THE PALHEIRO
About an hour’s ride from the town, at a height of some 1,800 or
2,000 feet, is the Palheiro, formerly known as Palheiro de Ferreiro
(Blacksmith’s Hut), the principal country place in the neighbourhood
of Funchal, belonging to the same owner as the Quinta Santa Luzia. The
road leads past many smaller villas, whose gardens have most of them
fallen into decay, and only undergo a hurried process of tidying when
their Portuguese owner comes to spend a few weeks away from the summer
heat of Funchal.
Palheiro was not entirely laid out by its present owner, though the
grounds have been very much enlarged and improved, and the house
itself, having been destroyed by fire a few years ago, has been lately
rebuilt. Some letters from Madeira, written by J. Driver and published
in 1834, give the following interesting account of Palheiro, which in
those days belonged to the family of Carvalhal.
“The grounds of Senhor Jose de Carvalhal are the finest in the island,
possessing a level surface, which is very difficult to be met with
here to any extent. This place was recommended to us for our first
ride into the country, and after some delay in making choice of the
ponies and _burroquieros_ that we intended afterwards to patronize,
we made our way eastward out of the city. Crossing a bridge over the
deep bed of a river, we saw the ruins created by the great flood in
1803, when several hundred inhabitants were swept into the sea. We now
ascended a steep and narrow road for a distance of two or three miles,
passing several of the merchants’ houses, from all of which there is a
commanding and beautiful view of the city and the bay. The Palheiro,
lately the residence of Senhor Carvalhal, by far the richest _hidalgo_
of the island, has been confiscated by the Miguelite Government.
Senhor Carvalhal himself had some difficulty in effecting his escape;
however, he got on board an English vessel in the bay, and is now
residing in London. Upwards of 700 pipes of very choice and old wine
were at once taken from his cellars, and sent to Lisbon to be sold on
Government account. The house was ransacked, and his grounds are now
(though this is of recent occurrence) fast going to ruin. There are a
few soldiers stationed near the house to prevent any material damage,
and these are now the only persons to be seen on this once splendid
estate. The park, if we may so term it, is more in the English style
than we expected to find it; but when we came to the orange, lemon,
pomegranate and shaddock groves, which are in fine foliage and planted
in the best order, we at once saw the effect of these Southern climes.
The flower-gardens, though not abounding in that variety we might
expect, are well arranged, but begin to show more of the ‘fallen state’
of things than the other parts of the grounds. The house itself is
not on a large scale, yet it is built in good style and keeping with
the place, as well as the chapel, which is a neat edifice at a short
distance from the house. Senhor Carvalhal used to employ more than two
hundred men on the estate, for the purpose of keeping it in order.
He was a kind landlord, and much respected throughout the whole of
the island. Let us, then, hope that Portugal will soon have a fixed
Government, and that Senhor Carvalhal will return to his country, and
again have the pleasure of enjoying his estates.”
The hope here expressed was fulfilled, and the family continued to
live there until the estate changed hands and became the property of
the present owner, in 1884.
Although on first acquaintance it is true that the grounds suggest
those of an English park, possibly from the welcome presence of turf,
and also from the fact that at that high elevation the deciduous trees
are leafless throughout the winter, like Mr. Driver, we shall very soon
discover many trees and shrubs that could not be grown in even the
most southern parts of England, though many English shrubs and flowers
flourish in the warmer climate.
There are two roads leading from the outer gate to the house. The lower
road winds through a long avenue of camellia-trees, whose branches
in January and February are laden with their single, double and
semi-double blossoms, ranging in colour from pure white, through every
shade of pink, to deep red. Along the higher road, beneath the trees,
broad stretches of the deep green leaves of the _Amaryllis belladonna_
give promise of beauties to come. In summer all trace of their foliage
vanishes, and early in September the deep red stems and sheath of their
flowers begin to appear. By the end of September their blush-coloured
flowers will have developed; and so profusely do they flower that all
through October in these higher regions the land is transformed by
their rosy loveliness. Like the garden of Santa Luzia, Palheiro has
been made the trial-ground of many an imported treasure, and many
which did not flourish in the warmer and drier regions have succeeded
admirably in the cooler and damper air of the hills.
The flower-gardens certainly show no signs of the “fallen state of
things” under their present ownership, and a small enclosed garden
a short distance from the house is a perfect treasure-house; though
naturally at its best in spring and summer, it is never devoid of
flowers. Here English daffodils, pansies, and polyanthuses grow side
by side with many a bulb and plant which will just _not_ stand the
rigours of our English winters. The large-flowered violets, Princess of
Wales and other varieties, flower in their thousands from November till
April, with blooms so large that they suggest violas more than violets.
Freezias and ixias have seeded themselves in the grass slopes of this
little favoured garden, where the beds are enclosed by trim box hedges.
