike Patras, Zante long had the advantage of Italian and then of English rule; and the citizens care for music more than for transformation-scenes. The Palikar element also is notably absent; and the soldiers are in uniform, not in half-uniform and half-brigand attire. I missed the British flag once so conspicuous upon the southern round tower of the castle, where in days, or rather nights, of old I had spent not a few jolly hours; but I heard with pleasure that it is proposed to make a haute-ville of the now deserted and crumbling triangle, a Sommerfrisch where the parboiled citizens of Athens will find a splendid prospect and a cooling sea-breeze.

Mr. E. Barff kindly accompanied us in the usual drive 'round the Wrekin,' for which we may here read the 'wreck.' We set out along the sea-flank of the Castle hill. This formation, once a regular hog's-back, has been split by weather about the middle; and its southern end has been shaken down by earthquakes, and carved by wind and rain into precipices and pinnacles of crumbling sandstone, which form the 'Grey Cliffs.' Having heard at Patras the worst accounts of Zante since it passed under Greek rule, I was not a little surprised by the excellent condition of the roads and the general look of prosperity.

Turning to the right we entered Mr. Barff's garden-house, where the grounds were bright and beautiful with balsam and mignonette, dahlias and cyclamens, chrysanthemums and oleanders, jasmine and double-violets, orange-blossoms, and a perfect Gulistan of roses, roses of York and Lancaster, white, pink, and purple, yellow and green—a perfumed spring in dreary December. Laden with bouquets we again threaded the olive-grounds, whose huge trunks are truly patriarchal, and saw basking in the sun old Eumæus, the Swine-King, waiting upon his black and bristly herd. The glimpse led to a characteristic tale. A wealthy Greek merchant in London had made the most liberal offers to his brother, a shepherd in the hills of Cephalonia; the latter returned his very best thanks, but declared himself perfectly happy and unwilling to tempt fortune by change of condition to England. Greece, it is evident, has not ceased to breed 'wise men.'

We returned, viâ the landward flank of the hog's-back, along the fine plain ('O Kampos') bounded west by the range called after Mount Meriy, the apex, rising 3,274 feet. Anglo-Zantiots fondly compare its outline with the Jura's. The look of the rich lowlands, 'the vale,' as our charts call it, suggested a river-valley, but river there is none. Every nook and corner was under cultivation, and each country-house had its chapel and its drying-ground for 'fruit,' level yards now hidden under large-leaved daisies and wild flowers. We passed through the Graetani village, whose tenants bear a bad name, and saw none of the pretty faces for which Zante is famed. The sex was dressed in dark jackets and petticoats à l'italienne; and the elders were apparently employed in gathering 'bitter herbs,' dandelion and the wild endive. Verily this is a frugal race.

The drive ended with passing up the Strada Larga, the inner High Street, running parallel with the Marina. After Turkish fashion, trades flock together, shoemakers to the south and vegetable-vendors to the north. There are two good specimens of Venetian palazzetti, one fantastic, the other classical; and there is a rough pavement, which is still wanting in Patras. A visit to the silk-shop of Garafuglia Papaiouanou was obligatory: here the golden-hued threads reminded me of the Indian Tussur-moth. Also de rigueur was the purchase of nougat and raki, the local mandorlato and mastaché, almond-cake and grape-spirit.

Zante appears to me an excellent home for a large family with a small income. A single man lives at the best hotel (Nazionale) for forty-five francs per week. A country-house with nine bedrooms, cellarage, stabling, dog-house, orangery, and large garden, is to be had for 25l. a year. Fowls cost less than a franc; turkeys, if you do not buy them from a shipchandler, two francs and a half. The strong and sherry-flavoured white wine of Zante rarely exceeds three shillings the gallon, sixpence a bottle. And other necessaries in the same proportion.

But, oh that St. Dionysius, patron saint of Zante, would teach his protégés a little of that old Persian wisdom which abhorred a lie and its concomitants, cheating and mean trickery! The Esmeralda, after two days and one night at Zante, was charged 15l., for pilotage, when the captain piloted himself; for church, where there is no parson; and for harbour dues where there is no harbour. It is almost incredible that so sharp-witted a race can also be so short-sighted; so wise about pennies, so foolish about pounds.

On Saturday we left Zante in the teeth of a fresh but purely local north-easter, which whistled through the gear and hurled the spray high up Cape Skinari. The result was, as the poet sings—

That peculiar up-and-down motion
Which belongs to the treacherous ocean.

Not without regret I saw the last of the memorious old castle and of Skopo the picturesque. We ran along the western shore of Cephalonia, the isle of three hundred villages: anyone passing this coast at once understands how Greece produced so many and such excellent seamen. The island was a charming spectacle, with its two culminations, Maraviglia (3,311 ft.) and Elato (5,246 ft.), both capped by purple cloud; its fertile slopes and its fissured bight, Argostoli Bay, running deep into the land.

We fondly expected to pass the Messina Straits by daylight, and to cast another glance upon old Etna, Scylla and Charybdis, the Liparis and Stromboli. And all looked well, as about noon we were abreast of Cape Spartivento, the 'Split-wind' which divides the mild northers and southers of the Straits from the raw Boras and rotting Sciroccos of the Adriatic. But presently a signal for succour was hoisted by a marvellous old tub, a sailer-made-steamer, sans boats, sans gunwales; a something whose dirt and general dilapidation suggested the Flying Dutchman. I almost expected to see her drop out of form and crumble into dust as our boys boarded her. The America, of Barletta, bound from Brindisi to Genoa, had hurt her boilers. We hauled in her cable—these gentry must never be trusted with a chance of slipping loose—and tugged her into Messina, thereby losing a valuable day.

The famous Straits were almost a replica of Ionian Island scenery: the shores of the Mediterranean, limestone and sandstone, with here and there a volcanic patch, continually repeat themselves. After passing the barren heel of the Boot and its stony big toe, the wady-streaked shores become populous and well cultivated, while railway trains on either side, island and continent, toss their snowy plumes in the pride of civilisation. The ruined castles on the crags and the new villages on the lowlands told their own story of Turkish and Algerine piracy, now doomed to the limbo of things that were. In the evening we were safely anchored within the zancle (sickle) of Messina-port, whose depth of water and circular shape have suggested an old crater flooded. It was Sunday, and we were greeted with the familiar sounds, the ringing of cracked bells, the screaming of harsh, hoarse voices, a military band and detached musical performances. The classical facade of the Marina, through whose nineteen archways and upper parallelograms you catch a vista of dark narrow wynd, contrasts curiously with Catania: the former is a 'dicky,' a front hiding something unclean; while the latter is laid out in Eastern style, where, for the best of reasons, the marble palace hides behind a wall of mud. The only new features I noted were a metal fish-market, engineer art which contrasts marvellously with the Ionic pilasters and the solid ashlar of the 'dicky;' and, at the root of the sickle, a new custom-house of six detached boxes, reddest-roofed and whitest-walled, built to copy children's toy cottages. Croatian Fiume would blush to own them. Of the general impurity of the town and of the bouquet de Messine the less said the better.

As we made fast to the Marina our tobacco was temporarily sealed after the usual mean Italian fashion. Next morning an absurd old person, in a broad red baldrick, came on board and counted noses, to ascertain that we had not brought the dreaded small-pox from the Ionian Islands. After being graciously and liberally allowed to land, we were visited by the local chapmen, whose goods appeared rather mixed—polished cowhorns and mildewed figs, dolls in costume and corrosive oranges; by the normal musical barber, who imitates at a humble distance bird and beast; and by the vendor of binoculars, who asks forty francs and who takes ten. The captain noted his protest at the Consulate, and claimed by way of sauvetage 200l. The owners offered 200 lire—punds Scots. Briefly, noon had struck before we passed out of the noise and the smells of Messina.

Our good deed had cost us dear. A wet scirocco had replaced the bright norther and saddened all the view. Passing the tide-rip Charybdis, a meeting of currents, which called only for another hand at the wheel; and the castled crag of naughty Scylla, whose town has grown prodigiously, we bade adieu to the 'tower of Pelorus.' Then we shaped our course for the Islands of Æolus, or the Winds, and the Lipari archipelago, all volcanic cones whose outlines were misty as Ossian's spectres. And we plodded through the dreary dull-grey scene of drizzling scirocco—

Till, when all veilèd sank in darkling air,
Naught but the welkin and the wave was there.

Next morning showed us to port the Cone of Maritimo: it outlies Marsala, whose wine caused the blinding of Polyphemus, and since that time has brought on many an attack of liver. The world then became to us pontus et aer. Days and nights were equally uneventful; the diary tells only of quiet seas under the lee of Sardinia and of the Balearics, ghostly glimpses of the North African coast and the steady setting in of the normal wester, the indraught of 'the Straits.'

On Friday (November 9) the weather broke and deluged us with rain. At Gibraltar the downpour lasted twenty-four hours. We found ourselves at anchor before midnight with a very low barometer, which suggested unpleasantries. Next morning we sighted the deep blue waters of the Bay, and the shallow brown waters of the Bayside crested with foam by a furious norther, that had powdered the far Ronda highlands with snow. Before noon, however, the gale had abated and allowed me to transfer myself and African outfit on board the Fez (Capt. Hay), Moroccan Steamship Company, trading to North Africa. This was a godsend: there is no regular line between Gibraltar and Lisbon, and one might easily be delayed for a week.

The few hours' halt allowed me time to call upon my old friend, M. Dautez, a Belgian artist. Apparently he is the only person in the place who cares for science. He has made extensive collections. He owns twenty-four coins from Carteia, whereas Florez (Medallas, Madrid, 1773) shows a total of only thirty-three. Amongst his antiquities there is a charming statuette of Minerva, a bronze miniature admirably finished. He has collected the rock fauna, especially the molluscs, fossil and modern. He is preparing an album of the Flora Calpensis. His birds' nests were lately sold to an Englishman. All these objects, of immense local interest, were offered by him at the lowest possible rate to the Military Library, but who is there to understand their value? I wonder how many Englishmen on the Rock know that they are within easy ride of the harbour which named the 'Ships of Tarshish'? Tartessus, which was Carteia, although certain German geographers would, against the general voice of antiquity, make the former the country and the latter the city, lay on both sides of the little Guadarranque stream, generally called First River; and the row of tumuli on the left bank probably denotes the site of the famous docks. I was anxious to open diggings in 1872, but permission was not forthcoming: now, however, they say that the Duke of Medina Sidonia would offer no objections.

Gib, though barbarous in matters of science, is civilised as regards 'business.' It was a treat to see steamer after steamer puff in, load up with blue peter at the fore, and start off after a few hours which would have been days at Patras, Zante, and Messina. Here men work with a will, as a walk from the Convent to the Old Mole, the Mersa or water-port of a Moroccan town, amply proves. The uniforms are neat and natty—they were the reverse five years ago—and it is a pleasure to look upon the fresh faces of English girls still unstained by unconsumed carbon. And the authorities have had the good sense to preserve the old Moorish town of Tárik and his successors, the triangle of walls with the tall tower-like mosque for apex, and the base facing the bay.

We left Gibraltar at 5 P.M. on Saturday (December 10), giving a wide berth to the hated Pearl Rock, which skippers would remove by force of arms. Seen from east or west Gib has an outline of its own. The Britisher, whose pride it is, sees the 'lion of England who has laid his paw upon the key of the Mediterranean,' and compares it with the king of beasts, sejant, the tail being Europa Point. The Spaniards, to whom it is an eyesore, liken it to a shrouded corpse, the outlined head lying to the north, and declare, truly enough, that to them it is a dead body.

The norther presently changed to the rainy south-wester, the builder of the Moroccan 'bars' and the scourge of the coast fringing North-west Africa, Rolling set in with the usual liveliness. Events were not eventful. The first midnight found us off Cape Trafalgar, and the second off St. Vincent. At 4 P.M. (December 12), we saw the light of Espíchel (Promóntorium Barbaricum), the last that shines upon the voyager bound Brazilwards. Before nightfall we had left Buzio lighthouse to starboard. We then ran up the northern passage in charge of a lagging pilot; and, as the lamps were lighting, we found ourselves comfortably berthed off that pretty toy, Belem Tower.

Next morning broke upon a lovely view: no wonder that the Tagus is the pride of Portuguese bards. The Rosicler, or rosy dawn-light, was that of a May morning—the May of poetry, not of meteorology—and the upper windows of distant Lisbon were all ablaze with the unrisen sun. It was a picture for the loveliest colours, not for 'word-painting;' and the whole scene was classical as picturesque. We may justly say of it, 'Nullum sine nomine saxum.' Far over the rising hills of the north bank rose shaggy Cintra, 'the most blessed spot in the habitable globe,' with its memorious convent and its Moorish castle. The nearer heights were studded with the oldest-fashioned windmills, when the newest are found even in the Canaries; a single crest bore its baker's dozen, mostly decapitated by steam. Advancing we remarked the glorious Belem monastery, defiled by its ignoble modern ruin to the west; the new hippodrome crowning the grassy slope; the Bed House of Belem, now being brightened up for Royal residence during the Exhibition of 1882; the Memoria and the Ajuda Palace, more unfinished, if possible, than ever. As we approached the bulk of the city the marking objects were the cypressed Prazeres Cemetery; the red Necessidades Palace, and the Estrella, whose dome and domelets, built to mimic St. Peter's, look only like hen and chickens. Then in due time came the Carmo Church, still unrepaired since 1755; Blackhorse Square, still bare of trees; the Government offices, still propped to prevent a tumble-down, and the old Custom House, still a bilious yellow; the vast barrack-like pile of S. Vicente, the historic Sé or cathedral with dumpy towers; the black Castle of São Jorge, so hardly wrung from the gallant Moors, and the huge Santa Engracia, apparently ever to be a ruin.

I spent a pleasant week at Lisbon, and had a fair opportunity of measuring what progress she has made during the last sixteen years. We have no longer to wander up and down disconsolate

Mid many things unsightly to strange ee.

If the beggars remain, the excessive dirt and the vagrant dogs have disappeared. The Tagus has a fine embankment; but the land side is occupied by mean warehouses. The sewers, like those of Trieste, still want a cloaca maxama, a general conduit of masonry running along the quay down-stream. The Rocio has been planted with mean trees, greatly to the disgust of the average Lusitanian, who hates such sun-excluding vegetation like a backwoodsman; yet the Quintella squarelet shows what fine use may be made of cactus and pandanus, aloes and palms, not to mention the ugly and useful eucalyptus. The thoroughfares are far cleaner than they were; and Lisbon is now surrounded by good roads. The new houses are built with some respect for architectonic effect of light and shade: such fine old streets as the Rua Augusta offend the eye by façades flat as cards with rows of pips for windows. Finally, a new park is being laid out to the north of the Passeio Publico.

Having always found 'Olisipo' exceptionally hospitable and pleasant, I look forward to the days when she will be connected with Paris by direct railway. Her hotels are first-rate; her prices are not excessive; her winter climate is delightful, and she is the centre of most charming excursions. The capital has thrown off much of her old lethargy. Her Geographical Society is doing hard and honest work; she has nobly expiated the national crime by becoming a 'Camonian' city; and she indulges freely in exhibitions. One, of Ornamental Art, was about to be opened when I last saw her, and it extended deep into the next spring.

CHAPTER II. — FROM LISBON TO MADEIRA.

My allotted week in Lisbon came to an end only too soon: in the society of friends, and in the Camonian room (Bibliotheca Nacional), which contains nearly 300 volumes, I should greatly have enjoyed a month. The s.s. Luso (Captain Silva), of the 'Empresa Insulana,' one of the very few Portuguese steamers, announced her departure for December 20; and I found myself on board early in the morning, with a small but highly select escort to give me God-speed.

Unfortunately the 'May weather' had made way for the cacimbas (mists) of a rainy sou'-wester. The bar broke and roared at us; Cintra, the apex of Lisbon's extinct volcano and the Mountain of the (Sun and) Moon, hid her beautiful head, and even the Rock of Lisbon disdained the normal display of sturdy flank. Then set in a brise carabinée, which lasted during our voyage of 525 miles, and the Luso, rolling like a moribund whale, proved so lively that most of the fourteen passengers took refuge in their berths. A few who resisted the sea-fiend's assaults found no cause of complaint: the captain and officers were exceedingly civil and obliging, and food and wines were good and not costly.

From Madeira the Luso makes, once a month, the tour of the Azores, touching at each island—a great convenience—and returning in ten days.

Early on Thursday, the 22nd, the lumpy, churning sea began to subside, and the invisible balm seduced all the sufferers to the quarter-deck. They were wild to sight Madeira as children to see the rising of the pantomime-curtain. There was not much to gaze at; but what will not attract man's stare at sea?—a gull, a turtle, a flying fish! By the by, Captain Tuckey, of the Congo Expedition, remarked the 'extraordinary absence of sea-birds in the vicinity of Madeira and the Canaries:' they have since learned the way thither. Porto Santo appeared as a purple lump of three knobs, a manner of 'gizzard island,' backed by a deeper gloom of clouds—Madeira. Then it lit up with a pale glimmer as of snow, the effect of the sun glancing upon the thin greens of the northern flank; and, lastly, it broke into two masses—northern and southern—of peaks and precipices connected by a strip of lowland.

It is generally held that the discovery of the Madeiran group (1418-19) was the first marking feature of the century which circumnavigated Africa, and that Porto Santo was 'invented 'by the Portuguese before Madeira. The popular account, however, goes lame. For instance, the story that tried and sturdy soldiers and seamen were deterred from advancing a few miles, and were driven back to Portugal by the 'thick impenetrable darkness which was guarded by a strange noise,' and by anile fancies about the 'Mouth of Hell' and 'Cipango,' reads like mere stuff and nonsense. Again, great are the difficulties in determining the nationality of the explorers, and settling the conflicting claims of the French, Genoese, Portuguese, Spanish, English, and Arabs. History, and perhaps an aptitude for claiming, have assigned the honour exclusively to Lusitania: and every guide-book tells the same old tale. But I have lived long enough to have seen how history is written; and the discovery was, at best, a mere re-discovery, as we learn from Pliny (vi. 36), whose 'insulae purpurariae' cannot be confounded [Footnote: Mr. Major, however, would identify the Purple Islands with Oanarian Fuerteventura and Lanzarote, both possibly Continental.] with the Fortunate Islands, or Canaries. The 'Gaetulian dye' of King Juba in the Augustan age is not known. Its origin has been found in the orchilla still growing upon the Desertas; but this again appears unlikely enough. Ptolemy (iv. 1,16) also mentions 'Erythía,' the Red Isle—'red,' possibly, for the same reason; and Plutarch (in Suet.) may allude to the Madeiran group when he relates of the Fortunate Islands: 'They are two, separated only by a narrow channel, and at a distance of 400 leagues (read 320 miles) from the African coast.'

