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 50_l_. 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 (11_d_.), 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.)