At the corners or angles of the beds the box is cut into all sorts of
fancy shapes, such as pyramids and ninepins. In the beds grow large
masses of the pale yellow sparaxis, anemones of every shade, single,
semi-double, or double, and the graceful little _Cineraria stellata_,
in an infinite range of soft colouring. Or a whole bed is devoted to
the deep purple _Statice_, the beautiful white _Alstrœmeria peregrina_,
or some other chosen flower which gives a definite note to the colour
scheme. In March two fine specimens of _Magnolia conspicua_ are covered
with their cup-like white and lilac blossoms, and stand out in sharp
contrast to the deep emerald-green of the _Araucaria braziliensis_,
which forms an admirable background to them, and is in itself one of
the most beautiful of all trees. Near the magnolias a large shrub of
_Cantua buxifolia_, with its bright red tube-like blossoms hanging
in graceful bunches, provides a brilliant patch of colour. The lilac
_Iris fimbriata_, with its branches of delicately veined flowers,
seems to flourish in the shade, and though its individual blossoms are
short-lived, they are so freely produced that for many weeks in the
late winter and early spring the plants remain in beauty. One could
linger for many a long hour in this peaceful spot, resting in an arbour
completely formed of the clinging, twining _Muhlenbeckia_, which has
grown into so dense a thicket that it provides welcome shade and
shelter, or wandering from one little terrace to another, examining the
endless treasures the beds contain; for, as the garden has a wealth of
flowers all the summer, there are many things which, from being out of
flower, might pass unnoticed.
Great beds of _Azalea indica_, and trees of different varieties of
mimosa, bending under the weight of their golden blossoms, remind one
that this is no English garden, while glades and banks show long vistas
of white arum lilies, as _Richardia_ or _Calla Æthiopia_ are commonly
called. Here these African lilies, which are also called lilies of the
Nile, are completely naturalized, and bloom continuously for at least
five or six months of the year.
A deep dell, shaded by mahogany and other trees, has provided a
home for the tree-ferns of Australia, New Zealand, and Africa, and
in some twelve or fourteen years they have made such astonishingly
rapid growth that the little ravine is suggestive of the celebrated
fern-tree gullies of Australia or Tasmania. The ivy, which hangs from
tree to tree in long ropes, replaces the lianes of a tropical forest,
and the banks are clothed with woodwardias and other ferns, while a
few of the rarer native wild-flowers, such as the monster buttercup,
_Ranunculus grandifolia_, and the giant fennel, have been introduced,
and are thoroughly in keeping with their wild and natural surroundings.
A path winds down the little valley following the bed of the stream,
and on emerging from the deep shade of the fern-trees, broad masses
of naturalized plants are revealed with every turn of the path. On a
grassy slope, over which tower two or three grand old stone-pines,
thousands upon thousands of golden lupins have sown themselves. A
single specimen of a plant may often hardly be regarded or considered
worthy of notice, but the same plant, when seen in great masses, may
call forth universal admiration because of the wealth of colour it
provides. In summer the agapanthus will send up innumerable heads
of clear blue flowers, while the little _Fuchsia coccinea_ seems to
flower bravely at all seasons of the year. In order to show that
even in this favoured land it is possible to have failures in the
gardens, and importations from other climes do not always succeed, some
rhododendrons, even the common _ponticum_, were pointed out to me as
never having made themselves at home, and in a shady corner hundreds of
our English primroses had been planted, but had pined away and died.
In another part of the garden the beautiful rhododendrons from Java
are being given a trial; but possibly, just as the climate is too
hot for the hardier varieties, it may prove too cold for those from
tropical regions. The variety known as _arboreum_, with its large heads
of deep crimson flowers, appreciates the climate, and has no spring
frost to cut its blossoms, which so often mars the beauty of this very
early-flowering rhododendron in England, where, for this reason, it
only succeeds in sheltered situations. The large white variety, which
is commonly called the Himalayan rhododendron, though, more correctly
speaking, it is known as _Edgeworthii_, flourishes here. It was
introduced from Sikkim to Europe in 1851. It is a shrub of somewhat
straggling growth, with large wide-open pure white flowers, sometimes
tinged with yellow or blush; they are produced in small clusters, not
more than three or four together, and diffuse an overpoweringly strong
scent.
Among new importations are a collection of Japanese cherry-trees,
including the beautiful and graceful weeping variety and some of the
double-flowered kinds, also the deep pink plums, which should all prove
a success, as in the little flower-garden described above a large
double-flowered pink peach-tree is the pride of the garden when in
blossom.
Besides these so-called fruit-trees, which are only cultivated for
their beautiful blossom, and bear no fruit, many fruit-bearing
cherries, plums, and peaches have been planted in the more prosaic part
of the garden; but the stone fruit, is only a partial success. The
peaches seem to deteriorate when the trees have been more than a few
years in the island. Possibly the pruning is at fault, or the fruit
forms and ripens too quickly; and when the plum-trees are laden with
fruit, a _leste_--the cruel, hot, scorching wind which the natives
dread in summer--will blow for a few days, and shrivel the fruit and
spoil the whole crop.
The orange-groves have vanished, destroyed by disease, which gradually
spread from Funchal throughout the island, up to the higher land. The
lack of enterprise common to all Southern races being a marked feature
among the Portuguese, no combined effort was ever made to check its
devastating progress.
The garden has no definite boundary, no unsightly garden fence, which
is the stumbling-block of so many gardens. One can wander down through
the pine woods, or up the hill, where, looking west, the whole bay and
town of Funchal lies spread out like a map before you, or, looking
east, the distant islands seem to provide a never-ending variety to
the view. Sometimes the islands look dark against the sky, which means
storms ahead; or sometimes they are wrapt in a soft haze, which means a
promise of fine weather; or the setting sun may have caught and kissed
them with her last departing rays, and made them blush a rosy-pink, and
one is tempted to linger and watch the light gradually fade; but it is
time to turn homewards, as in these Southern latitudes twilight is all
too short, and darkness descends quickly over the land.