The Jesuit, Antonio Cordeyro, [Footnote: Historia insulana das Ilhas a Portugal sugoytas, pp. 61-96. Lisbon, 1717.] who borrows from the learned and trustworthy Dr. Gaspar Fructuoso, [Footnote: As Saudades da Terra, lib. i. ch. iii, Historia das Ilhas, &c. This lettered and conscientious chronicler, the first who wrote upon the Portuguese islands, was born (A.D. 1522) at Ponta Delgada (Thin Point) of St. Michael, Azores. He led a life of holiness and good works, composed his history in 1590, left many 'sons of his soul,' as he called his books, and died in his natal place, A.D. 1591. The Madeiran portion of the two huge folios (some 4,000 pages of MS.) has been printed at Funchal, with copious notes by Dr. A. Rodrigues de Azevedo, Professor of Literature, &c., at the National Lyceum; and a copy was kindly lent to me, during the author's absence in Lisbon, by Governor Viscount de Villa Mendo.] declares in 1590: 'The first discoverers of the Porto Santo Island, many say, were those Frenchmen and Castilians (Spaniards) who went forth from Castile to conquer the Canaries; these, when either outward or homeward bound, came upon the said island, and, for that they found it uninhabited and small, they abandoned it; but as they had weathered a storm and saved themselves there, they named it Port Holy.' Fructuoso (i. 5) expressly asserts that the Portuguese sailed from Lisbon in June 1419 for 'the Isle of Porto Sancto'(in 32° N. lat.), which two years before had been discovered by some Castilian ships making the Canaries, the latter having been occupied a short time previously by the French; wherefore the pilot took that route.' The Jesuit chronicler continues to relate that after the formally proclaimed annexation of the Canaries by the Normans and Castilians (A.D. 1402-18), Prince Henry, the Navigator, despatched from Lagos, in 1417, an expedition to explore Cape Bojador, the 'gorbellied.' The three ships were worked by the Italian master-seaman Bertholomeu Palestrello or Palestro, commonly called Perestrello. The soldiers, corresponding to our marines, were commanded by the 'sweet warman,' João Gonçales da Camara, nicknamed 'O Zargo,' the Cyclops, not the squint-eyed; [Footnote: Curious to say, Messieurs White and Johnson, the writers of the excellent guide-book, will translate the word 'squint-eyed:' they might have seen the portrait in Government House.] his companion was Tristão Vaz Teyxeyra, called in honour 'the Tristam.' Azurara, [Footnote: Chronica do Descobrimento de Guiné. By Gomes Eannes de Azurara, written between A.D. 1452-53, and quoted by Prof. Azevedo, Notes, p. 830.] a contemporary, sends the 'two noble squires,' Zarco and Tristam, 'who in bad weather were guided by God to the isle now called Porto Sancto' (June 1419). They returned home (marvellous to relate) without touching at Madeira, only twenty-three miles distant; and next year (1420) Prince Henry commissioned Palestrello also.

The Spaniards prefer to believe that after Jehan de Béthencourt's attack upon the Canaries (A.D. 1403), his soldier Lancelot, who named Lanzarote Island, touched at Porto Santo in 1417; and presently, sailing to the south-west, discovered Madeira. This appears reasonable enough.

Patriotic Barbot (1700), in company with the mariner Villault de Belfons, Père Labat, and Ernest de Fréville, [Footnote: Mémoire sur le Commerce Maritime de Rouen.] claims the honour for France. According to that 'chief factor for the African Company,' the merchants of Dieppe first traded to West Africa for cardamoms and ivory. This was during the reign of Charles V., and between 1364 and 1430, or half a century before the Portuguese. Their chief stations were Goree of Cape Verde, Sierra Leone, Cape Mount, the Kru or Liberian coast, then called 'of Grain,' from the 'Guinea grains' or Malaguetta pepper (Amomum granum Paradisi), and, lastly, the Gold Coast. Here they founded 'Petit Paris' upon the Baie de France, at 'Serrelionne;' 'Petit Dieppe,' at the mouth of the St. John's River, near Grand Bassá, south of Monrovia; and 'Cestro' [Footnote: Now generally called Grand Sestros, and popularly derived from the Portuguese cestos—pepper.] or 'Sestro Paris,' where, three centuries afterwards, the natives retained a few words of French. Hence Admiral Bouet-Willaumez explains the Great and Little 'Boutoo' of our charts by butteau, from butte, the old Norman word still preserved in the great western prairies.

Barbot resumes that in 1383 the Rouen traders, combining with the Dieppe men, sent upon an exploring voyage three ships, one of which, La Vierge, ran down coast as far as where Commenda (Komenda or Komání) and Elmina now stand. At the latter place they built a fort and factory just one century before it was occupied by the Portuguese. The Frenchman declares that one of the Elmina castles was called Bastion de France, and 'on it are still to be seen some old arithmetical numbers, which are anno 13' (i.e. 1383); 'the rest being defaced by weather.' This first factory was afterwards incorporated with the modern building; and in 1387 it was enlarged with the addition of a chapel to lodge more than ten or twelve men, the original garrison.

In 1670 Ogilvy [Footnote: London: Printed by Tho. Johnson for the author, and to be had at his house in White Fryers, MDCLXX.] notes: 'The castle (Elmina) was judged to be an Antient Building from several marks of Antiquity about it; as first by a decay'd Battery, which the Dutch repaired some years ago, retaining the name of the French Battery, because it seems to have been built by the French; who, as the Inhabitants say, before the coming of the Portugals harbour'd there. The Dutch when they won it, found the numerical Figures of the year thirteen hundred; but were not able to make anything of the two following Characters. In a small place within also, may be seen a Writing carved in Stone between two old Pillars, but so impair'd and worn out by the weather that it is not legible.' At Groree, too, similar remains were reported.

The adventurers, it is said, carried on a good trade till 1430-90, when the civil wars distracting France left her without stomach for distant adventure; and in 1452 Portugal walked over the course. M. d'Avezac, who found Porto Santo in a French map of the fourteenth century, [Footnote: Bulletin de la Société de Géographie, cinquième série, tome v. p. 260. Also 'Iles de l'Afrique,' in the Univers. Paris, 1868.] seems inclined to take the part of 'quelques précurseurs méconnus contre les prétentions trop exclusives des découvreurs officiels.'

Barbot's details are circumstantial, but they have not been confirmed by contemporary evidence or by local tradition. The Portuguese indignantly deny the whole, and M. Valdez in his 'Complete Maritime Handbook' [Footnote: Six Years of a Traveller's Life in Western Africa. London, Hurst & Blackett, 1861.] alludes contemptuously to 'Norman pirates.' They point out that Diego d'Azembuja, the chief captain, sent in 1481 to found São Jorje da Mina, our 'Elmina Castle,' saw no traces of previous occupation. But had he done so, would he have dared to publish the fact? Professor Azevedo relies upon the silence of Azurara, Barros, and Camoens concerning the French, the Spaniards, and the English in the person of Robert à Machim. But this is also at best a negative argument: the 'Livy of Portugal' never mentions the great mathematician, Martin Behaim, who accompanied Diego Cam to his discovery of the Congo. In those days fair play was not a jewel.

The truth is that it would be as easy to name the discoverer of gunpowder or steam-power as to find the first circumnavigator of the African continent. I have no difficulty in believing that the Phoenicians and Carthaginians were capable of making the voyage. They were followed to West Africa in early days, according to El-Idrisi and Ibn. el-Wardi, by the Arabs. The former (late eleventh century) relates that an Arab expedition sailed from Lisbon, shortly after the eighth century, and named Madeira and Porto Santo the 'Islands El-Ghanam and Rákah.' However that may be, the first Portuguese occupants found neither men nor ruins nor large quadrupeds upon any of the group.

The English accident of hitting upon Madeira, and the romantic tale of Master Robert à Machim, or Machin, or Macham, and Mistress Anne d'Arfet, or Darby, or Dorset, which would have suited Camoens, and which I have told elsewhere, [Footnote: Wanderings in West Africa, vol. i, p. 17. Chapter II., 'A Day at Madeira,' was written after my second and before my third visit.] and need not repeat, was probably an 'ingenious account' invented for politico-international ends or to flatter Dom Enrique, a Britisher by the distaff-side. It is told with a thousand variants, and ignored by the learned Fructuoso. According to the apocryphal manuscript of Francisco Alcoforado, the squire who accompanied the Zargo, this elopement took place in the earlier days of Edward III. (A.D. 1327-77). The historian Antonio Galvão fixes upon September 1344, the date generally accepted. Thus the interval between Machim's death and the Zargo's discovery would be seventy-four years; and—pace Mr. Major—the Castilian pilot, Juan Damores (de Amores), popularly called Morales, could not have met the remnant of the Bristol crew in their Moroccan prison, and could not have told the tale to the Portuguese explorers.

M. d'Avezac (loc. cit. p. 116) supports the claims of the Genoese, quoting the charts and portulans of the fourteenth century in which appear Italian names, as Insule dello Legname (of wood, materia, Madeira), Porto Sancto, Insule Deserte, and Insule Selvaggie. Mr. R. H. Major replies that these Italian navigators were commandants of expeditions fitted out by the Portuguese; and that this practice dated from 1341, when two ships officered by Genoese, with crews of [footnote: Amongst the 'ridiculous little blots, which are "nuts" to the old resident,' I must confess to killing Robert Machim in 1334 instead of 1344; 'Collegio' was also translated 'College' instead of 'Jesuit Church.'] Italians, Castilians, and Hispani (Spanish and Portuguese), were sent to explore the Canaries.

'Holy Port' began badly. The first governor, Perestrello, fled from the progeny of his own she-rabbit. This imprudence was also committed at Deserta Grande; and, presently, the cats introduced by way of cure ran wild. A grass-clad rock in the Fiume Gulf can tell the same tale: sheep and lambs were effectually eaten out by rabbits and cats. It will be remembered that Columbus married Philippa, third daughter of the navigator Perestrello, lived as a mapper with his father-in-law, and thence travelled, between 1470 and 1484, to Guinea, where he found that the equatorial regions are not uninhabitable by reason of the heat. He inherited the old seaman's papers, and thus arose the legend of his learning from a castaway pilot the way to the New World. [Footnote: Fructuoso writes that in 1486 Columbus gave food and shelter to the crew of a shattered Biscayan ship; the pilot dying bequeathed to him papers, charts and valuable observations made on the Western Ocean.]

Long years rolled by before Porto Santo learnt to bear the vine, to breed large herds of small cattle, and to produce cereals whose yield is said to have been 60 to 1. Meanwhile it cut down for bowls, mortars, and canoes, as the Guanches did for shields, its thin forest of 'Dragons.' The Dragoeiro (Dracaena Draco Linn., Palma canariensis Tourn.), which an Irish traveller called a 'dragon-palm,' owed its vulgar name to the fancy that the fruit contained the perfect figure of a standing dragon with gaping mouth and long neck, spiny back and crocodile's tail. It is a quaint tree of which any ingenious carpenter could make a model. The young trunk is somewhat like that of the Oreodoxa regia, or an asparagus immensely magnified; but it frequently grows larger above than below. At first it bears only bristly, ensiform leaves, four feet long by one to three inches broad, and sharp-pointed, crowning the head like a giant broom. Then it puts forth gouty fingers, generally five, standing stiffly up and still capped by the thick yucca-like tufts. Lastly the digitations grow to enormous arms, sometimes eighteen feet in girth, of light and porous, soft and spongy wood. The tree then resembles the baobab or calabash, the elephant or hippopotamus of the vegetable kingdom.

Amongst the minor uses of this 'Dragon,' the sweet yellowish berries called masainhas were famous for fattening pigs. The splinters made tooth-picks which, dipped in the juice, secured health for human gums. But the great virtue resided in the Sanguis Draconis, the 'Indian Cinnabaris' of Pliny, [Footnote: N.H. xxxiii. 38.] who holds it to be the sanies of the dragon mixed with the blood of the dying elephant. The same semi-mystical name is given to the sap by the Arab pharmists: in the Middle Ages this strong astringent resin was a sovereign cure for all complaints; now it is used chiefly for varnishes. The gum forms great gouts like blood where the bark is wounded or fissured: at first it is soft as that of the cherry, but it hardens by exposure to a dry red lump somewhat like 'mummy.' It has no special taste: when burnt the smell is faintly balsamic. The produce was collected in canes, and hence the commercial name 'Dragon's blood in reeds.'

Mr. P. Barker Webb believed the Dragoeiro to be a species peculiar to the Madeiras and Canaries. But its chief point of interest is its extending through Morocco as far as Arabo-African Socotra, and through the Khamiesberg Range of Southern Africa, where it is called the Kokerboom. As it is utterly African, like the hippopotamus, the zebra, and the giraffe, we must account, by transplantation from Socotra, for the D. Draco seen by Cruttenden in the mountains behind Dhofar and on the hills of El-Yemen. [Footnote: Journ. R. Geogr. Soc. p. 279, vol. viii. of 1838.] The line of growth, like the coffee-shrub and the copal-tree, suggests a connection across the Dark Continent: thus the similar flora of Fernando Po Peak, of Camarones volcano, and of the highlands of Abyssinia seems to prove a latitudinal range traversing the equatorial regions, where the glacial epoch banished for ever the hardier plants from the lower levels. When Humboldt determined it to be a purely Indian growth, he seems to have confounded the true 'dragon' with a palm or some other tree supplying the blood. It was a 'dazzling theory,' but unsound: the few specimens in Indus-land, 'its real country,' are comparatively young, and are known to have been imported.

The endogenous monster, indigenous to the Elysian Fields, is to the surrounding vegetation what the cockatrice is to the cock, the wyvern to the python. I should say 'was,' for all the replants at Madeira and the Canaries are modern, and resemble only big toothsticks. But 'dragons' proper have existed, and perhaps memories of these portents long lingered in the brain of protohistoric man. Even if they had been altogether fabulous, the fanciful Hellenic mind would easily have created them. The Dragoeiro with its boa-like bole, its silvery, light-glancing skin, and its scars stained with red blood, growing in a wild garden of glowing red-yellow oranges, would easily become the fiery saurian guarding the golden apples of the Hesperides.

Porto Santo and Madeira, though near neighbours, are contrasts in most respects. The former has yellow sands and brackish water, full of magnesia and lime, which blacken the front teeth; the latter sweet water and black shingles. The islet is exceedingly dry, the island damp as Devonshire. Holy Port prefers wheeled conveyances: Wood-and-Fennel-land corsas or sledges, everywhere save on the New Road. Finally, the wines of the northern mite are comparatively light and acidulous; of the southern, luscious and heady.

Both scraps of ground are of kindred although disputed origin. Classicists [Footnote: Plato, Timaeus, ii. 517. His 'fruit with a hard rind, affording meat, drink, and ointment,' is evidently the cocoanut. The cause of the lost empire and the identity of its site with the Dolphin's Ridge and the shallows noted by H.M.S. Challenger, have been ably pleaded in Atlantis, &c., by Ignatius Donnelly (London, Sampson Low, 1882).] find in these sons of Vulcan, the débris of Platonic Atlantis, a drowned continent, a 'Kingdom of Nowhere,' which some cataclysm whelmed beneath the waters, leaving, for all evidence, three shattered groups of outcrops, like the Channel Islands, fragments of a lost empire, the 'bones of a wasted body.' Geologists, noting that volcanoes almost always fringe mainlands, believe them destined, together with the Cape Verdes, to rampart in future ages the Dark Continent with a Ghaut-chain higher than the Andes. Other theorists hold to a recent connection of the Madeiras with Mount Atlas, although the former rise from a narrow oceanic trough some 13,000 to 15,000 feet deep. Others again join them to Southern Europe and to Northern America. The old Portuguese and certain modern realists make them a continuation of the Serra de Monchique in the Algarves, even as the Azores prolong Cintra; and this opinion is somewhat justified by the flora, which resembles in many points the tertiary and extinct growths of Europe. [Footnote: Such is the opinion of M. Pégot-Ogier in The Fortunate Islands, translated by Frances Locock (London, Bentleys, 1871). Moquet set the example in 1601 by including Madeira also in the 'Elysian Fields and Earthly Paradise' of the ancients.]

Porto Santo was till lately distinguished only for pride, poverty, and purity of blood. Her soil, according to the old chroniclers, has never been polluted, like São Thomé and other colonies, by convicts, Jews, or other 'infected peoples.' She was populated by Portuguese 'noble and taintless'—Palestrellos, Calaças, Pinas, Vieyras, Rabaçaes, Crastos, Nunes, Pestanas, and Concellos. And yet not a little scandal was caused by Holiport when the 'Prophet Fernando' and the 'Prophetess Philippa' (Nunes), 'instigated by the demon and the deceitfulness of mankind,' induced the ecclesiastics to introduce into the introit, with the names of St. Peter and St. Paul, the 'Blessed Prophet Fernando.' The tale of murder is told with holy horror by Dr. Gaspar Fructuoso, and the islanders are still nicknamed 'prophetas.' Foreigners, however, who have lately visited them, speak highly of their simple primitive ways.

I boated to the Holy Port in 1862, when Messieurs Blandy's steamship Falcon was not in existence. And now as the Luso steamed along shore, no external change appeared. A bird's-eye view of the islet suggests a podão or Madeiran billhook, about six miles by three. The tool's broken point is the Ilha da Cima, facing to north-east, a contorted pile which resembles a magnified cinder. The handle is the Ilheu Baixo, to the south; and the blade is the tract of yellow sandy lowlands—the sole specimen of its sort in the Madeiras—connecting the extremities. Three tall cones at once disclose vulcanism; the Pico de Facho, or Beacon Peak (1,660 feet), the Pico de Anna Ferreira (910 feet), and the sugarloaf Pico de Castello (1,447 feet). The latter rises immediately north of the single town, and its head still shows in white points the ruins of the fort which more than once saved the population from the 'Moors.' The lower levels are terraced, as usual in this archipelago, and the valleys are green with vines and cereals. The little white Villa Baleira is grouped around its whiter church, and dotted with dark vegetation, trees, and houses, straggling off into open country. Here lodge the greater part of the islanders, now nearly 1,750 souls. The population is far too thick. But the law of Portugal has, till lately, forbidden emigration to the islanders unless a substitute for military service be provided; the force consists of only 250 men, and the term of service is three years; yet a remplaçant costs upwards of 50l. Every emigrant was, therefore, an energetic stowaway, who landed at Honolulu or Demerara without shoes and stockings, and returned in a few years with pounds sterling enough to purchase an estate and a pardon. Half-a-dozen boats, some of them neat little feluccas with three masts, are drawn up on the beach: there is not much fishing; the vine-disease has raged, and the staple export consists of maize in some quantities; of cantaria, a grey trachyte which works more freely than the brown or black basalt, and of an impure limestone from Ilheu Baixo, the only calcaire used in Funchal. This rock is apparently an elevated coral-reef: it also produces moulds of sea-shells, delicately traced and embedded in blocks of apparently unbroken limestone. Of late a fine vein of manganese has been found in the northern or mountainous part of the island: specimens shown to me by Mr. J. Blandy appeared remarkably rich.

Under the lee of Porto Santo we enjoyed a dry deck and a foretaste of the soft and sensuous Madeiran 'Embate,' the wester opposed to the Leste, Harmattan, Khammasin, or Scirocco, the dry wind which brings wet. [Footnote: The popular proverb is, 'A Leste never dies thirsty.'] Then we rolled over the twenty-five geographical miles separating us from our destination. Familiar sites greeted my eyes: here the 'Isle of Wood' projects a dwarf tail composed of stony vertebræ: seen upon the map it looks like the thin handle of a broad chopper. The outermost or extreme east is the Ilha de Fora, where the A.S.S. Forerunner and the L. and H. Newton came to grief: a small light, one of the many on this shore, now warns the careless skipper; but apparently nothing is easier than to lose ships upon the safest coasts. Inside it is the Ponta de São Lourenço, where the Zargo, when startled, called upon his patron Saint of the Gridiron; others say it was named after his good ship. It has now a lighthouse and a telegraph-station. [Footnote: The line runs all along the southern shore as far as the Ponta do Pargo (of the 'braise-fish,' Pargus vulgaris), the extreme west. At Funchal the cable lands north of Fort São Thiago Minor, where ships are requested not to anchor. It is used chiefly for signalling arrivals from north and south; and there is talk of extending it to the Porto da Cruz, a bay on the north-eastern side. It would be of great advantage to Madeira if steamers could here land their mails when prevented from touching at Funchal by the south winds, which often last a week. Accordingly a breakwater has been proposed, and Messieurs Blandy are taking interest in the improvement.] The innermost of this sharp line of serrated basaltic outliers is the Pedra do Furado, which Englishmen call the Arch-Rock.

The substantial works of the Gonçalo-Machico highway, the telegraph-posts, and the yellow-green lines of sugar-cane, were the only changes I could detect in Eastern Madeira. Nothing more charming than the variety and contrast of colours after the rusty-brown raiment which Southern Europe dons in mid-December. Even the barren, arid, and windswept eastern slopes glowed bright with the volcanic muds locally called laterites, and the foliated beds of saibros and maçapés, decomposed tufas oxidised red and yellow. As we drew nearer to Funchal, which looks like a giant plate-bande, tilted up at an angle of 40°, we were startled by the verdure of every shade and tint; the yellow-green of the sugar and common cane (Arundo sagittata), of the light-leaved aloe, banana, and hibiscus; the dark orange, myrtle, and holm-oak; the gloomy cypress, and the dull laurels and bay-trees, while waving palms, growing close to stiff pines and junipers (Oedro da Serra), showed the contrast and communion of north and south.

