The view in front was obstructed by a high ridge, of which we had nearly
gained the highest point, when we left our horses, and running up a few
yards of steep turf found ourselves all at once on the brink of the
Curral. It is a huge valley, or rather crater, of immense depth,
enclosed on all sides by a range of magnificent mountain precipices, the
sides and summit of which are broken in every variety of buttress or
pinnacle--now black and craggy and beetling--at other times spread with
the richest green turf, and scattered with a profusion of the evergreen
forest-trees, indigenous to the island; while far below, in the midst of
all these horrors, smiles a fairy region of cultivation and
fruitfulness, with a church and village, the white cabins of which seem
half smothered in the luxuriance of their own vines and orchards.
We gazed long and eagerly at the prospect. It is not easy to give an
accurate notion of its peculiar character; and even painting would but
ill assist, for one of the most striking features is the great and
sudden _depth_ which you look down, the effect of which we know the
pencil cannot at all convey. The side on which we stand, however, though
steep, is not absolutely precipitous; on the contrary, the gradation of
crag and projection, by which it descends to the bottom, is one of the
finest things in the view. Close on our right a lofty peak presents its
rocky face to the valley, to which it bears down in a magnificent mass,
shouldering its way, as it seemed, half across it. The opposite sides
appear more bare, precipitous, and lofty; and this last character is
heightened by some white clouds that rest upon and conceal
their summits.
Rejoining the road, we for awhile lost sight of the valley. When we
again came in view of it, it was rapidly filling with clouds, but at
first their interposition was hardly a disadvantage; they gave a vague
indefinite grandeur to the cliffs and mountains, which seemed to rise
one knew not from what depth, and lose their summits in regions beyond
our ken. The breaks, too, that occurred in this shrouding of the scene,
showed fragments of it with strange effect--till at length the whole
hollow filled, and presented a uniform sea of vapour.
_Rambles in Madeira_.
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