Lines of plane-trees, with foliage now blighted yellow and bright green in February, define the embouchures of the three grim black ravines radiating from the upper heights, and broadening out as they approach the bay. The rounded grassy hill-heads setting off the horizontal curtains of dry stone, 'horticultural fortifications' which guard the slopes, and which rise to a height of 3,000 feet; the lower monticules and parasitic craters, Signal Hill, Race-course Hill, São Martinho and Santo Antonio, telling the tale of throes perhaps to be renewed; the stern basaltic cliff-walls supporting the island and prolonged in black jags through the glassy azure of the transparent sea; the gigantic headlands forming abutments for the upper arch; the chequered lights and shades and the wavy play of sunshine and cloudlet flitting over the face of earth; the gay tenements habited in white and yellow, red, green, and, not unfrequently, blue; the houses built after the model of cigar-boxes set on edge, with towers, belvederes, and gazebos so tall that no one ascends them, and with flat roofs bearing rooms of glass, sparkling like mirrors where they catch the eye of day; the toy-forts, such as the Fortaleza do Pico de São João, built by the Spaniards, an upper work which a single ironclad would blow to powder with a broadside; the mariner's landmark, 2,000 feet high, Nossa Senhora do Monte, white-framed in brown-black and backed by its feathery pines, distance-dwarfed to mere shrubs, where the snow-winds sport; the cloud-cap, a wool-pack, iris-tinted by the many-hued western sky, and the soft sweet breath of the serre-chaude below, profusely scented with flower and fruit, all combined to form an ensemble whose first sight Northern travellers long remember. Here everyone quotes, and so will I:—

Hic ver assiduum atque alienis mensibus æstas.

Though it be midwinter, the land is gorgeous with blossoms; with glowing rose, fuchsia, and geranium; with snowy datura, jasmine, belladonna, stephanotis, lily, and camelia; with golden bignonia and grevillea; with purple passion-creeper; with scarlet coral and poinciana; with blue jacaranda (rosewood), solanum and lavender; and with sight-dazzling bougainvillea of five varieties, in mauve, pink, and orange sheets. Nor have the upper heights been wholly bared. The mountain-flanks are still bushy and tufty with broom, gorse, and furze; with myrtle, bilberry and whortleberry; with laurels; with heaths 20 feet high, and with the imported pine.

We spin round fantastic Garajáo, [Footnote: Not the meaningless Garajão, as travellers will write it.] the wart-nosed cliff of 'terns' or 'sea-swallows' (Sterna hirundo), by the northern barbarian termed, from its ruddy tints, Brazen Head. Here opens the well-known view perpetuated by every photographer—first the blue bay, then the sheet of white houses gradually rising in the distance. We anchor in the open roadstead fronting the Fennel-field ('Funchal'), concerning which the Spaniard spitefully says—

Donde crece la escola
Nace el asno que la roya.

[Footnote:

Wheresoe'er the fennel grows
Lives the ass that loves to browse.]

And there, straight before us, lies the city, softly couched against the hill-side that faces the southern sea, and enjoying her 'kayf' in the sinking sun. Her lower zone, though in the Temperates, is sub-tropical: Tuscany is found in the mid-heights, while it is Scotland in the bleak wolds about Pico Ruivo (6,100 feet) and the Paül (Moorland) da Serra. I now see some change since 1865. East of the yellow-washed, brown-bound fort of São Thiago Minor, the island patron, rises a huge white pile, or rather piles, the Lazaretto, with its three-arched bridge spanning the Wady Gonçalo Ayres. The fears of the people forbid its being used, although separated from them by a mile of open space. This over-caution at Madeira, as at Tenerife, often causes great inconvenience to foreign residents; moreover, it is directly opposed to treaty. There is a neat group, meat-market, abattoir, and fish-market—where there is ne'er a flat fish save those who buy—near those dreariest of academic groves, the Praça Academica, at the east end proper, or what an Anglo-Indian would term the 'native town.' Here we see the joint mouth of the torrent-beds Santa Luzia and João Gomes which has more than once deluged Funchal. Timid Funchalites are expecting another flood: the first was in 1803, the second in 1842, and thus they suspect a cycle of forty years. [Footnote: The guide-books make every twenty-fifth year a season of unusual rain, the last being 1879-80.] The lately repaired Sé (cathedral) in the heart of the mass is conspicuous for its steeple of azulejos, or varnished tiles, and for the ruddy painting of the black basaltic façade, contrasting less violently with the huge splotches of whitewash, the magpie-suit in which the church-architecture of the Madeiras and the Canaries delights. The São Francisco convent, with its skull-lined walls, and the foundations of its proposed successor, the law courts, have disappeared from the space adjoining the main square; this chief promenade, the Praça da Constituição, is grown with large magnolias, vinhaticos, or native mahogany (Persea Indica), and til-trees (Oreodaphne foetens), and has been supplemented by the dwarf flower-garden (Jardim Novo) lately opened to the west. The latter, I regret to say, caused the death of many noble old trees, including a fine palm; but Portuguese, let me repeat, have scant sympathy with such growth. The waste ground now belonging to the city will be laid out as a large public garden with fountains and band-stands. Finally, that soundly abused 'Tower of Babel,' alias 'Benger's Folly,' built in 1796, has in the evening of its days been utilised by conversion into a signal-tower. So far so good.

But the stump of caes, or jetty, which was dashed to pieces more than a score of years ago, remains as it was; The landing-place calls loudly for a T-headed pier of concrete blocks, or a gangway supported upon wooden piles and metal pilasters: one does not remark the want in fine weather; one does bitterly on bad days. There has been no attempt to make a port or even a débarcadère by connecting the basaltic lump Loo (Ilheu) Fort with the Pontinha, the curved scorpion's tail of rock and masonry, Messieurs Blandy's coal stores, to the west. Big ships must still roll at anchor in a dangerous open roadstead far off shore; and, during wet weather, ladies, well drenched by the surf, must be landed with the aid of a crane in what should be the inner harbour. The broken-down circus near Reid's is to become a theatre, but whence the money is to come no one knows. The leper hospital cannot afford to make up more than nine or ten beds. The jail is in its old disgraceful state, and sadly wants reform: here the minimum of punishment would suffice; I never saw the true criminal face, and many of the knick-knacks bought in Madeira are the work of these starving wretches. The Funchal Club gives periodically a subscription ball, 'to ameliorate, if possible, the condition of the prisoners at the Funchal jail'—asking strangers, in fact, to do the work of Government. The Praça da Rainha, a dwarf walk facing the huge yellow Government House, alias Palacio de São Lourenço, has been grown with mulberries intended for sericulture. Unfortunately, whatever may here be done by one party (the 'ins') is sure to be undone when the 'outs' become 'ins.' There has been no change in the 'Palace,' except that the quaint portraits of one-eyed Zargo, who has left many descendants in the island, and of the earlier Captains-General, dignitaries who were at once civil and military, have been sent to the Lisbon Exhibition. The queer old views of Machim's landing and of Funchal Bay still amuse visitors. Daily observations for meteorology are here taken at 9 A.M. and 3 and 9 P.M.; the observatory standing eighty feet above sea-level.

As our anchor rattles downwards, two excise boats with the national flag take up their stations to starboard and port; and the boatmen are carefully watched with telescopes from the shore. The wiser Spaniards have made Santa Cruz, Tenerife, a free port. The health-officer presently gives us pratique, and we welcome the good 'monopolist,' Mr. William Reid, and his son. The former, an Ayrshire man, has made himself proprietor of the four chief hostelries. Yates's or Hollway's in the Entrada da Cidade, or short avenue running north from the landing-place, has become a quasi-ruinous telegraph-station. Reid's has blossomed into the 'Royal Edinburgh;' it is rather a tavern than an hotel, admitting the 'casuals' from passing steamers and men who are not welcome elsewhere. One of these, who called himself a writer for the press, and who waxed insultingly drunk, made our hours bitter; but the owner has a satisfactory and sovereign way of dealing with such brutes. Miles's has become the Carmo, and Schlaff's the 'German.' The fourth, Santa Clara, retains her maiden name; the establishment is somewhat collet monté, but I know none in Europe more comfortable. There are many others of the second rank; and the Hôtel Central, with its café-billiard and estaminet at the city-entrance, is a good institution which might be made better.

We throw a few coppers to the diving-boys, who are expert as the Somali savages of Aden, and we quit our water prison in the three-keeled boats,

Magno telluris amore
Egressi

'Tellus,' however, is represented at Funchal by chips and pebbles of black basalt like petrified kidneys, stuck on edge, often upon a base of bare rock. They are preferred to the slabs of Trieste and Northern Italy, which here, with the sole exception of the short Rua de Bettencourt, are confined to flights of steps. The surfaces are greased by rags and are polished by the passage of 'cars' or coach-sleighs, which irreverents call 'cow-carts;' these vehicles, evidently suggested by the corsa, or common sleigh, consist of a black-curtained carriage-body mounted on runners. The queer cobble-pavement, that resembles the mosaics of clams and palm-nuts further south, has sundry advantages. It is said to relieve the horses' back sinews; it is never dusty; the heaviest rain flows off it at once; nor is it bad walking when the kidney-stones are small. The black surface is sometimes diapered with white pebbles, lime from Porto Santo. Very strange is the glare of moonlight filtered through the foliage; the beams seem to fall upon patches of iced water.

We had not even the formality of a visit to the Custom-house: our unopened boxes were expected to pay only a small fee, besides the hire of boat, porters, and sledges. A cedula interina, costing 200 reis (11d.), was the sole expense for a permit to reside. What a contrast with London and Liverpool, where I have seen a uniform-case and a cocked hat-box subjected to the 'perfect politeness' of certain unpleasant officials: where collections of natural history are plundered by paid thieves, [Footnote: When we last landed at Liverpool (May 22), the top tray of my wife's trunk reached us empty, and some of the choicest birds shot by Cameron and myself were stolen. Since the days of Waterton the Liverpudlian custom-house has been a scandal and a national disgrace.] and where I have been obliged to drop my solitary bottle of Syrian raki!

I was hotelled at the 'Royal Edinburgh,' and enjoyed once more the restful calm of a quasi-tropical night, broken only by the Christmas twanging of the machete (which is to the guitar what kit is to fiddle); by the clicking of the pebbles on the shore, and by the gentle murmuring of the waves under the window.

NOTE.—The Madeiran Archipelago consists of five islands disposed in a scalene triangle, whose points are Porto Santo (23 miles, north-east), Madeira (west), and the three Desertas (11 miles, south-east). The Great and Little Piton of the Selvagens, or Salvages (100 miles, south), though belonging to Portugal and to the district of Funchal, are geographically included in the Canarian group. Thus, probably, we may explain the 'Aprositos,' or Inaccessible Island, which Ptolemy

[Footnote: The great Alexandrian is here (iv. 6, §§ 33-4) sadly out of his reckoning. He places the group of six islands adjacent to Libya many degrees too far south (N. lat. 10°-16°), and assigns one meridian (0° 0' 0") to Aprositos, Pluitana (Pluvialia? Hierro?), Caspeiria (Capraria? Lanzarote?), and another and the same (1° 0' 0") to Pintouaria (Nivaria? Tenerife?), Hera (Junonia? Gomera?), and Canaria.]

includes in his Six Fortunates; and the Isle of SS. Borondon and Maclovius the Welshman (St. Malo). The run from Lizard's Point is laid down at 1,164 miles; from Lisbon, 535; from Cape Cantin, 320; from Mogador (9° 40' west long.), 380; and 260 from Santa Cruz, Tenerife. The main island lies between N. lat. 32° 49' 44" and 32° 37' 18"; the parallel is that of Egypt, of Upper India, of Nankin, and of California. Its longitude is included within 16° 39' 30" and 17° 16' 38" west of Greenwich. The extreme length is thus 37-1/2 (usually set down as 33 to 54) miles; the breadth, 12-1/2 (popularly 15-16 1/2); the circumference, 72; the coast-line, about 110; and the area, 240—nearly the size of Huntingdonshire, a little smaller than the Isle of Man, and a quarter larger than the Isle of Wight. Pico Ruivo, the apex of the central volcanic ridge, rises 6,050-6,100 feet, with a slope of 1 in 3.75; the perpetual snow-line being here 11,500. Madeira is supposed to tower from a narrow oceanic trough, ranging between 13,200 and 16,800 feet deep. Of 340 days, there are 263 of north-east winds, 8 of north, 7 of east, and 62 of west. The rainfall averages only 29.82 to 30.62 inches per annum. The over-humidity of the climate arises from its lying in the Guinea Gulf Stream, which bends southward, about the Azores, from its parent the great Gulf Stream, striking the Canaries and flowing along the Guinea shore. (White and Johnson's Guide-Book, and 'Du Climat de Madère,' &c., par A. C. Mourão-Pitta, Montpellier, 1859, the latter ably pleading a special cause.)

CHAPTER III. — A FORTNIGHT AT MADEIRA.

I passed Christmas week at the 'Flower of the Wavy Field;' and, in the society of old and new friends, found nothing of that sameness and monotony against which so many, myself included, have whilom declaimed. The truth is that most places breed ennui for an idle man. Nor is the climate of Madeira well made for sedentary purposes: it is apter for one who loves to flâner, or, as Victor Hugo has it, errer songeant.

Having once described Funchal at some length, I see no reason to repeat the dose; and yet, as Miss Ellen M. Taylor's book shows,

[Footnote: Madeira: its Scenery, and how to see it. Stanford, London, 1878. This is an acceptable volume, all the handbooks being out of print. I reviewed it in the Academy July 22, 1882.]

the subject, though old and well-worn, can still bear a successor to the excellent White and Johnson handbook.

[Footnote: Mr. Johnson still survives; not so the well-known Madeiran names Bewick, (Sir Frederick) Pollock, and Lowe (Rev, R. T.) The latter was drowned in 1873, with his wife, in the s.s. Liberia, Captain Lowry. The steamer went down in the Bay of Biscay, it is supposed from a collision. I sailed with Captain Lowry (s.s. Athenian) in January 1863, when St. George's steeple was rocking over Liverpool: he was nearly washed into the lee scuppers, and a quartermaster was swept overboard during a bad squall. I found him an excellent seaman, and I deeply regretted his death.]

As early as 1827 'The Rambler in Madeira' (Mr. Lyall) proclaimed the
theme utterly threadbare, in consequence of 'every traveller opening
his quarto (?) with a short notice of it;' and he proceeded at once to
indite a fair-sized octavo. Humboldt said something of the same sort in
his 'Personal Narrative,' and forthwith wrote the worst description of
the capital and the 'Pike' of Tenerife that any traveller has ever
written of any place. He confesses to having kept a meagre diary, not
intending to publish a mere book of travels, and drew his picture
probably from recollection and diminutive note-books.

I found Funchal open-hearted and open-handed as ever; and the pleasure of my stay was marred only by two considerations, both purely personal. Elysian fields and green countries do not agree with all temperaments. Many men are perfectly and causelessly miserable in the damp heats of Western India and the Brazil. We must in their case simply reverse the Wordsworthian dictum,

Not melancholy—no, for it is green.

They are perfectly happy in the Arabian desert, and even in Tenerife, where others feel as if living perpetually on the verge of high fever.

To this 'little misery' were added the displeasures of memory. Our last long visit was in 1863, when the Conde de Farrobo ruled the land, and when the late Lord Brownlow kept open house at the beautiful Vigia. I need hardly say that we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves: the impressions of that good old time were deep and durable.

Amongst other things, Governor Farrobo indulged his fair friends with a display of the old jogo de canas, or running at the ring. The Praça Academica had been rigged out to serve as a tilting-yard, with a central alley of palisading and two 'stands,' grand and little. The purpose was charitable, and the performers were circus-horses, mounted by professionals and amateurs, who thus 'renowned it' before the public and their damas. The circlet, hanging to a line, equalled the diameter of a small boy's hat; and when the 'knight' succeeded in bearing it off upon his pole, he rode up to be decorated by the hands of a very charming person with a ribbon-baudrière of Bath dimensions and rainbow colours. Prizes were banal as medals after a modern war, and perhaps for the same purpose—to prevent unchristian envy, hatred, and malice. Almost any trooper in an Anglo-Indian cavalry regiment would have done better; but then he would have couched his bamboo spear properly and would have put out his horse to speed—an idea which seemed to elude the Madeiran mind. The fête ended with a surprise less expensive than that with which the Parisian restaurant astonishes the travelling Britisher. A paper chandelier was suspended between two posts, of course to be knocked down, when out sprang an angry hunch-backed dwarf, who abused and fiercely struck at all straight backs within reach.

Madeira is celebrated for excursions, which, however, are enjoyable only in finest weather. Their grand drawback is inordinate expense; you may visit the whole seaboard of Morocco, and run to Tenerife and return for the sum spent in a week of Madeiran travel. The following tour to the north of the island was marked out for us by the late Mr. Bewick; his readiness to oblige, his extensive local knowledge, and his high scientific attainments caused his loss to be long felt in the Isle of Wood. 'You make on the first day Santa Anna, on the opposite coast, a six to eight hours' stage by horse or hammock, passing through the grand scenery of the valleys Metade, Meiometade, and Ribeiro Frio.

[Footnote: Most of these places are given in Views (26) in the Madeiras, &c., by the Rev. James Bulwer. London, Rivington, 1829. He also wrote Rambles in Madeira and in Portugal in 1826.]

The next day takes you to Pico Ruivo, Rothhorn, Puy Rouge, or Red Peak,
the loftiest in the island, whose summit commands a view of a hundred
hills, and you again night at Santa Anna. The third stage is to the
rocky gorge of São Vicente, which abounds in opportunities for
neck-breaking. The next is a long day with a necessary guide to the
Paül da Serra, the "Marsh of the Wold," and the night is passed at
Seixal, on the north-west coast, famous for its corniche-road. The
fifth day conducts you along-shore to Ponta Delgada, and the last leads
from this "Thin Point" through the Grand Curral back to Funchal.'

I mention this excursion that the traveller may carefully avoid it in winter, especially when we attempted the first part, February being the very worst month. After many days of glorious weather the temper of the atmosphere gave way; the mercury fell to 28.5, and we were indulged with a succession of squalls and storms, mists and rain. The elemental rage, it is true, was that of your southern coquette, sharp, but short, and broken by intervals of a loving relapse into caress. In the uplands and on the northern coast, however, it shows the concentrated spleen and gloom of a climate in high European latitudes.

We contented ourselves with the Caminho do Meio, the highway supposed to bisect the island, and gradually rising to the Rocket Road (Caminho do Foguete) with a pleasant slope of 23°, or 1 in 2 1/3. These roads are heavy on the three h's—head, heart, and hand. We greatly enjoyed the view from the famous Levada, the watercourse or leat-road of Santa Luzia, with its scatter of noble quintas,

[Footnote: The country-house is called a quinta, or fifth, because that is the proportion of produce paid by the tenant to the proprietor.]

St. Lucy's, St. Anne's, Quinta Davies, Palmeira, and Til. Nossa Senhora do Monte, by Englishmen misnamed 'the Convent,' and its break-arm slide-down, in basket-sleighs, is probably as well known, if not better known, to the reader than St. Paul's, City. Here we found sundry votaries prostrating themselves before a dark dwarf 'Lady' with jewelled head and spangled jupe: not a few were crawling on their knees up the cruel cobble-stones of the mount. On the right yawned the 'Little Curral,' as our countrymen call the Curral das Romeiras (of the Pilgrimesses); it is the head of the deluging torrent-bed, João Gomes. Well worth seeing is this broken punch-bowl, with its wild steep gap; and, if the traveller want a vertiginous walk, let him wend his way along the mid-height of the huge tongue which protrudes itself from the gorge to the valley-mouth.

Near the refuge-house called the Poizo, some 4,500 feet above sea-level, a road to the right led us to Comacha, where stood Mr. Edward Hollway's summer quinta. It occupies a ridge-crest of a transverse rib projected southerly, or seawards, from the central range which, trending east-west, forms the island dorsum. Hence its temperature is 60° (F.) when the conservatory upon the bay shows 72°. Below it, 1,800 feet high, and three miles north-east of the city, lies the Palheiro do Ferreiro ('blacksmith's straw-hut'), the property of the once wealthy Carvalhal house. The name of these 'Lords of the Oak-ground' is locally famous. Chronicles mention a certain Count Antonio who flourished, or rather 'larked,' circa A.D. 1500. In those days the land bore giants and heroes, and Madeiran blood had not been polluted by extensive miscegenation with the negro. Anthony, who was feller than More of More Hall, rode with ungirthed saddle over the most dangerous achadas (ledges); a single buffet of this furious knight smashed a wild boar, and he could lift his horse one palm off the ground by holding to a tree branch. The estate has been wilfully wasted by certain of his descendants. Comacha, famous for picnics, is a hamlet rich in seclusion and fine air; it might be utilised by those who, like the novel-heroes of Thackeray and Bulwer, deliberately sit down to vent themselves in a book.

Pico Ruivo was a distressing failure. We saw nothing save a Scotch mist, which wetted us to the bones; and we shivered standing in a slush of snow which would have been quite at home in Upper Norwood. On this topmost peak were found roots of the Madeiran cedar (Juniperus Oxycedrus), showing that at one time the whole island was well wooded.

We need not believe in the seven years' fire; but the contrast of the southern coast with the northern, where the forests primaeval of Lauraceae and Myrtaceae still linger, shows the same destructive process which injured Ireland and ruined Iceland. The peculiarity of these uplands, within certain limits, is that the young spring-verdure clothes them before it appears in the lower and warmer levels. Here they catch a sunshine untarnished by watery vapour.

During our short trip and others subsequent many a little village showed us the Madeiran peasant pure and simple. Both sexes are distressingly plain; I saw only one pretty girl amongst them. Froggy faces, dark skins, and wiry hair are the rule; the reason being that in the good old days a gentleman would own some eighty slaves. [Footnote: As early as 1552 the total of African imports amounted to 2,700.] But they are an industrious and reproductive race.

[Footnote: The following note of the census of 1878 was given to me by
my kind colleague, Mr. Consul Hayward:—
Habitations Males Females Total
Madeira.............28,522 62,900 67,367 130,267
Porto Santo......... 435 874 874 1,748
_______
132,015

No. of Persons who can read and write.

Males Females Total
Madeira..............................4,454 4,286 8,740
Porto Santo.......................... 77 34 111
______
8,851

No. of Persons who can read but not write.

Males Females Total
Madeira.......1,659 2,272 3,931
Porto Santo... 42 60 102
_____
4,033

Miss Taylor (Madeira, p. 58) reduces to 33,000—evidently a misprint—this population about four times as dense as that of Portugal.]

Many Madeirans highly distinguished themselves in the Dutch-Brazilian wars, especially the 'Castriota Lusitano.' His name is unknown; he changed it when he left his islet home, the townlet Santa Cruz. These islanders were the model 'navvies' of the age before steam: Albuquerque applied for Madeirans when he formed the barbarous project of diverting the Nile to the Red Sea. Their descendants are beggars from the cradle; but they beg with a good grace, and not with a curse or an insult like the European 'asker' when refused: moreover, the mendicant pest is not now over-prevalent. In the towns they cheat and pilfer; they gamble in the streets; they drink hard on Saturdays and Sundays, and at times they murder one another. Liquor is cheap; a bottle of aguardente or caxaça (new raw rum) costs only fivepence, and the second distillation ninepence. I heard of one assault upon an English girl, but strangers are mostly safe amongst them. Their extreme civility, docility, and good temper, except when spoilt by foreigners, makes it a pleasure to deal with them. They touch their hats with a frank smile, not the Spanish scowl near Gibraltar, or of Santa Cruz, Tenerife. The men are comparatively noiseless; a bawling voice startles you like a pistol-shot. I rarely heard a crying child or a scolding woman offering 'eau bénite à la Xantippe;' even the cocks and hens tied to old shoes cackle with reserve. The climate tames everything from Dom to donkey. Except in January and February it is still, intensely still—the very leaves seem to hang motionless. This softness shows itself especially in the language, which has none of the abruptness of European Portuguese. The sound is a drawling singsong; the articulation is peculiar, and the vocabulary is in some points confined to the Island.

The country people, an active, agile, unmuscular race, mostly preserve the old national dress. Some men still wear, and both sexes once wore, the ridiculous carapuça, or funnel-cap with a rat-tail for a tassel. The rest of the toilet consists of homespun cottons, shirts and knickerbockers, with buff shoes or boots broad-soled and heelless. The traveller who prefers walking should always use this chaussure, and the 'little girl in topboots' is still a standing joke. The women affect parti-coloured petticoats of home-made baize or woollen stuff, dyed blue, scarlet, brown, or orange; a scalloped cape of the same material bound with some contrasting hue; and a white or coloured head-kerchief, sometimes topped by the carapuça, but rarely by the vulgar 'billycock' of the Canaries. In the villages crimson shawls and capes are general, and they cover the head like mantillas.

The peasant's cot is of the simplest, and those in the plantations suggest African huts. Even the best houses, except when copied from the English, are scantily furnished; and little beyond a roof is absolutely wanted. The home of the cazeiro, or peasant tenant practically irremovable, is whitewashed and thatched, the straw forming a crest along the ridge. It covers only one room, converted by a curtain into 'but' and 'ben.' A parental bed, a rickety table, and two or three stools or settles compose the necessaries; the ornaments are the saints hanging to the walls, and for windows there are shutters with a sliding panel. The feeding apparatus consists of a kind of quern for grinding corn, especially maize,

[Foonote: The word is of doubtful origin, generally derived from the Haytian mahiz. But in northern Europe mayse (Irish maise) bread, and the Old High German maz (Hind. mans) means meat]

which, however, is now too dear for general use; sundry vegetable baskets, and an iron pot for boiling fish and porridge, arums (Inhame), and koko (Colocasia esculenta). They have some peculiar dishes, such as the bolo de mel, a ginger cake eaten at Christmas, and the famous carne de vinho e alhos (meat of wine and garlic). The latter is made by marinating pork in vinegar with garlic and the herb called oragão (origanum, or wild marjoram); it is eaten broiled, and even Englishmen learn to appreciate a dish which is said to conversar. The stewed fowl with rice is also national. As everywhere in Portugal, bacalháo,

[Footnote: Brevoort derives the word from baculus, the stick which keeps the fish open; others from the German boloh, fish. In 1498 Seb. Cabot speaks of 'great fishes which the natives call Baccalaos.' He thus makes the word 'Indian;' whereas Dr. Kohl, when noticing the cod-fisheries of Europe, declares that in Germany it is Backljau. Mr. O. Crawford (Portugal, Old and New. London: C. Kegan Paul, 1880) rightly notes that 'bacalháo' applies equally to the fresh fish and the dried fish.]

or dried cod-fish, cooked with garlic or onions, is deservedly a favourite: it contains more nourishment than beef. There is superior originality amongst the doces (sweetmeats) for which Madeira was once world-famous; and in the queques (cakes), such as lagrimas-cakes, cocoanut-cakes, and rabanadas, the Moorish 'rabanat,' slabs of wheat bread soaked in milk, fried in olive oil, and spread with honey. The drink is water, or, at best, agua-pé, the last straining of the grape. Many peasants, who use no stimulant during the day, will drink on first rising a dram para espantar o Diabo (to frighten the Devil), as do the Congoese paramatar o bicho (to kill the worm).

Here cleanliness is not next to godliness. People bathe only in hot weather—the rule of man and the lower mammalia. A quick and intelligent race they are, like the Spaniards and Bedawi Arabs, a contradiction in religious matters: the Madeiran believes in little or nothing, yet he hates a Calvinista like the very fiend. They have lost, as the census shows, something of their extreme ignorance, and have abated their worst superstitions since the expulsion of the Jesuits by Pombal (1759), and the reforms of 1820, 1828, and 1835. In the latter year Dom Pedro suppressed monkeries and nunneries by disallowing masses, and by pensioning the holy tenantry with 9 dols. per mensem, afterwards, reduced to 5 dols. In 1863 the bishop, Dom Patricio Xavier de Moura, did his best to abolish the pretty refocaria (the hearth-lighter), who, as Griraldus hath it, extinguished more virtue than she lit fires; and now the rectory is seldom gladdened by the presence of noisy little nephews and nieces. The popular morals, using the word in its limited sense, were peculiar. The number of espostos que não se sabe quem, são seus pais (fatherless foundlings) outnumbered those born de legitimo matrimonio; and few of the gudewives prided themselves upon absolute fidelity. This flaw, which in England would poison all domestic affection, was not looked upon in a serious light by the islandry. The priesthood used to lament the degeneracy of the age and sigh for the fine times of foros e fogos, the rights and fires of an auto-da-fé. The shepherds have now learned to move with the times and to secure the respect of their sheep. Imagine being directed to Paradise by a reverend man who gravely asks you where and what Hanover is.

Another important change is being brought about by the emigrant. During the last few years the old rule has been relaxed, and whole families have wandered abroad in search of fortune. Few Madeirans in these days ship for the Brazil, once the land of their predilection. They prefer Cape Town, Honolulu, the Antilles, and especially Demerara; and now the 'Demerarista' holds the position of the 'Brasileiro' in Portugal and the 'Indio' or 'Indiano' of the Canaries: in time he will buy up half the island.

In 1862 we hired rowing and sailing boats to visit the southern coast east and west of Funchal. For the last twelvemonth Mr. Blandy's steam-tug Falcão has carried travellers to and fro: it is a great convenience to the lazy sightseer, who cares only to view the outside of things, and here the outsides are the only things worth viewing.

We will begin with the western trip to Paül do Mar, affording a grand prospect of basaltic pillars and geological dykes, and of the three features—rocky, sylvan, and floral. Steaming by the mouth of the wady or ravine Sao João, whose decayed toy forts, S. Lazaro and the palace-battery, are still cumbered with rusty cannon, we pass under the cliff upon whose brow stand some of the best buildings. These are the Princess Dona Maria Amelia's Hospicio, or Consumptive Hospital, built on Mr. Lamb's plans and now under management of the French soeurs, whose gull wings are conspicuous at Funchal; the Asylo, or Poor-house, opened in 1847 for the tempering of mendicancy; and facing it, in unpleasant proximity, the Portuguese cemetery, decorated as to its entrance with sundry skulls and cross-bones, and showing its tall cypresses to the bay. Here comes the Quinta (Comtesse) Lambert, once occupied by Queen Adelaide. The owner doubled the rent; consequently Las Angustías (the Agonies), as it was called from an old chapel, has been unrented for the last two years. A small pleasaunce overhanging a perpendicular cliff, and commanding a glorious view, shows the Quinta da Vigia, lately bought by Mr. Hollway for 8,000l., and let at 500l. to 1,000l, a year. Nothing more charming than its grounds, which attracted H.I.M. of Austria, and now the charming Countess Tyszkiewicz. Landward it faces the Rua da Imperatriz, which leads to the 'Loo Fields.'

The study of basaltic pillars at once begins: Loo Fort is partly built upon them. Beyond Vigia cliff we pass in succession three jagged island-rocks, called 'gurgulhos,' or black-beetles (curculio), which, like the opposite foreshore, admirably show the formation. As a rule the columns are quadrangular; I saw but few pentagons and hexagons. We cast a look at a spouter of circular shape, the Forja, and the Forno, a funnel-formed blowing-rock. The cliff is pierced with a multitude of caves, large and small, and their regular arches look as if the ejected matter, as happens with lava, had cooled and solidified above, while still flowing out in a fiery torrent below. Mostly, however, they are the work of wind and water.

Then comes the old Gurgulho Fort—a dwarf square, partly thatched and converted into a private dwelling. It lies below Signal Hill, with its dwarf ruined tower, a lumpy parasitic crater whose western slopes have been ruined by disforesting. Between the two runs the New Road, which owes its being to the grape-famine of 1852. It is the 'Rotten Row' of Funchal, where horses tread the earth instead of skating and sliding over the greased pebbles; and where fair amazons charge upon you like Indian irregular cavalry. Five miles long, it is the only level line of any extent in Madeira, and it wants but one thing—prolongation. The lion in the path, however, is Cape Girâo, which would cost a treasure to 'tunnel' or to cut into a corniche.

The next feature is the Ponta da Cruz, a fantastic slice of detached basalt. Here, at the southernmost point of the island, the Descobridores planted a cross, and every boatman doffs his cap to its little iron descendant. Beyond it comes the Praia Formosa, a long line of shingle washed down by a deep ravine. All these brooks have the same origin, and their extent increases the importance of the wady. In 1566 the French pirates under De Montluc, miscalled heretics (hereges Ugnotas) landed here, as, indeed, every enemy should. The colour of 'Fair Reach' is ashen grey, scolloped with cinder-black where the creamy foam breaks: for beauty it wants only golden sands, and for use a few bathing machines.

The next notable feature is the Ribeira dos Soccorridos ('River of the Rescued'), where two of the Zargo's lads were with difficulty saved from the violent stream then flowing. It is now provided with a long bridge-causeway of three arches, approached by a chapel, Nossa Senhora das Victorias, whose tiled and pillared porch reminds one of Istria. This bed is the drain of the Grand Curral, called by the people 'Das Freiras,' because the holy women here took refuge from the plundering French 'Lutherans.' The favourite picnic-ground is reached in three hours from Funchal by two roads, both winding amongst the pap-shaped hillocks which denote parasitic cones, and both abutting upon the ravine-side, east and west. The latter, skirting the Pico dos Bodes (of he-goats), a tall cone seen from near Funchal, and sentinelling the great gap, is the joy-for-ever of midshipmites. To the horror of the burriqueiro, or syce, they gallop hired screws, high-heeled as their grandams, over paths at which an English stag would look twice; and for a dollar they secure as much chance of a broken limb, if not of 'going to pot with a young lady' (Captain Basil Hall's phrase), as reasonable beings can expect.

The Grand Curral is the central vent of a volcano originally submarine, and, like the Peak of Tenerife, of the age miocene. Fossils of that epoch have been found upon the crater-walls of both. Subsequent movements capped it with subaerial lavas and conglomerates; and wind and weather, causing constant degradation, deepened the bowl and almost obliterated signs of igneous action. This is general throughout Madeira; the only craters still noticed by guide-books are the Lagos (Lake) de Santo Antonio da Serra, east of Funchal and west of Machico, 500 feet across by 150 deep; and, secondly, the Fanal to the north-west, about 5,000 feet above sea-level. The Curral floor, smooth and bald, is cut by a silvery line of unsunned rivulet which at times must swell to a torrent; and little white cots like egg-shells are scattered around the normal parish-church, Nossa Senhora do Livramento. The basin-walls, some 2,000 feet high and pinnacled by the loftiest peaks in the island, are profusely dyked and thickly and darkly forested; and in the bright blue air, flecked with woolpack, Manta, the buzzard, and frequent kestrels pass to and fro like flies.

Beyond the Soccorridos lies the charming valley of Camara dos Lobos, popularly Cama di Lobos,

[Footnote: It is placed west instead of east of Cape Girao in the Conoise Handbook of Madeira, by the Rev. J. M. Rendell. London: Kegan Paul and Co., 1881.]

the lair of the sea-wolves, or seals. With its vivid lines of sugar-cane, its terraces, its fine remains of forest vegetation, and its distances of golden lights, of glazed blue half-lights, and of purple shades, it looks like a stage-rake, a décor de théatre. Tunny-fishing, wine-making, and sugar-boiling have made it, from a 'miserable place,' a wealthy townlet whose tall white houses would not disgrace a city; two manufactories show their craft by heaps of bagasse, or trash; and the deep shingly bay, defended by a gurgulho of basaltic pillars, is covered with piscator's gear and with gaily painted green boats. 'Seal's Lair' was the model district of wine-production, like its neighbour on the north-western upland, Campanario, famous for its huge Spanish chestnut: both were, however, wasted by the oidium of 1852. In 1863 it partially recovered, under the free use of sulphur; but now it has been ravaged by the more dangerous phylloxera, which is spreading far faster than Mr. Henry Vizetelly supposes.

[Footnote: Facts about Port and Madeira, by Henry Vizetelly, who visited the island in 1877. The papers first appeared in the (old original) Pall Mall Gazette (August 26-September 4,1877), and then were published in a volume by Ward and Lock, 1880]

The only cure of this pest known to Madeira is the troublesome and expensive process practised by a veteran oenologist, Mr. Leacock.

He bares every vine-root, paints it with turpentine and resin, and carefully manures the plant to restore its stamina. Mr. Taylor, of Funchal, has successfully defended the vines about his town-house by the simple tonic of compost. But the Lobos people have, methinks, done wisely to uproot the infected plant wholesale: indeed, from this point to the furthest west we hardly saw a vine-stock. They have supplied its place with garden-stuff, an article which always finds a ready sale. The island is annually visited by at least 500 English ships, and there is a steady demand for 'green meat.' I am not aware that beet-root, one of the best antiscorbutics, has been extensively tried.

Off Cama di Lobos is the best tunny-fishing. It is practised quite differently from the Mediterranean style; here the labyrinth of nets is supplanted by the line of 300 fathoms. At night the bright fires on board the fishing-canoes make travellers suspect that spears, grains, or harpoons are used. This, however, is not the case; line-fishing is universal, and the lights serve mostly for signals.

From Cama di Lobos the huge hill-shoulder to the west, whose face, Cabo Girão, must be ascended by a rough, steep incline. Far easier to view the scene from a boat. Cape 'Turn Again' is the furthest occidental point reached by the far-famed exploration of O Zargo. The profile suggests it to be the northern half of a dome once regular and complete, but cut in two, as a cake might be, by time and the elements. It has the name of being the 'highest sea-wall in the world' (1,934 feet); if so, little Madeira can boast her 'unicum.' Beaching the summit, you either stand up regardant or you peer couchant, as your nerves incline, down a height whose merit is to be peculiarly high. Facetious picnickers roll over the edge-rocks which may kill the unfortunates gathering grass—dreadful trade!—upon the dizzy ledges. There are also quarrymen who extract cantaria-slabs for sills and copings from the four square apertures which look afar like mortice-holes; and a fine marbled stone, white, blue, and ruddy, has been taken from this part of the cliff-face. Finally, there is a little knot of tiny huts which sticks like a wasp-nest to the very foot of the huge wall.

Seen from the deep indigo-blue water, that turns leek-green in the shallows, Cape Girão ('they turn') is a grand study of volcanic dykes. They are of all sizes, from a rope to a cable multiplied a thousandfold; and they stand out in boldest dado-relief where the soft background of tufa, or laterite, has been crumbled away by rain and storm-blast. Some writers have described them as ramifying like a tree and its branches, and crossing and interlacing like the ties of a building; as if sundry volcanic vents had a common centre below. I saw nothing of this kind. The dykes of light grey material, sometimes hollowed out and converted into gutters by falling water, appeared to have been shot up in distinct lines, and the only crossing was where a slip or a fault occurred.

A front view of Cape Girão shows that it is supported on either side, east and west, by buttresses of a darker rock: the eastern dip at an angle of 45°, the western range between 20° above and 40° below. The great central upheaval seems to have pushed its way through these older strata, once straight, now inclined. The layers of the more modern formation—lavas and scoriae—are horizontal; sheets of sub-columnar, compact basalt have been spread upon and have crushed down to paper-thickness their beds of bright red tufa, here and there white with a saline effervescence. Of such distinct superimpositions we counted in one place five; there may have been many more. All are altered soils, as is shown by remains of trees and decayed vegetation.

Beyond Cabo Girão the scenery is grand enough, but monotonous in the extreme. The island is girt by a sea-wall, more or less perpendicular; from this coping there is a gentle upslope, the marvellous terracing for cultivation being carried up to the mountain-tops. The lower levels are everywhere dotted with white farmhouses and brown villages. The colours of the wall are the grey of basalt, the purple of volcanic conglomerates, and the bright reds and yellows of tufas. Here and there, however, a thread of water pouring from the summit, or bursting from the flank, fills a cavity which it has worn and turned for itself; and from this reservoir the industrious peasant has diverted sufficient to irrigate his dwarf terraced plots of cane, bananas, yams, or other vegetables; not a drop of the precious fluid is wasted, and beds are laid out wherever the vivifying influence can extend. The water-race down the wall is shown by mosses and lichens, pellitories, and rock-plants; curtains and hangers; slides, shrubs, and weepers of the most vivid green, which give life and beauty to the sternest stone.

The only breaks in this regular coast-wall are the spines and spurs protruding seawards; the caverns in which the surges break and roar, and the ribeiras or ravines whose heads are far inland, and whose lines show grey second distances and blue third distances. At their mouths lie the sea-beaches and the settlements: the latter, with their towered churches and their large whitewashed houses, look more like detached bits of city than our notion of villages. Other places are built upon heaps of débris washed down from the heights, which hold out no promise of not falling again. The huts scattered amidst the cultivation remind one of nothing but Africa. In some places, too, a soft layer of tufa has been hollowed for man's abode, suggesting, like the caves, a fine old smuggling-trade. As many as eight doors may be counted side by side. In other places a rock-ledge, or even a detached boulder, has been converted into a house by masonry-walls. We shall seldom see these savageries on the eastern coast of the island.

The seafaring settlements are connected with the interior by breakneck paths and by rude steps, slippery with green moss. The people seem to delight in standing, like wild goats, upon the dizziest of 'jumpy' peaks; we see boys perched like birds upon impossible places, and men walking along precipice-faces apparently pathless. The villages are joined to one another by roads which attempt to follow the sea-line; the chasms are spanned by the flimsiest wooden bridges, and the cliff is tunnelled or cut into a corniche.

After disembarking passengers at Ponta d'Agua and Ribeira Nova we passed the great landslip of 1805, Lugar do Baixo. The heap of ruins has long been greened over. The cause was evidently a waterfall which now descends freely; it must have undermined the cliff, which in time would give way. So in the Brazil they use water instead of blasting powder: a trench is dug behind the slice of highland to be removed; this is filled by the rains and the pressure of the column throws the rock bodily down. We shall find this cheap contrivance useful when 'hydraulicking' the auriferous clays of the Gold Coast.

Then we came to Ponta do Sol, the only remarkable site on the trip, famous for bodice-making and infamous for elephantiasis. Here a huge column of curiously contorted basalt has been connected by a solid high-arched causeway with the cliff, which is equally remarkable, showing a central boss of stone with lines radiating quaquaversally. There are outer steps and an inner flight leading under a blind archway, the latter supplied with a crane. The landing in the levadia, or surf, is abominable and a life-boat waits accidents outside. It works with the heavy Madeiran oars, square near the grip and provided with a board into whose hole the pin fits. The townlet, capital of the 'comarca,' fronted by its little Alameda and a strip of beach upon which I should prefer to debark, shows a tall factory-chimney, noting the sugar-works of Wilhabram Bros. There is a still larger establishment at the Serra d'Agoa in the Arco [Footnote: Arco (bow, arch) is locally applied to a ridge or to the district bounded by it.] da Calheta (Arch of the Creeklet), a property of the Visconde de Calçada. The guide-books mention iron pyrites and specular iron in small quantities behind Ponta do Sol.

Passing the deep ravine, Ribeiro Fundo, and the Ponta da Galéra, with its rooky spur, we sighted Jardim do Mar, a village on a mound of débris with black walls of dry stone defending the terraces from surf and spray. The furthest point, where we halted half an hour, is 'Paül do Mar' (Swamp of the Sea), apparently a misnomer. It is the port of the Fajãa da Ovelha (Ewe's landslip), whose white tenements we see perched on the estreito, or tall horizon-slope. The large harbour-town is backed by a waterfall which may prove disastrous to it; its lands were formerly famous for the high-priced malvasia Candida—Candia malmsey.

The day had been delightful, 'June weather' in fickle April. The sea was smooth as glass, and the skies, sunny in the morning and starry at night, were canopied during the day by clouds banking up from the south-east. The western wind blew crisp and cold. This phase of climate often lasts till the end of June, and renders early summer endurable at Madeira. The steam-tug was more punctual going than coming. She left Funchal at 9 A.M., reached Paül do Mar at half-past twelve, covering some twenty-one direct knots; and returned to her moorings, crowded with passengers, at half-past five, instead of half-past four. My companion, M. Dahse, and I agreed that the coast was well worth seeing.

It would hardly be fair to leave Madeira without a visit to Machico, the scene of Machim's apocryphal death. The realists derive the name from Algarvan Monchique. I have made it on foot, on horseback, and by boat, but never so comfortably as when on board the steam-tug Falcão. Garajáo, whose ruddy rocks of volcanic tufa, embedding bits of lava, probably entitled it 'Brazenhead,' is worth inspecting from the sea. Possibly the classic term 'Purple Islands' may have arisen from the fiery red hue of the volcanic cliffs seen at the sunset hour. Like Girão, the middle block of Tern Point is horizontally stratified, while the western abutment slopes to the water. Eastward, however, there has been immense degradation; half the dome has been shaken down and washed away; while a succession of upheavals and earthquakes has contorted the strata in the strangest manner. Seen from Funchal, the profile of Garajáo is that of an elephant's head, the mahaut sitting behind it in the shape of a red-brown boss, the expanded head of a double dyke seaming the tufas of the eastern face. We distinguish on the brow two 'dragons,' puny descendants of the aboriginal monsters. Beyond Garajáo the shore falls flat, and the upland soil is red as that of Devonshire. It is broken by the Ponta da Oliveira, where there is ne'er an olive-tree, and by the grim ravine of Porto de Caniço o Bispo, the 'bishop' being a basaltic pillar with mitre and pontifical robes sitting in a cave of the same material. I find a better episkopos at Ponta da Atalaia, 'Sentinel Point.' Head, profile, and shoulders are well defined; the hands rest upon the knees, and the plaited folds of the dress are well expressed by the basaltic columns of the central upheaval. Beyond Porto Novo do Cal, with its old fort and its limekiln, is the chapel of São Pedro, famous for its romeiro, 'pattern' or pilgrimage for St. Peter's Day. June 29 is kept even at Funchal by water-excursions; it is homage enough to pay a penny and to go round the ships.

We anchored and screamed abominably off Santa Cruz, the capital of its 'comarca.' The townlet lies on the left of a large ravine, whose upper bed contains the Madre d'Agoa, or water-reservoir. The settlement, fronted by its line of trees, the Alameda, and by its broad beach strewed with boats, consists of white, red, and yellow houses, one-, two-, and three-storied; of a white-steepled church and of a new market-place. East of it, and facing south, lies the large house of 'the Squire' (Mr. H. B. Blandy), a villa whose feet are washed by the waves; the garden shows the lovely union, here common, of pine and palm. The latter, however, promises much and performs little, refusing, like the olive, to bear ripe fruit. Beyond the Squire's is the hotel, approached by a shady avenue: it is the most comfortable in the island after the four of Funchal.

[Footnote: There are only two other country inns, both on the northern coast. The first is at Santa Anna, some 20 miles north-north-east of the capital; the second at São Vicente, to the north-west. All three are kept by natives of Madeira. Unless you write to warn the owners that you are coming, the first will be a 'banyan-day,' the second comfortable enough. This must be expected; it is the Istrian 'Città Nuova, chi porta trova.']

Santa Cruz has a regular spring-season; and the few residents of the capital frequent it to enjoy the sea-breeze, which to-day (April 23) blows a trifle too fresh.

We then pass the Ponta da Queimada, whose layers of basalt are deeply caverned, and we open the Bay of Machico. The site, a broad, green and riant valley, with a high background, is softer and gayer than that of Funchal. It has been well sketched in 'Views in the Madeiras,' and by the Norwegian artist Johan F. Eckersberg in folio, with letterpress by Mr. Johnson of the guide-book. The 'Falcon' anchors close to the landing-stairs, under a grim, grey old fort, O Desembarcadouro, originally a tower, and now apparently a dwelling-place. The débarcadère has the usual lamp and the three iron chains intended to prevent accidents.

The prosperous little fishing-village, formerly the capital of the Tristam, lies as usual upon a wady, the S. Gonsales, and consists of a beach, an Alameda, a church with a square tower, and some good houses. Twenty years ago the people had almost forgotten a story which named the settlement; and the impromptu cicerone carried strangers who sought the scene of Machim's death to the Quinta de Santa Anna,

[Footnote: Here Mr. White made some of his meteorological observations. VOL. I.]

well situated upon a land-tongue up the valley; to the parish church, which was in a state of chronic repair, and in fact to every place but the right. The latter is now supposed to be the little Ermida (chapel) de N. S. da Visitação. with its long steps and wall-belfry on the beach and the left jaw of the wady: it is a mere humbug, for the original building was washed away by the flood of 1803. In those days, too, visitors vainly asked for the 'remains of Machim's cross, collected and deposited here by Robert Page, 1825.' Now a piece of it is shown in frame. About 1863 I was told that a member of the family, whose name, it is said, still survives about Bristol, wished to mark the site by a monument—decidedly encouraging to Gretna-Greenism.

From Machico Bay we see the Fora and other eastern outliers which form the Madeiran hatchet-handle. Some enthusiasts prolong the trip to what is called the 'Fossil-bed,' whose mere agglomerations of calcareous matter are not fossils at all. The sail, however, gives fine views of the 'Deserters' (Desertas), beginning with the 'Ship Rock,' a stack or needle mistaken in fogs for a craft under sail. Next to it lies the Ilheu Chão, the Northern or Table Deserta, not unlike Alderney or a Périgord pie. Deserta Grande has midway precipices 2,000 feet high, bisected by a lateral valley, where the chief landing is. Finally, Cu de Bugio (as Cordeyro terms it) is in plan a long thin strip, and in elevation a miniature of its big brother, with the additions of sundry jags and peaks.

The group is too windy for cereals, but it grows spontaneously orchil and barilla (Mesembryanthemum nodiflorum), burnt for soda. Few strangers visit it, and many old residents have never attempted the excursion. It is not, however, unknown to sportsmen, who land—with leave—upon the main island and shoot the handsome 'Deserta petrels,' the cagarras (Puffinus major, or sheerwater), the rabbits, the goats that have now run wild, and possibly a seal. A poisonous spider is here noticed by the guide-books, and the sea supplies the edible pulvo (octopus) and the dreaded urgamanta. This huge ray (?) enwraps the swimmer in its mighty double flaps and drags him to the bottom, paralysing him by the wet shroud and the dreadful stare of its hideous eyes.

CHAPTER IV. — MADEIRA (continued)—CHRISTMAS—SMALL INDUSTRIES—

WINE—DEPARTURE FOR TENERIFE.

The Christmas of 1881 at Madeira could by no means be called gay. The foreign colony was hospitable, as usual, with dinners, dances, and Christmas trees. But amongst the people festivities seemed to consist chiefly of promenading one's best clothes about the military band and firing royal salutes, not to speak of pistols and squibs. The noise reminded me of Natal amongst the Cairene Greeks; here, as in the Brazil, if you give a boy a copper he expends it not on lollipops, but on fireworks. We wished one another boas entradas, the 'buon' principio' of Italy, and remembered the procession of seventeen years ago. The life-sized figures, coarsely carved in wood and dressed in real clothes, were St. Francis, St. Antonio de Noto, a negro (Madeiran Catholics recognise no 'aristocracy of the skin'); a couple of married saints (for even matrimony may be sanctified), SS. Bono and Luzia, with half a dozen others. The several platforms, carried by the brotherhoods in purple copes, were preceded by the clergy with banners and crosses and were followed by soldiers. The latter then consisted of a battalion of caçadores, 480 to 500 men, raised in the island and commanded by a colonel entitled 'Military Governor.' They are small, dark figures compared with the burly Portuguese artillerymen stationed at the Loo Fort and São Thiago Battery, and they are armed with old English sniders.

Behind the Tree of Penitence and the crosses of the orders came an Ecce Homo and a bit of the 'true Cross' shaded by a canopy. The peasantry, who crowded into town—they do so no longer—knelt to kiss whatever was kissable, and dodged up and down the back streets to gain opportunities. Even the higher ranks were afoot; they used to acquire in infancy a relish for these mild amusements. And one thing is to be noted in favour of the processions; the taste of town-decoration was excellent, and the combinations of floral colours were admirable. Perhaps there is too much of nosegay in Madeira, making us remember the line—

Posthume, non bene olet qui bane semper olet.

I went to the Jesuit church to hear the predica, or sermon. The preacher does not part his hair 'amidships,' or display cambric and diamond-rings, yet his manner is none the less maniérée. For him and his order, in Portugal as in Spain, the strictest minutiae of demeanour and deportment are laid down. The body should be borne upright, but not stuck up, and when the congregation is addressed the chest is slightly advanced. The dorsal region must never face the Sacrament; this would be turning one's back, as it were, upon the Deity. The elbow may not rest upon the cushion. The head, held erect, but not haughtily, should move upon the atlas gently and suavely, avoiding 'lightness' and undue vivacity. The lips must not smile; but, when occasion calls for it, they may display a saintly joy. The eyebrows must not be raised too high towards the hair-roots; nor should one be elevated while the other is depressed. The voice should be at times tremolando, and the tone periodically 'sing-song.' Finally, the eyes are ordered to wander indiscriminately, and with all pudicity, over the whole flock, and never to be fixed upon a pretty lamb.

Our countrymen are not over-popular in Portugal or in Madeira; such mortal insults as those offered by Byron, to name only the corypheus, will rankle and can never be forgotten. In this island strangers, especially Englishmen, have a bad practice of not calling upon the two governors, civil and military. The former, Visconde de Villa Mendo, is exceptional; he likes England and the English. As a rule the highest classes mix well with strangers; not so the medio ceto who, under a constitutional régime, rule the roast. Men with small fixed incomes have little to thank us for; we make things dear, and we benefit only the working men. Bourgeois exactions have driven both French ships and American whalers to Tenerife; and many of them would do the same with the English and German residents and visitors of Funchal. Not a few have noble and historic names, whose owners are fallen into extreme poverty. Professor Azevedo's book is also a nobiliaire de Madère. The last generation used to be remarkably prim and precise, in dress as in language and manner. They never spoke of 'hogs' or 'horns,' and they wore the skimpy waistcoats and the regulation whiskers of Wellington's day. The fair sex appeared only at 'functions,' at church, and at the Sunday promenade in the Place. The moderns dress better than their parents, who affected the most violent colours, an exceedingly pink pink upon a remarkably green green; and the shape of the garment was an obsolete caricature of London and Paris. They no longer assume the peculiar waddle, looking as if the lower limbs were unequal to the weight of the upper story; but the walk never equals that of the Spanish woman. This applies to Portugal as well. The strong points, here as in the Peninsula, are velvety black eyes and blue-black hair dressed à la Diane. It is still the fashion, as at Lisbon, to look somewhat boudeuse when abroad, by way of hint that man must not expect too much; yet these cross faces at home or with intimates are those of bonnes enfants. Lastly, the dark complexions and the irregular features do not contrast well with the charming faces and figures of Tenerife, who mingle the beauty of Guanchedom with that of Spain and Ireland.

The list of public amusements at Funchal is not extensive. Years ago the theatre was converted into a grain-store, and now it is a wine-store. The circus of lumber has been transferred from under the Peak Fort to near the sea; it mostly lacks men and horses. The Germans have a tolerable lending library; and the public bibliotheca in the Town House, near the Jesuit church, is rich in old volumes, mostly collected from religious houses. In 1851 the books numbered 1,800; now they may be 2,000; kept neat and clean in two rooms of the fine solid old building. Of course the collection is somewhat mixed, Fox's 'Martyrs' and the 'Lives of the Saints' standing peacefully near the 'Encyclopédie' and Voltaire. A catalogue can hardly be expected.

There are three Masonic lodges and two Portuguese clubs, one good, the other not; and the former (Club Funchalense), well lodged in a house belonging to Viscountess Torre Bella, gives some twice or three times a year very enjoyable balls. The Café Central, with estaminet and French billiard-table, is much frequented by the youth of the town, but not by residents. The great institution is the club called the 'English Rooms,' which has been removed from over a shop in the Aljube to Viscondessa de Torre Bella's house in the Rua da Alfandega. The British Consulate is under the same roof, and next door is Messieurs Blandy's ubiquitous 'Steamer Agency.' The roomy and comfortable quarters, with a fine covered balcony looking out upon the sea, are open to both sexes. The collection of books is old; but the sum of 100l. laid out on works of reference would bring it fairly up to the level of the average English country-club. Strangers' names were hospitably put down by any proprietary member as guests and visitors if they did not outstay the fortnight; otherwise they became subscribers. But crowding was the result, and the term has been reduced to three days: a month's subscription, however, costs only 10s. 6d. The doors close at 7.30 P.M.: I used to think this an old-world custom kept up by the veteran hands; but in an invalid place perhaps it is wisely done.

The principal passetemps at Madeira consists of eating, drinking, and smoking; it is the life of a horse in a loose box, where the animal eats pour passer le temps. After early tea and toast there is breakfast à la fourchette at nine; an equally heavy lunch, or rather an early dinner (No. 1), appears at 1 to 2 P.M.; afternoon tea follows, and a second dinner at 6 to 7. Residents and invalids suppress tiffin and dine at 2 to 3 P.M. In fact, as on board ship, people eat because they have nothing else to do; and English life does not admit of the sensible French hours—déjeuner à la fourchette at 11 A.M. and dinner after sunset.

The first walk through Funchal shows that it has not improved during the last score of years, and to be stationary in these days is equivalent to being retrograde. It received two heavy blows—in 1852 the vine-disease; and, since that time, a gradual decline of reputation as a sanatorium. Yet it may, I think, look for a better future when the Land Bill Law system, extending to England and Scotland, will cover the continent with colonies of British rentiers who rejoice in large families and small incomes. Moreover, Anglo-African officials are gradually learning that it is best to leave their 'wives and wees' at Madeira; and the coming mines of the Gold Coast will greatly add to the numbers. For the economist Funchal and its environs present peculiar advantages. The dearness of coin appears in the cheapness of houses and premises. Estates which cost 5,000l. to 15,000l. a generation ago have been sold to 'Demerarists' for one-tenth that sum. 'Palmeira,' for instance, was built for 42,000l., and was bought for 4,000l. A family can live quietly, even keeping ponies, for 500l. per annum; and it is something to find a place four to seven days' sail from England inhabitable, to a certain extent all the year round. The mean annual temperature is 67.3 degrees; that of summer varies from 70 degrees to 85 degrees, and in winter it rarely falls below 50 degrees to 60 degrees. The range, which is the most important consideration, averages 9 degrees, with extremes of 5 degrees to 35 degrees. The moist heat is admirably adapted for old age, and I doubt not that it greatly prolongs life. Youth, English youth, cannot thrive in this subtropical air; there are certain advantages for education at Funchal; but children are sent north, as from Anglo-India, to be reared. Otherwise they will grow up yellow and languid, without energy or industry, and with no object in life but to live.

Madeira has at once gained credit for comfort and has lost reputation as a sanatorium, a subject upon which fashion is peculiarly fickle. During the last century the Faculty sent its incurables to Lisbon and Montpellier despite the mistral and the fatal vent de bise. The latter town then lodged some 300 English families of invalids, presently reduced to a few economists and wine-merchants. Succeeded Nice and Pisa, one of the most wearying and relaxing of 'sick bays;' and Pau in the Pyrenees, of which the native Béarnais said that the year has eight months of winter and four of inferno. Madeira then rose in the world, and a host of medical residents sounded her praises, till Mentone was written up and proved a powerful rival. And the climate of the hot-damp category was found to suit, mainly if not only, that tubercular cachexy and those, bronchial affections and lung-lesions in which the viscus would suffer from the over-excitement of an exceedingly dry air like the light invigorating medium of Tenerife or Thebes. Lastly, when phthisis was determined to be a disease of debility, of anæmia, of organic exhaustion, and of defective nutrition, cases fitted for Madeira were greatly limited. Here instruments deceive us as to humidity. The exceeding dampness is shown by the rusting of iron and the tarnishing of steel almost as effectually as upon the West African coast. Yet Mr. Vivian's observations, assuming 100 to be saturation, made Torquay 76 and Funchal 73. [Footnote: Others make the mean humidity of Funchal 76, and remark that in the healthiest and most pleasant climates the figures range between 70 and 80]. Moreover it was found out that consumption, as well as intermittent fevers, are common on the island, so common, indeed, as to require an especial hospital for the poorer classes, although the people declare them to have been imported by the stranger. I may here observe that while amongst all the nations of Southern Europe great precautions are taken against the contagion of true phthisis, English medicos seem to ignore it. A Pisan housekeeper will even repaper the rooms after the death of a consumptive patient. At Funchal sufferers in every stage of the disease live in the same house and even in the same rooms.

Then came the discovery that for consumptives dry cold is a medium superior to damp heat. Invalids were sent to the Tyrol, to the Engadine, to Canada, and even to Iceland, where phthisis is absolutely unknown, and where a diet of oleaginous fish is like feeding upon cod-liver or shark-liver oil. The air as well as the diet proved a tonic, and patients escaped the frequent cough, catarrh, influenza, and neuralgia which are so troublesome at Funchal. Here, too, the invalid must be accompanied by a 'prudent and watchful friend,' or friends, and the companions will surely suffer. I know few climates so bad and none worse for those fecund causes of suffering in Europe, liver-affections ('mucous fevers'), diarrhoeas, and dysenteries; for nervous complaints, tic douloureux, and neuralgia, or for rheumatism and lumbago. Asthma is one of the disorders which shows the most peculiar forms, and must be treated in the most various ways: here some sufferers are benefitted, others are not. Madeira is reputedly dangerous also for typhoid affections, for paralysis, and for apoplexy. There is still another change to come. The valley north of the beautiful and ever maligned 'Dead Sea' of Palestine, where the old Knights Templar had their sugar-mills and indigo-manufactories, has peculiar merits. Lying some 1,350 feet below the Mediterranean, it enables a man to live with a quarter of a lung: you may run till your legs fail with fatigue, but you can no more get out of breath than you can sink in the saline waters of Lake Asphaltites. When a railway from Jafa to Jerusalem shall civilise the 'Holy Land,' I expect great things from the sites about the Jordan embouchure.

After the 'gadding vine' had disappeared the people returned to their old amours, the sugar-cane, whose five loaves, disposed crosswise, gave the island her heraldic cognisance. Madeira first cultivated sugar in the western hemisphere and passed it on to the New World. Yet the cane was always worked under difficulties. Space is limited: the upper extreme of cultivation on the southern side may be estimated at 1,000 feet. The crop exhausts the soil; the plant requires water, and it demands what it can rarely obtain in quantity—manure. Again, machinery is expensive and adventure is small. Jamaica and her slave-labour soon reduced the mills from one hundred and fifty to three, and now five. My hospitable friend, Mr. William Hinton, is the only islander who works sugar successfully at the Torreão. The large rival mill with the tall regulation smoke-stack near the left mouth of the Ribeira de São' João, though inscribed 'Omnia vincit improbus labor,' and though provided with the most expensive modern appliances, is understood not to be a success for the Companhia Fabril d'Assucar.

Here sugar-working in the present day requires for bare existence high protective duties. The Government, however, has had the common sense, and the Madeirans patriotic feeling enough, to defend their industry from certain ruinous vagaries, by taxing imported growths 80 reis (4d.) per kilo. A hard-grit free-trader would abolish this abomination and ruin half the island. And here I would remark that in England the world has seen for the first time a wealthy and commercial, a great and generous nation proclaim, and take pride in proclaiming, the most immoral doctrine. 'Free Trade,' so called, I presume, because it is practically the reverse of free or fair trade, openly abjures public spirit and the chief obligation of the citizen—to think of his neighbour as well as himself, and not to let charity end, as it often begins, at home. 'Buy cheap and sell dear' is the law delivered by its prophets, the whole duty of 'the merchant and the man.' When its theorists ask me the favourite question, 'Would you not buy in the cheapest market?' I reply, 'Yes, but my idea of cheapness is not yours: I want the best, no matter what its price, because it will prove cheapest in the end.' How long these Free-trade fads and fooleries will last no one can say; but they can hardly endure till that millennium when the world accepts the doctrine, and when Free Trade becomes free trade and fair trade.

As regards petite industrie in Madeira, there is a considerable traffic in 'products of native industry,' sold to steamer-passengers. The list gives jewellery and marquetry or inlaid woodwork; feather-flowers, straw hats, lace and embroidery, the latter an important item; boots and shoes of unblackened leather; sweetmeats, especially guava-cheese; wax-fruits, soap-berry bracelets, and 'Job's tears;' costumes in wood and clay; basketry, and the well-known wicker chairs, tables, and sofas. The cooperage is admirable; I have nowhere seen better-made casks. The handsomest shops, as we might expect, are the apothecaries'; and, here, as elsewhere, they thrive by charging a sixpence for what cost them a halfpenny.

An enterprising Englishman lately imported sheep from home. The native mutton was described in 1842 as 'strong in flavour and lean in condition;' in fact, very little superior to that of Trieste. Now it is remarkably good, and will be better. Silk, I have said, has not been fairly tried, and the same is the case with ginger. Cotton suffered terribly from the worm. Chinchona propagated from cuttings, not from the seed, did well. Dr. Grabham [Footnote: The Climate and Resources of Madeira. By Michael C. Grabham, M.D., F.R.G.S., F.R.C.P. London; Churchill, 1870.] tells us that the coffee-berry ripens and yields a beverage locally thought superior to that of the imported kinds. It has become almost extinct in consequence of protracted blights: the island air is far too damp. Tea did not succeed. [Footnote: Page 189, Du Climat de Madère, etc., par C. A. Mourão Pitta, Montpellier, 1859.] Cochineal also proved a failure. The true Mexican cactus (Opuntia Tuna) was brought to supplant the tree-like and lean-leafed native growth; but there is too much wind and rain for the insects, and the people prefer to eat the figs or 'prickly pears.' Bananas grow well, and a large quantity is now exported for the English market. But the climate does not agree with European fruits and vegetables; strawberries and French beans are equally flavourless. I remarked the same in the glorious valley of the Lower Congo: it must result from some telluric or atmospheric condition which we cannot yet appreciate.

Tobacco has been tried with some success, though the results do not equal those of the Canaries; there, however, the atmosphere is too dry, here it is not. The estanco (monopoly) and the chronic debt to those who farm the import-tax long compelled the public to pay dear for a poor article. Home-growth was forbidden till late years; now it is encouraged, and rate-payers contribute a small additional sum. Hitherto, however, results have not been over-favourable, because, I believe, the tobacco-beds have been unhappily placed. Rich valley-soils and sea-slopes, as at Cuban Vuelta de Abajo and Syrian Latakia, are the proper habitats of the 'holy herb.' Here it is planted in the high dry grounds about the 'Peak Fort' and the uplands east of the city. Manure also is rare and dear, and so is water, which, by the by, is sadly wasted in Madeira for want of reservoirs. Consequently the peasants smoke tobacco from the Azores.

The Casa Funchalense, north of the Cathedral, is the chief depôt for island-growths. It sells 'Escuros' (dark brands) of 20 reis, or 1d., and 50 reis, according to size. The 'Claros,' which seem to be the same leaf steamed, fetch from 40 to 100 reis. A small half-ounce of very weak and poor-flavoured pipe-tobacco also is worth 1d.

An influential planter, Senhor João de Salles Caldeira, kindly sent to Mr. John Blandy some specimens of his nicotiana for me to test in Africa. The leaf-tobaccos, all grown between 1879 and 1881, at Magdalena in the parish of St. Antonio, were of three kinds. The Havano was far too short for the trade; the Bahiano, also dark, was longer; and the so-called 'North-American' was still longer, light-coloured and well tied in prick-shape. The negro verdict was, 'Left, a lilly he be foine,' meaning they want but little to be excellent. The Gold Coast prefers yellow Virginia, whose invoice price is 7d. per lb. The traders are now introducing Kentucky, which, landed from Yankee ships, costs 6d. But, here as elsewhere, it is difficult to bring about any such change.

There were two qualities of Madeiran charutos (cigars): one long Claro which smoked very mild, and a short Escuro, which tasted a trifle bitter. The blacks complained that they were too new; and I should rank them with the average produce of Brazilian Bahia. A papered cigarilha, clad in an outer leaf of tobacco, was exceptionally good. The cígarros (cigarettes), neatly bound in bundles of twenty-five, were of three kinds, fortes (strong), entre-fortes, and fracos (mild). All were excellent and full of flavour; they did not sicken during the voyage, and I should rank them with the far-famed Bragança of the Brazil.

The most successful of these small speculations is that of Mr. E. Hollway. Assisted by an able gardener from Saint Michael, Azores, where the pineapple made a little fortune for Ponta Delgada, he has converted Mount Pleasant, his father's house and grounds on the Caminho do Meio, into one huge pinery. The Madeiran sun does all the work of English fires and flues; but the glass must be whitewashed; otherwise, being badly made, with bubbles and flaws, it would burn holes in the plants. The best temperature for the hot-houses is about 90° F.: it will rise after midday to 140°, and fall at night to 65°. The species preferred are, in order of merit, the Cayena, the black Jamaica, and the Brazilian Abacaxi. The largest of Mr. Hollway's produce weighed 20 lbs.—pumpkin size. Those of 12 lbs. and 15 lbs. are common, but the market prefers 8 lbs. His highest price was 2l., and he easily obtains from 10s. to 15s. In one greenhouse we saw 2,500 plants potted and bedded; the total numbers more than double that figure. The proprietor has a steam-saw, makes his own boxes, and packs his pines with dry leaves of maize and plantain. He is also cultivating a dwarf banana, too short to be wind-wrung. His ground will grow anything: the wild asparagus, which in Istria rises knee-high, here becomes a tall woody shrub.

And now of the wine which once delighted the world, and which has not yet become 'food for the antiquary.' To begin with, a few dates and figures are necessary. In 1852, that terrible year for France, the Oïdium fungus attacked the vine, and soon reduced to 2,000 the normal yearly production of 20,000 and even 22,000 pipes.

[Footnote: Between 1792 and 1827 the yearly average was 20,000.
In 1813 it was 22,000.
" 1814 " 14,000.
" 1816 " 15,000.

In 1816 it was 12,000.
" 1818 " 18,000.
" 1825 " 14,000.

It then decreased to an average of 7,000 till the oïdium-year (Miss E. M, Taylor, p. 74).]

The finest growths suffered first, as animals of the highest blood succumb the soonest to epidemics. When I wrote in 1863 the grape was being replanted, chiefly the white verdelho, the Tuscan verdea. In 1873 the devastating Phylloxera appeared, and before 1881 it had ruined two of the finest southern districts. The following numerals show the rapid decline of yield:—6,000 pipes in 1878, 5,000 in 1879, 3,000 in 1880, and 2,000 in 1881. There are still in store some 30,000 pipes, each=92 gallons (forty-five dozen); and a single firm, Messrs. Blandy Brothers, own 3,000. Mr. Charles R. Blandy, the late head of the house, bought up all the must grown since 1863; but he did not care to sell. This did much harm to the trade, by baulking the demand and by teaching the public to do without it. His two surviving sons have worked hard and advertised on a large scale; they issue a yearly circular, and the result is improved enquiry. Till late years the world was not aware that the Madeiran vine has again produced Madeira wine; and a Dutch admiral, amongst others, was surprised to hear that all was not made at Cettes. I give below Messrs. Blandy's trade-prices, to which some 20 per cent, must be added for retail.

[Footnote: Sound light medium Madeiras from 26s. to 32s. per dozen, packed and delivered in London; light, golden, delicate, 36s.; tawny Tinta, also called 'Madeira Burgundy,' a red wine mixing well with water, 40s.; fine old dry Verdelho, 48s.; rich soft old Bual, not unlike Amontillado, 54s.; very fine dry old Sercial (the Riesling grape), 56s.; and the same for highly-flavoured soft old Malmsey, 'Malvasia Candida,' corrupted from 'Candia' because supposed to have been imported from that island in 1445. 'Grand Old Oama de Lobos' is worth 70s., and the best Old Preserve wine 86s. For wines very old in bottle there are special quotations.]

The lowest price free on board is 23l, and the values rise from 40l. at four years old to 1OOl. at ten years old.

'Madeira' was most popular in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, especially at the Court of Francois I. Shakespeare in 'Henry IV.' makes drouthy Jack sell his soul on Good Friday for a cup of Madeira and a cold capon's leg. Mr. H. Vizetelly, whose professional work should be read by all who would master the subject, marvels why and how this 'magnificent wine' went out of fashion. The causes are many, all easy to trace. Men not yet very old remember the day when England had no vino de pasto fit to be drunk at meals; when they found only ports, sherries, and loaded clarets; and when they sighed in vain for light Rhine or Bordeaux growths, good ordinaire being to drink what bread is to food.

[Footnote: This, however, is a mere individual opinion. I have lately read a book recommending strong and well-brandied wines as preventing the crave for pure alcohol.]

Now, however, the national taste has changed; the supply of Madeira not sufficing for the demand, the class called boticarios (apothecaries) brought rivals into the market; and extensive imitation's with apples, loquats (Japanese medlars), and other frauds, brandied to make the stuff keep, plastered or doctored with Paris-plaster to correct over-acidity, and coloured and sweetened with burnt sugar and with boiled 'must' (mosto) to mock the Madeira flavour, gave the island-produce a bad name. Again, the revolution in the wine-trade of 1860-61 brought with it certain Continental ideas. In France a glass of Madeira follows soup, and in Austria it is drunk in liqueur-glasses like Tokay.

[Footnote: 'Madeira' is the island modification of the Cyprus and the Candia (?) grape. 'Tokay' comes from the Languedoc muscatel, and 'Constantia' from Burgundy, like most of the Rhine-wines.]

The island wine must change once more to suit public taste. At present it ships at the average strength of 18°-25° per cent, of 'proof spirit,' which consists of alcohol and water in equal proportions. For that purpose each pipe is dosed with a gallon or two of Porto Santo or São Vicente brandy. This can do no harm; the addition is homogeneous and chemically combines with the grape-juice; but when potato-spirit and cane-rum are substituted for alcohol distilled from wine, the result is bad. The vintage is rarely ripened by time, whose unrivalled work is imperfectly done in the estufa or flue-stove, the old fumarium, or in the sertio (apotheca), an attic whose glass roofing admits the sun. The voyage to the East Indies was a clumsy contrivance for the same purpose; and now the merchants are beginning to destroy the germs of fermentation not by mere heat, but by the strainer extensively used in Jerez. The press shown to me was one of Messrs. Johnson and Co., which passes the liquor through eighteen thick cottons supported by iron plates. It might be worth while to apply electricity in the form used to destroy fusel-oil. Lastly, the wine made for the market is a brand or a blend, not a 'vintage-wine.' At any of the armazems, or stores, you can taste the wines of '70, '75, '76, and so forth, of A 1 quality; and you can learn their place as well as their date of birth. But these are mixed when wine of a particular kind is required and the produce becomes artificial. What is now wanted is a thin light wine, red or white, with the Madeira flavour, and this will be the drink of the future. The now-forgotten tisane de Madère and the 'rain-water Madeira,' made for the American markets, a soft, delicate, and straw-coloured beverage, must be the models.

I sampled the new wines carefully; and, with due remembrance of the peaches in 'Gil Blas,' I came to the conclusion that they are no longer what they were. The wine is tainted with sulphur in its odorous union with hydrogen. It is unduly saccharine, fermenting irregularly and insufficiently. For years the plant has constantly been treated against oidium with antiseptics, which destroy the spores and germ-growths; and we can hardly expect a first-rate yield from a chronically-diseased stock. Still the drink is rich and highly flavoured; and, under many circumstances, it answers better than any kind of sherry. No more satisfactory refreshment on a small scale than a biscuit and a glass of Bual. Moreover, the palate requires variety, and here finds it in a harmless form. But as a daily drink Madeira should be avoided: even in the island I should prefer French Bordeaux, not English claret, with an occasional change to Burgundy. Meanwhile, 'London particular' is a fact, and the supply will probably exceed the demand of the present generation.

I also carefully sampled the wines of the north coast, which had not, as in Funchal, been subjected to doctoring by stove, by spirits, and by blend. They are lighter than the southern; but, if unbrandied, some soon turn sour, and others by keeping get strong and heady. The proportion of alcoholism is peremptorily determined by climate—that is, the comparative ratio of sun and rain. In Europe, for instance, light wines cannot be produced without 'liquor,' as the trade calls aqua pura, by latitudes lower than Germany and Southern France. When heat greatly exceeds moisture, the wines may be mild to mouth and nose, yet they are exceedingly potent; witness the vino d'oro of the Libanus.

At Funchal I also tasted a very neat wine, a vin de pays with the island flavour and not old enough to become spirituous. If the vine be again grown in these parts, its produce will be drunk in England under some such form. But Madeira has at last found her 'manifest destiny:' she will be an orchard to Northern Europe and (like the England of the future) a kitchen-garden to the West African Coast, especially the Gold Mines.

My sojourn at the Isle of Wood and its 'lotus-eating' (which means double dinners) came to an end on Sunday, January 8, the s.s. Senegal Captain W. L. Keene, bringing my long-expected friend Cameron, of African fame. The last day passed pleasantly enough in introducing him to various admirers; and we ate at Santa Clara a final dinner, perfectly conscious that we were not likely to see its like for many a month. We were followed to the beach by a choice band of well-wishers—Baron Adelin de Vercour, Colonel H. W. Keays Young, and Dr. Struthers—who determined upon accompanying us to Tenerife. The night was black as it well could be, and the white surf rattled the clicking pebbles, as we climbed into the shore-boat with broad cheek-pieces, and were pulled off shipwards. On board we found Mr. William Reid, junior, who had carefully lodged our numerous impediments; and, at 10 P.M., we weighed for Tenerife.

I must not leave the Isle of Wood, which has so often given me hospitality, without expressing a hearty wish that the Portuguese 'Government,' now rhyming with 'impediment,' will do its duty by her. The Canaries and their free ports, which are different from 'free trade,' have set the best example; and they have made great progress while the Madeiras have stood still, or rather have retrograded. The Funchal custom-house is a pest; the import charges are so excessive that visitors never import, and for landing a single parcel the ship must pay high port-charges where no port exists. The population is heavily taxed, and would willingly 'pronounce' if it could only find a head. The produce, instead of being spent upon the island, is transmitted to Lisbon: surely a portion of it might be diverted from bureaucratic pockets and converted into an emigration fund. It is sad to think that a single stroke of the Ministerial pen would set all right and give new life to the lovely island, and yet that the pen remains idle.

And a parting word of praise for Madeira. Whatever the traveller from Europe may think of this quasi-tropical Tyrol, those homeward-bound from Asia and Africa will pronounce her a Paradise. They will enjoy good hotels, comfortable tables d'hôte, and beef that does not resemble horseflesh or unsalted junk. Nor is there any better place wherein to rest and recruit after hard service in the tropics. Moreover, at the end of a month spent in perfect repose the visitor will look forward with a manner of dismay to the plunge into excited civilised life.

But Madeira is not 'played out;' au contraire, she is one of those 'obligatory points' for commerce which cannot but prosper as the world progresses. The increasing traffic of the West African coast will make men resort to her for comforts and luxuries, for climate and repose. And when the Gold Mines shall be worked as they should be this island may fairly look forward to catch many a drop of the golden shower.

The following interesting table, given to me by M. d'Oliveira, clerk of the English Rooms, shows what movement is already the rule of Funchal.

VESSELS ENTERED IN THE PORT FROM JANUARY 1 TO DECEMBER 31.

Vessels of War

Nationality Sailing/Steamers
Frigates Corvettes Schooners/Transports -/Gunboats
American -/1 1/1 -/- -/-
Argentine -/- -/- -/- -/-
Austrian -/- -/- -/- -/-
Belgian -/- -/- -/- -/-
Brazilian -/- -/- -/- -/-
British -/6 -/3 1/10 -/7
Danish -/- -/1 -/- -/-
Dutch -/- -/2 -/- -/1
French 2/2 -/- -/1 -/1
German -/3 -/3 -/- -/-
Italian -/- -/1 -/- -/-
Norwegian -/- -/1 -/- -/-
Portuguese -/- -/- -/- -/2
Russian -/- -/- -/- -/-
Spanish -/- -/- -/- -/-
Swedish -/- -/1 -/- -/-
Totals: 2/12 1/13 1/11 -/11

Pleasure Vessels

Nationality Steam Yachts
Yachts
American - -
Argentine - -
Austrian - -
Belgian - -
Brazilian - -
British 2 4
Danish - -
Dutch - -
French - -
German - -
Italian - -
Norwegian - -
Portuguese - -
Russian - -
Spanish - -
Swedish - -

Totals: 2 4

Merchant Vessels

Nationality Steamers Ships Barques Barquantines Brigs

American - - 3 - - Argentine 1 - - - - Austrian - 1 2 - - Belgian 26 - - - - Brazilian 3 - - - - British 439 1 9 20 9 Danish - - - - 1 Dutch 1 - - - - French - - 3 - - German 8 - 16 - 2 Italian - - - - - Norwegian - - 5 1 1 Portuguese 48 - 3 - - Russian - - 2 - - Spanish - - 2 - - Swedish - - 2 - -

Totals: 526 2 43 21 13

CHAPTER V. — TO TENERIFE, LA LAGUNA, AND OROTAVA.

When I left, in 1865, the western coast of the Dark Continent, its transit and traffic were monopolised by the A(frican) S(team) S(hip) Company, a monthly line established in 1852, mainly by the late Macgregor Laird. In 1869 Messieurs Elder, Dempster, and Co., of Glasgow, started the B(ritish) and A(frican) to divide the spoils. The junior numbers nineteen keel, including two being built. It could easily 'eat up' the decrepit senior, which is now known as the A(frican) S(tarvation) S(teamers); but this process would produce serious competition. Both lines sail from Liverpool on alternate Saturdays, and make Funchal, with their normal unpunctuality, between Fridays and Sundays. This is dreary slow compared with the four days' fast running of the 'Union S. S. C.' and the comfortable 'Castle Line,' alias the Cape steamers.

The B. and A. s.s. Senegal is a fair specimen of the modern West African trader 'improved:' unfortunately the improvements affect the shareholders' pockets rather than the passengers' persons. The sleeping-berths are better, but the roomy, well-lighted, comfortable old saloon, sadly shorn of its fair proportions, has become the upper story of a store-room. The unfortunate stewards must catch fever by frequent diving into the close and sultry mine of solids and fluids under floor. There being no baggage-compartment, boxes and bags are stowed away in the after part, unduly curtailing light and air; the stern lockers, once such pleasant sleeping-sofas, and their fixed tables are of no use to anything besides baskets and barrels. Here the surgeon, who, if anyone, should have a cabin by way of dispensary, must lodge his medicine-chest. Amongst minor grievances the main cabin is washed every night, breeding a manner of malaria. The ice intended for passengers is either sold or preserved for those who ship most cargo. Per contra, the cook is good, the table is plentiful, the wines not over bad, the stewards civil, and the officers companionable.

Both lines, however, are distinctly traders. They bind themselves to no time; they are often a week late, and they touch wherever demand calls them. The freight-charges are exorbitant, three pounds for fine goods and a minimum of thirty-six shillings, when fifteen per ton would pay. The White Star Line, therefore, threatens concurrence. Let us also hope that when the Gold Mines prosper we shall have our special steamers, where the passenger will be more prized than the puncheon of palm-oil. But future rivals must have a care; they will encounter a somewhat unscrupulous opposition; and they had better ship American crews, at any rate not Liverpudlians.

The night and the next day were spent at sea in a truly delicious climate, which seemed to wax softer and serener as we advanced. Here the moon, whose hue is golden, not silvern, has a regular dawn before rising, and an afterglow to her setting; and Venus casts a broad cestus of glimmering light upon the purple sea. Mount Atlas, alias the Pike of Teyde, gradually upreared his giant statue, two and a half miles high: travellers speak of seeing him from Madeira, a distance of some 260 (dir. geog.) miles; but this would be possible only were both termini 15,000 feet in altitude. The limit of sight for terrestrial objects under the most favourable conditions does not exceed 210 miles. Yet here it is not difficult to explain the impossible distances, 200 miles instead of 120, at which, they say, the cone has been sighted: mirage or refraction accounts for what the earth's convexity disallows.

We first see a low and regular wall of cloud-bank whose coping bears here and there bulges of white, cottony cloud. Then a regular pyramid, at this season white as snow, shows its gnomon-like point, impaling the cumuli. Hour by hour the outlines grow clearer, till at last the terminal cone looks somewhat like a thimble upon a pillow—the cumbre, or lofty foundation of pumice-plains. But the aspect everywhere varies according as you approach the island from north, south, east, or west.

The evening of January 9 showed us right abeam a splendid display of the Zodiacal Light, whose pyramid suggested the glow of a hemisphere on fire. The triangle, slightly spherical, measured at its base 22 degrees to 24 degrees and rose to within 6" of Jupiter. The reflection in the water was perfect and lit up with startling distinctness the whole eastern horizon.

At 7 A.M. next morning, after running past the Anaga knuckle-bone—and very bony it is—of the Tenerife gigot, we cast anchor in the Bay of Santa Cruz, took boat, and hurried ashore. In the early times of the A.S.S. halts at the several stations often lasted three days. Business is now done in the same number of hours; and the captain informs you that 'up goes the anchor' the moment his last bale or bag comes on board. This trading economy of time, again, is an improvement more satisfactory to the passenger than to the traveller and sightseer who may wish to see the world.

Brusque was the contrast between the vivid verdure of Sylvania, the Isle of Wood, and the grim nudity of north-eastern Tenerife; brusquer still the stationary condition of the former compared with the signs, of progress everywhere evident in the latter. Spain, under the influence of anticlerical laws and a spell of republicanism, has awoke from her sleep of ages, and we note the effects of her revival even in these colonies. A brand-new red fort has been added to La Ciudadela at the northern suburb, whence a mole is proposed to meet the southern branch and form a basin. Then comes the triangular city whose hypothenuse, fronting east, is on the sea; its chief fault is having been laid out on too small a scale. At the still-building pier, which projects some 500 yards from the central mass of fort and cuadras (insulae or house-blocks), I noticed a considerable growth of buildings, especially the Marineria and other offices connected with the free port. The old pink 'castle' San Cristobal (Christopher), still cumbers the jetty-root; but the least sentimental can hardly expect the lieges to level so historic a building: it is the site of Alonso Fernandez de Lugo's first tower, and where his disembarkation on May 3, 1493, gave its Christian name 'Holy Cross' to the Guanche 'Añasa.' Meanwhile the Rambleta de Ravenal, dated 1861, a garden, formerly dusty, glary, and dreary as the old Florian of Malta, now bears lovers' seats, a goodly growth of planes and tamarinds, a statue, a fountain, and generally a gypsy-like family. By its side runs a tramway for transporting the huge blocks of concrete intended to prolong the pier. The inner town also shows a new palace, a new hospital, and a host of improvements.

Landing at Santa Cruz, a long dull line of glaring masonry, smokeless and shadeless, was to me intensely saddening. A score of years had carried off all my friends. Kindly Mrs. Nugent, called 'the Admiral,' and her amiable daughter are in the English burial-ground; the hospitable Mr. Consul Grattan had also faded from the land of the living. The French Consul, M. Berthelot, who published [Footnote: Histoire naturelle des Iles Canaries, par MM. P. Barker Webb et Sabin Berthelot, ouvrage publié sous les auspices de M. Guizot, Ministre de l'Instruction Publique, Paris, 1839. Seven folio vols., with maps, plans, and sketches, all regardless of expense.] by favour of the late Mr. Webb, went to the many in 1880. One of the brothers Richardson had died; the other had subsided into a clerk, and the Fonda Ingleza had become the British Consulate. The new hotel kept by Señor Camacho and his English wife appeared comfortable enough, but it had none of those associations which make the old familiar inn a kind of home. En revanche, however, I met Mr. Consul Dundas, my successor at the port of Santos, whence so few have escaped with life; and his wife, the daughter of an Anglo-Brazilian friend.

Between 1860 and 1865 I spent many a week in Tenerife, and here I am tempted to transcribe a few extracts from my voluminous notes upon various subjects, especially the Guanche population and the ascent of the Pike. A brief history of the unhappy Berber-speaking goatherds who, after being butchered to make sport for certain unoccupied gentlemen, have been raised by their assailants to kings and heroes rivalling the demi-gods of Greece and Rome, and the melancholy destruction of the race, have been noticed in a previous volume. [Footnote: Yol. i. chap, ii., Wanderings in West Africa. The modorra, lethargy or melancholia, which killed so many of those Numidian islanders suggests the pining of a wild bird prisoned in a cage.] I here confine myself to the contents of my note-book upon the Guanche collections in the island.

One fine morning my wife and I set out in a venerable carriage for San Cristobal de la Laguna. The Camiño de los Coches, a fine modern highway in corkscrew fashion from Santa Cruz to Orotava, was begun, by the grace of General Ortega, who died smoking in the face of the firing party, and ended between 1862 and 1868. This section, eight kilomètres long, occupies at least one hour and a half, zigzagging some 2,000 feet up a steep slope which its predecessor uncompromisingly breasted. Here stood the villa of Peter Pindar (Dr. Walcott), who hymned the fleas of Tenerife: I would back those of Tiberias. The land is arid, being exposed to the full force of the torrid northeast trade. Its principal produce is the cactus (coccinellifera), a fantastic monster with fat oval leaves and apparently destitute of aught beyond thorns and prickles. Here and there a string of small and rather mangy camels, each carrying some 500 lbs., paced par monts et par vaux, and gave a Bedawi touch to the scene: they were introduced from Africa by De Béthencourt, surnamed the Great. We remarked the barrenness of the bronze-coloured Banda del Sur, whose wealth is in cochineal and 'dripstones,' or filters of porous lava. Here few save the hardiest plants can live, the spiny, gummy, and succulent cactus and thistles, aloes and figs. The arborescent tabayba (Euphorbia canariensis), locally called 'cardon,' is compared by some with the 'chandelier' of the Cape, bristling with wax tapers: the Guanches used it extensively for narcotising fish. This 'milk plant,' with its acrid, viscid, and virulent juice, and a small remedial shrub growing by its side, probably gave rise to the island fable of the twin fountains; one killed the traveller by a kind of risus Sardonicus, unless he used the other by way of cure. A scatter of crosses, which are impaled against every wall and which rise from every eminence; a ruined fort here and there; a long zigzag for wheels, not over-macadamised, with an older short cut for hoofs, and the Puente de Zurita over the Barranco Santo, an old bridge made new, led to the cuesta, or crest, which looks down upon the Vega de la Laguna, the native Aguere.

The 'noble and ancient city' San Cristobal de la Laguna was founded on June 26, 1495, St. Christopher's Day, by De Lugo, who lies buried in the San Miguel side-chapel of La Concepcion de la Victorias. The site is an ancient lava-current, the successor of a far older crater, originally submarine. The latest sub-aerial fire-stream, a broad band flowing from north to south—we have ascended it by the coach-road—and garnished with small parasitic craters, affords a bed and basis to the capital-port, Santa Cruz. After rains the lake reappears in mud and mire; and upon the lip where the town is built the north-east and the south-west winds contend for mastery, shedding abundant tears. Yet the old French chronicler says of the site, 'Je ne croy pas qu'il y eu ait en tout le monde aucune autre de plus plaisante.' The mean annual temperature is 62° 51' (F.), and the sensation is of cold: the altitude being 1,740 feet. Hence, like Orotava, it escaped the yellow fever which in October 1862 had slain its 616 victims.

[Footnote: The list of epidemics at Santa Cruz is rather formidable, e.g. 1621 and 1628, peste (plague); 1810 and 1862, yellow Jack; 1814, whooping cough, scarlatina, and measles; 1816-16, small-pox (2,000 victims); 1826, cough and scarlet ferer; 1847, fatal dysentery; and 1861-62, cholera (7,000 to 12,000 deaths).]

La Laguna offers an extensive study of medieval baronial houses, of colonial churches, of ermitas, or chapels, of altars, and of convents now deserted, but once swarming with Franciscans and Augustines and Dominicans and Jesuits. These establishments must have been very rich, for, here as elsewhere,

Dieu prodigue ses biens
À ceux qui font voeu d'être siens.

St. Augustine, with its short black belfry, shows a Christus Vinctus of the Seville school, and the institute or college in the ex-monastery contains a library of valuable old books. The Concepcion boasts a picture of St. John which in 1648 sweated for forty days. [Footnote: Evidently a survival of the classic aera sudantia. Mrs. Murray notices the 'miracle' at full length (ii. 76).] The black and white cathedral, bristling with cannon-like gargoyles, a common architectural feature in these regions, still owns the fine pulpit of Carrara marble sent from Genoa in 1767. The chef d'oeuvre then cost 200l.; now it would be cheap at five times that price. In the sacristy are the usual rich vestments and other clerical curios. The Ermita de San Cristobal, built upon an historic site, is denoted as usual by a giant Charon bearing a small infant. There is a Carriera or Corso (High Street) mostly empty, also the great deserted Plaza del Adelantado, of the conqueror Lugo. The arms of the latter, with his lance and banner, are shown at the Ayuntamiento, or town-house; I do not admire his commercial motto—

Quien lanza sabe tener,
Ella le da de comer.

[Footnote:
Whose lance can wield
Daily bread 'twill yield.]

Conquering must not be named in the same breath as 'bread-winning.' There, too, is the scutheon of Tenerife, given to it in 1510; Michael the Archangel, a favourite with the invader, stands unroasted upon the fire-vomiting Nivarian peak, and this grand vision of the guarded mount gave rise to satiric lines by Vieira:—

Miguel, Angel Miguel, sobre esta altura
Te puso el Rey Fernando y Tenerife;
Para ser del asufre y nieve fria
Guardia, administrador y almoxarife.

[Footnote:
Michael, archangel Michael, on this brow
Throned thee King Ferdinand and Tenerife;
To be of sulphur grough and frigid snow
Administrator, guard, and reeve-in-chief.]

The deserted streets were long lines with an unclean central gutter. Some of the stone houses were tall, grand, solid, and stately; such are the pavilion of the Counts of Salazar, the huge, heavy abode of the Marquesses de Nava, and the mansions of the Villanuevas del Pardo. But yellow fever had driven away half of the population—10,000 souls, who could easily be 20,000—and had barricaded the houses to the curious stranger. Most of them, faced and porticoed with florid pillars, were mere dickies opening upon nothing, and only the huge armorial bearings showed that they had ever been owned. Mixed with these 'palaces.' were 'cat-faced cottages' and pauper, mildewed tenements, whose rusty iron-work, tattered planks, and broken windows gave them a truly dreary and dismal appearance. The sole noticeable movement was a tendency to gravitate in the roofs. The principal growth, favoured by the vapour-laden air, was of grass in the thoroughfares, of moss on the walls, and of the 'fat weed' upon the tiles. The horse-leek (sempervivum urbium), brought from Madeira, was first described by the 'gifted Swede' Professor Smith, who died on the Congo River. Finally, though the streets are wide and regular, and the large town is well aired by four squares, the whole aspect was strongly suggestive of the cocineros (cooks), as the citizens of the capital are called by the sons of the capital-port. They retort by terming their rival brethren chicharreros, or fishers of the chicharro (horse-mackerel, Caranx Cuvieri.)

From La Laguna we passed forward to Tacoronte, the 'Garden of the Guanches,' and inspected the little museum of the late D. Sebastian Casilda, collected by his father, a merchant-captain de long cours. It was a chaos of curiosities ranging from China to Peru. Amongst them, however, were four entire mummies, including one from Grand Canary. Thus we can correct M. Berthelot, who follows others in asserting that only the Guanches of Tenerife mummified their dead. The oldest description of this embalming is by a 'judicious and ingenious man who had lived twenty years in the island as a physitian and merchant.' It was inserted by Dr. Thomas Sprat in the 'Transactions of the Royal Society,' London, and was republished in John Ogilby's enormous folio [Footnote: The 'physitian' was Dr. Eden, an Englishman who visited Tenerife in 1662.—Bohn's Humboldtr, i. 66] yclept 'Africa.' The merchant 'set out from Guimar, a Town for the most part inhabited by such as derive themselves from the Antient Guanchios, in the company of some of them, to view their Caves and the corps buried in them (a favour they seldom or never permit to any, having the Corps of their Ancestors in great veneration, and likewise being extremely against any molestation of the Dead); but he had done many Eleemosynary Cures amongst them, for they are very poor (yet the poorest think themselves too good to Marry with the best Spaniard), which endeared him to them exceedingly. Otherwise it is death for any Stranger to visit these Caves and Bodies. The Corps are sew'd up in Goatskins with Thongs of the same, with very great curiosity, particularly in the incomparable exactness and evenness of the Seams; and the skins are made close and fit to the Corps, which for the most part are entire, the Eyes clos'd, Hair on their heads, Ears, Nose, Teeth, Lips, and Beards, all perfect, onely discolour'd and a little shrivell'd. He saw about three or four hundred in several Caves, some of them standing, others lying upon Beds of Wood, so hardened by an art they had (which the Spaniards call curay, to cure a piece of Wood) that no iron can pierce or hurt it.[Footnote: The same writer tells that they had earthen pots so hard that they could not be broken. I have heard of similar articles amongst the barbarous races east of Dalmatia.] These Bodies are very light, as if made of straw; and in some broken Bodies he observ'd the Nerves and Tendons, and also the String of the Veins and Arteries very distinctly. By the relation of one of the most antient of this island, they had a particular Tribe that had this art onely among themselves, and kept it as a thing sacred and not to be communicated to the Vulgar. These mixt not themselves with the rest of the Inhabitants, nor marry'd out of their own Tribe, and were also their Priests and Ministers of Religion. But when the Spaniards conquer'd the place, most of them were destroy'd and the art perisht with them, onely they held some Traditions yet of a few Ingredients that were us'd in this business; they took Butter (some say they mixed Bear's-grease with it) which they kept for that purpose in the Skins; wherein they boyl'd certain Herbs, first a kind of wild Lavender, which grows there in great quantities upon the Rocks; secondly, an Herb call'd Lara, of a very gummy and glutinous consistence, which now grows there under the tops of the Mountains; thirdly, a kind of cyclamen, or sow-bread; fourthly, wild Sage, which grows plentifully upon this island. These with others, bruised and boyl'd up into Butter, rendered it a perfect Balsom. This prepar'd, they first unbowel the Corps (and in the poorer sort, to save Charges, took out the Brain behind): after the Body was thus order'd, they had in readiness a lixivium made of the Bark of Pine-Trees, wherewith they washt the Body, drying it in the Sun in Summer and in the Winter in a Stove, repeating this very often: Afterward they began their unction both without and within, drying it as before; this they continu'd till the Balsom had penetrated into the whole Habit, and the Muscle in all parts appear'd through the contracted Skin, and the Body became exceeding light: then they sew'd them up in Goat-skins. The Antients say, that they have above twenty Caves of their Kings and great Personages with their whole Families, yet unknown to any but themselves, and which they will never discover.' Lastly, the 'physitian' declares that 'bodies are found in the caves of the Grand Canaries, in Sacks, quite consumed, and not as these in Teneriff.'

This assertion is somewhat doubtful; apparently the practice was common to the archipelago. It at once suggests Egypt; and, possibly, at one time, extended clean across the Dark Continent. So Dr. Barth [Footnote: Travels, &c., vol. iv. pp. 426-7.] tells us that when the chief Sonni Ali died in Grurma, 'his sons, who accompanied him on the expedition, took out his entrails and filled his inside with honey, in order that it might be preserved from putrefaction.' Many tribes in South America and New Zealand, as well as in Africa, preserved the corpse or portions of it by baking, and similar rude devices. According to some authorities, the Gruanche menceys (kinglets or chiefs) were boxed, Egyptian fashion, in coffins; but few are found, because the superstitious Christian islanders destroy the contents of every catacomb.

In the Casilda collection I observed the hard features, broad brows, square faces, and flavos crines described by old writers. Two showed traces of tongue and eyes (which often were blue), proving that the softer and more perishable parts were not removed. There were specimens of the dry and liquid balsam. Of the twenty-six skulls six were from Grand Canary. All were markedly of the type called Caucasian, and some belonged to exceptionally tall men. The shape was dolichocephalic, with sides rather flat than rounded; the perceptive region was well developed, and the reflective, as usual amongst savages and barbarians, was comparatively poor. The facial region appeared unusually large.

The industrial implements were coarse needles and fish-hooks of sheep-bone. The domestic supellex consisted of wooden ladles coarsely cut, and of rude pottery, red and yellow, generally without handles, round-shaped and adorned with scratches. None of these ganigos, or crocks, were painted like those of Grand Canary. They used also small basaltic querns of two pieces to grind the gofio, [Footnote: The gofio was composed of ripe barley, toasted, pounded, and kneaded to a kind of porridge in leathern bags like Turkish tobacco-pouches. The object was to save the teeth, of which the Guanches were particularly careful.] or parched grain. The articles of dress were grass-cloth, thick as matting, and tamarcos, or smock-frocks, of poorly tanned goatskins. They had also rough cords of palm-fibre, and they seem to have preferred plaiting to weaving; yet New Zealand flax and aloes grow abundantly. Their mahones correspond with Indian moccasins, and they made sugar-loaf caps of skins. The bases of shells, ground down to the thickness of a crown-piece, and showing spiral depressions, were probably the viongwa, necklaces still worn in the Lake Regions of Central Africa. The beads were of many kinds; some horn cylinders bulging in the centre, and measuring 1.25 inch long; others of flattened clay like the American wampum or the ornaments of the Fernando Po tribes; and others flattened discs, also baked, almost identical with those found upon African mummies—in Peru they were used to record dates and events. A few were of reddish agate, a material not found in the island; these resembled bits of thick pipe-stem, varying from half an inch to an inch in length. Perhaps they were copies of the mysterious Popo-bead found upon the Slave Coast and in inner Africa.

The Gruanches were doomed never to reach the age of metal. Their civilisation corresponded with that of the Chinese in the days of Fo-hi. [Footnote: Abel Rémusat tells us that of the two hundred primitive Chinese 'hieroglyphs' none showed a knowledge of metal.] The chief weapons were small triangles of close-grained basalt and iztli (obsidian flakes) for tabonas, or knives, both being without handles. They carried rude clubs and banot, or barbed spears of pine-wood with fire-charred points. The garrotes (pikes) had heads like two flattened semicircles, a shape preserved amongst negroes to the present day. Our old author tells us that the people would 'leap from rock to rock, sometimes making ten Fathoms deep at one Leap, in this manner: First they tertiate their Lances, which are about the bigness of a Half-Pike, and aim with the Point at any piece of a Rock upon which they intend to light, sometimes not half a Foot broad; in leaping off they clap their Feet close to the Lance, and so carry their bodies in the Air: the Point of the Lance comes first to the place, which breaks the force of their fall; then they slide gently down by the Staff and pitch with their Feet on the very place they first design'd; and so from Rock to Rock till they come to the bottom: but their Novices sometimes break their necks in the learning.'

I observed more civilisation in articles from the other islands, especially from the eastern, nearer the African continent. In 1834 Fuerteventura yielded, from a depth of six feet, a dwarfish image of a woman with prominent bosom and dressed in the native way: it appeared almost Chinese. A pot of black clay from Palmas showed superior construction. Here, too, in 1762 a cavern produced a basalt plate, upon which are circular scrawls, which support the assertions of old writers as regards the islanders not being wholly ignorant of letters. I could trace no similarity to the peculiar Berber characters, and held them to be mere ornamentation. The so-called 'Seals of the Kings' were dark stones, probably used for painting the skin; they bore parallelograms enclosed within one another, diaper-work and gridirons of raised lines. In fact, the Guanches of Tenerife were unalphabetic.

Hierro (Ferro), the Barranco de los Balos (Grand Canary), Fuerteventura, and other items of the Fortunates have produced some undoubted inscriptions. They are compared by M. Berthelot with the signs engraved upon the cave-entrance of La Piedra Escrita in the Sierra Morena of Andalusia; with those printed by General Faidherbe in his work on the Numidic or Lybian epigraphs; with the 'Thugga inscription,' Tunis; and with the rock-gravings of the Sahará, attributed to the ancient Tawárik or Tifinegs. Dr. Gran-Bassas (El Museo Canario), who finds a notable likeness between them and the 'Egyptian characters (cursive or demotic), Phenician and Hebrew,' notes that they are engraved in vertical series. Dr. Verneau, of the Academy, Paris, suggests that some of these epigraphs are alphabetic, while others are hieroglyphic. [Footnote: El Museo Canario, No. 40, Oct. 22, 1881.] Colonel H. W. Keays-Young kindly copied for me, with great care, a painting in the Tacoronte museum. It represents a couple of Guanche inscriptions, apparently hieroglyphic, found (1762) in the cave of Belmaco, Isle of Palma, by the ancients called Benahoave. They are inscribed upon two basaltic stones.

I also inspected the collection of a well-known lawyer, Dr. Francisco Maria de Leon. Of the three Guanche skulls one was of African solidity, with the sutures almost obliterated: it was the model of a soldier's head, thick and heavy. The mass of mummy-balsam had been tested, without other result than finding a large proportion of dragon's blood. In the fourteenth century Grand Canary sent to Europe at one venture two hundred doubloons' worth of this drug.

By the kindness of the Governor I was permitted to inspect four Guanche mummies, discovered (June 1862) in the jurisdiction of Candelaria. Awaiting exportation to Spain, they had been temporarily coffined upon a damp ground-floor, where the cockroaches respected nothing, not even a Guanehe. I was accompanied by Dr. Angel M. Yzquierdo, of Cadiz, physician to the hospital, and we jotted down as follows:—

No. 1, a male of moderate size, wanted the head and upper limbs, while the trunk was reduced to a skeleton. The characteristic signs were Caucasian and not negro; nor was there any appearance of the Jewish rite. The lower right leg, foot, and toe-nails were well preserved; the left was a mere bone, wanting tarsus and metatarsus. The stomach was full of dried fragments of herbs (Ohenopodium, &c.), and the epidermis was easily reduced to powder. In this case, as in the other three, the mortuary skins were coarsely sewn with the hair inside: it is a mistake to say that the work was 'like that of a glove.'

No. 2 was large-statured and complete; the framework and the form of the pelvis were masculine. The skin adhered to the cranium except behind, where the bone protruded, probably the effect of long resting upon the ground. Near the right temporal was another break in the skin, which here appeared much decayed. All the teeth were present, but they were not particularly white nor good. The left forearm and hand were wanting, and the right was imperfect; the lower limbs were well preserved even to the toe-nails.

No. 3, also of large size, resembled No. 2; the upper limbs were complete, and the lower wanted only the toes of the left foot. The lower jaw was absent, and the upper had no teeth. An oval depression, about an inch in its greater diameter, lay above the right orbit. If this be a bullet-mark, the mummy may date from before the final conquest and submission in A.D. 1496. But it may also have resulted from some accident, like a fall, or from the blow of a stone, a weapon which the Guanches used most skilfully. Mr. Sprat, confirmed by Glas, affirms that they 'throw Stones with a force almost as great as that of a Bullet, and now use Stones in all their fights as they did antiently.'

No. 4, much smaller than the two former, was the best preserved. The shape of the skull and pelvis suggested a female; the arms also were crossed in front over the body, whereas in the male mummy they were laid straight. The legs were covered with skin; the hands were remarkably well preserved, and the nails were darker than other parts. The tongue, in all four, was absent, having probably decayed.

These crania were distinctly oval. The facial angle, well opened, and ranging from 80° to 85°, counterbalanced the great development of the face, which showed an animal type. A little hair remained, coloured ruddy-chestnut and straight, not woolly. The entrails had disappeared, and the abdominal walls not existing, it was impossible to detect the incisions by which the tanno-balsamic substances, noted by Bory de Saint-Vincent and many others, were introduced. The method appears uncertain. It is generally believed that after removing the entrails through an irregular cut made with the tabona, or obsidian (knife), the operators, who, as in Egypt, were of the lowest caste, injected a corrosive fluid. They then filled the cavities with the balsam described above; dried the corpse; and, after, fifteen to twenty days, sewed it up in tanned goatskins. Such appears to have been the case with the mummies under consideration.

The catacombs, inviolable except to the sacrilegious, were numerous in the rockiest and least accessible parts of the island. Mr. Addison found them in the Cañádas del Pico, 7,700 feet above sea-level. [Footnote: Tenerife: 'An Ascent of the Peak and Sketch of the Island,' by Robert Edward Alison. Quarterly Journal of Science, Jan. 1806.] Hence it has been remarked of the Guanches that, after a century of fighting, nothing remained of them but their mummies. The sharp saying is rather terse than true.

The Guanches were barbarians, not savages. De Béthencourt's two chaplains, speaking in their chronicle of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, tell us 'there are many villages and houses, with numerous inhabitants.' The ruins still found in the Isles are called 'casas hondas' ("deep houses"); because a central excavation was surrounded by a low wall. The castle of Zonzamas was built of large stones without lime. In Port Arguineguin (Grand Canary) the explorers sent by Alfonso IV. (1341) came upon 300 to 400 tenements roofed with valuable wood, and so clean inside that they seemed stuccoed. They encircled a larger building, probably the residence of the chief. But the Tenerifans used only caves.

The want of canoes and other navigating appliances in Guanche-land by no means proves that the emigration took place when the Canaries formed part of the Continent. The same was the case with the Australians, the Tasmanians, and the New Zealanders. The Guanches, at the same time, were admirable swimmers, easily able to cross the strait, nine miles wide, separating Lanzarote from La Graciosa. They could even kill fish with sticks when in the water. The fattening of girls before marriage was, and is still, a Moroccan, not an Arab custom. The rude feudalism much resembled that of the Bedawi chiefs. George Glas, [Footnote: The History of the Discovery and Conquest of the Canary Islands, &c. 4to. London, 1764. I have given some notices of the unfortunate 'master mariner' in Wanderings in West Africa, vol. i. p. 79] or rather Abreu Galindo, his author, says of their marriages, 'None of the Canarians had more than one wife, and the wife one husband, contrary to what misinformed authors affirm.' The general belief is that at the time of the conquest polyandry prevailed amongst the tribes. It may have originated from their rude community of goods, and probably it became a local practice in order to limit population. Possibly, too, it was confined to the noble and the priestly orders.

Humboldt remarks, [Footnote: Personal Narrative, chap, i. p. 32, Bohn's ed. London, 1852.] 'We find no example of this polyandry except amongst the people of Thibet.' Yet he must have heard of the Nayr of Malabar, if not of the Todas on the Nilagiri Hills. D. Agustin Millares [Footnote: Historia de la Gran Canaria. Published at Las Palmas.] explains the custom by 'men and women being born in almost equal proportions,' the reverse being the fact. Equal proportions induce the monogamic relation.

Learned M. d'Avezac derives 'Guanche' from Guansheri or Guanseri, a Berber tribe described by El-Idrisi and Leo Africanus. This is better than finding it in the Keltic gwuwrn, gwen, white. Older authorities hold it a corruption of 'Vinchune,' the indigenous name of the Nivarian race. Again, 'the inhabitants of Tenerife called themselves Guan (the Berber Wan), one person, Chinet or Chinerf, Tenerife; so that Guanchinet meant a man of Tenerife, and was easily corrupted to Guanche. Thus, too, Glas's 'Captain Artemis' was Guan-arteme, the one or chief ruler. Vieira derives 'Tenerf' or'Chenerf' from the last king; and old MSS. have 'Chenerife.' The popular voice says it is composed of 'Tener,' mountain or snow, and of 'ryfe,' snow or mountain. Pritchard [Footnote: Researches into the Physical History of Mankind, book iii. chap. ii.] applied the term Guanche to all the Canarian races, and he is reproached for error by M. de Macedo, [Footnote: 'Ethnological Remarks,' &c., by J. J. de Costa de Macedo, of Lisbon, Royal Geographical Society's Journal, vol. ii. p. 172. Wanderings in West Africa, i. 116, contains my objections to his theory.] who would limit it to the Tenerifans. The same occurs in the Rev. Mr. Delany [Footnote: Notes of a Residence in the Canary Islands, &c. London, 1861.] and in Professor Piazzi Smyth, [Footnote: An Astronomer's Experiment, p. 190. L. Reeve, London, 1868.] who speaks of the 'Guanches of Grand Canary and Teneriffe.' According to popular usage all were right, 'Guanche' being the local and general term for the aborigines of the whole archipelago. But the scientific object that it includes under the same name several different races.

The language is also a point of dispute: some opine that all the islanders had one tongue, others that they were mutually unintelligible; many that it was Berber (Numidian, Getulian, and Garamantan), a few that it was less distinctly Semitic. The two chaplains of De Béthencourt [Footnote: Bontier and Le Verrier, Histoire de la première Découverte e Conquête des Canaries. Bergeron, Paris, 1630.] noted its resemblance with that of the 'Moors' of Barbary. Glas, who knew something of Shilha, or Western Berber, made the same observation. But the Genoese pilot Niccoloso di Recco during the expedition of A.D. 1344 collected the numerals, and two of these, satti (7) and tamatti (8), are less near the original than the Berberan set and tem.

The catalogue of Abreu Galindo, who lived here in 1591 and printed his history in 1632, preserves 122 words; Vieira only 107, and Bory de Saint-Vincent [Footnote: Essai sur les Iles fortunées. Humboldt has only five.] 148. Webb and Berthelot give 909. Of these 200 are nouns, including 22 names of plants; 467 are placenames, and 242 are proper names. Many are questionable. For instance, sabor (council-place) is derived from cabocer, 'expression par laquelle les nègres de la Sénégambie dénotent la réunion de leurs chefs.' [Footnote: Vol. i. part i. p. 223.] As all know, it is the corrupted Portuguese caboceiro, a headman.

Continuing our way from Tacoronte we reached Sauzal, beyond which the coach did not then run; the old road was out of condition, and the new not in working order. We offered a dollar each for carrying our light gear to sturdy men who were loitering and lying about the premises. They shook their heads, wrapped their old blanket-cloaks around them, and stretched themselves in the sun like dogs after a cold walk. I could hardly wonder. What wants have they? A covering for warmth, porridge for food, and, above all, the bright sun and pure air, higher luxuries and better eudaemonics than purple and fine linen. At last some passing muleteers relieved us of the difficulty.

The way was crowded with Laguneros, conspicuous in straw-hats; cloth jackets, red waistcoats embroidered at the back; bright crimson sashes; white knickerbockers, with black velveteen overalls, looking as if 'pointed' before and behind; brown hose or long leather gaiters ornamented with colours, and untanned shoes. Despite the heat many wore the Guanche cloak, a blanket (English) with a running string round the neck. The women covered their graceful heads with a half-square of white stuff, and deformed the coiffure by a hideous black billycock, an unpleasant memory of Wales. Some hundreds of men, women, and children were working on the road, and we were surprised by the beauty of the race, its classical outlines, oval contours, straight profiles, magnificent hair, and blue-grey eyes with black lashes. This is not the result of Guanche blood, as a town on the south-western part of the island presently showed me. Also an orderly of Guanche breed from the parts about Arico, who had served for years at the palace, was pointed out as a type. He stood six feet four, with proportional breadth; his face was somewhat lozenge-shaped, his hair straight, black like a Hindu's, and his tawny skin looked only a little darker than that of Portuguese Algarves. The beauty of the islanders results from a mixture of Irish blood. During the Catholic persecution before 1823 many fled the Emerald Isle to Tenerife, and especially to Orotava. The women's figures in youth are charming, tall, straight, and pliant as their own pine-trees. All remark their graceful gait.

We passed through places famed in the days of the conquest—La Matanza, the native Orantapata, where De Lugo's force was nearly annihilated. Now it is the half-way station to Orotava; and here the coche stops for dinner, prices being regulated by Government. The single inn shows the Pike, but not the subjacent valley. Then to Acentejo, the local Roncesvalles, where the invaders were saved only by St. Michael; and next to La Vitoria, where they avenged themselves. At Santa Ursula we first saw the slopes of Orotava, the Guanche Tavro or Atanpalata; and on the Cuesta de la Villa we were shown near its mark, a date-palm, the cave that sheltered the patriot chief, unfortunate Bencomo. As the fashionables came forth to walk and drive we passed the calvario and the place leading to the Villa Orotava, and found quarters in the fonda of D. José Gobea. The sala, or chief room, some 30 feet long, wanted only an Eastern divan round the walls; it was easily converted into a tolerable place of bivouac, and here we resolved to try country life for a while.

The first aspect of the Orotava Tempe was disappointing after Humboldt's dictum, 'Voici ce qu'il y a de plus délicieux au monde.' But our disappointment was the natural reaction of judgment from fancy to reality, which often leads to a higher appreciation. At last we learned why the Elysian [Footnote: In Arabic El-Lizzat, the Delight, or from the old Egyptian Aahlu,] Fields, the Fortunate Islands, the Garden of the Hesperides—where the sea is no longer navigable, and where Atlas supports the firmament on a mountain conical as a cylinder; the land of evening, of sunset, where Helios sinks into the sea, and where Night bore the guardians of the golden apples—were such favourites with the poets. And we came to love every feature of the place, from the snowy Pike of Teyde flushing pink in the morning sun behind his lofty rampart, to the Puerto, or lower town, whose three several reef-gates are outlaid by creamy surf, and whose every shift of form and hue stands distinct in the transparent and perfumed air. The intermediate slopes are clothed with a vegetation partly African, partly European; and here Humboldt, at the end of the last century, proposed to naturalise the chinchona.

La Villa lies some two miles and a half from and about 1,140 feet above the Puerto; and the streets are paved and precipitous as any part of Funchal. The population varied from 7,000 to 8,000 souls, whereas the lower town had only 3,500. It contains a few fine houses with huge hanging balconies and interior patios (courts) which would accommodate a regiment. They date from the 'gente muy caballerosa' (knightly folk) of three centuries ago. The feminine population appeared excessive, the reason being that some five per cent. of the youths go to Havannah and after a few years return 'Indianos,' or 'Indios,' our old 'nabobs.'

At the Puerto we were most kindly received by the late British Vice-Consul, Mr. Goodall, who died about the normal age, seventy-seven: if this be safely passed man in Tenerife becomes a macrobian. All was done for our comfort by the late Mr. Carpenter, who figures in the 'Astronomer's Experiment' as 'the interpreter.' Amongst the scanty public diversions was the Opera. The Villa theatre occupied an ancient church: the length of the building formed pit, boxes, and gallery; and 'La Sonnambula' descended exactly where the high altar had been. At the Puerto an old monastery was chosen for 'La Traviata:' the latter was realistic as Crabbe's poetry; even in bed the unfortunate 'Misled' one could not do without a certain truncated cylinder of acajou. I sighed for the Iberian 'Zarzuela,' that most charming opera buffa which takes its name from a 'pleasaunce' in the Pardo Palace near Madrid.

The hotel diet was peculiarly Spanish; already the stews and 'pilaffs' (puláos) of the East begin in embryo. The staple dish was the puchero, or cocido, which antiquated travellers still call 'olla podrida' (pot-pourri). This lesso or bouilli consists of soup, beef, bacon, and garbanzos (chick-peas, or Cicer arietinium) in one plate, and boiled potatoes and small gourds (bubangos) in another. The condiments are mostly garlic and saffron, preferred to mustard and chillies. The pastry, they tell me, is excellent.

In those days the Great Dragon Tree had not yet lost its upper cone by the dreadful storm of January 3, 1868; thus it had survived by two centuries and a half the Garoe Laurel, or Arbol Santo, the miraculous tree of Hierro (Ferro). It stood in the garden of the Marquez de Sauzal, who would willingly have preserved it. But every traveller had his own infallible recipe, and the proprietor contented himself with propping up the lower limbs by poles. It stood upon a raised bank of masonry-work, and the north-east side showed a huge cavity which had been stopped with stone and lime. About half a century ago one-third came down, and in 1819 an arm was torn off and sent, I believe, to Kew. When we saw the fragment it looked mostly like tinder, or touchwood, 'eld-gamall,' stone-old, as the Icelanders say. Near it stood a pair of tall cypresses, and at some distance a venerable palm-tree, which 'relates to it,' according to Count Gabriel de Belcastel,