The Ship-Dwellers: A Story of a Happy Cruise

by Albert Bigelow Paine

TWO MEN TAKE YOU IN HAND AND AWAY YOU GO

We descended that long, paved, greased hill in toboggans that are nice, comfortable baskets on runners. They hold two and three, according to size, and you get in and two men take you in hand, and away you go. You go, too. A distance of two miles has been made in three minutes in those things. I don't think we went as fast as that, but it was plenty fast enough for the wild delight of it, and if I had money enough and time enough I would go there and slide and slide away the eternal summer days.

It was a swift panorama of flower and sunlit wall and distant sea—the soft air rushing by. Now and then we would whirl past a carrier—a brown, bent man with one of those great sleds on his shoulders, toiling with it up the long, steep hill. They were marvellously picturesque, those carriers, but I wish they wouldn't do it. It takes some of the joy out of the slide to feel that somebody is going to carry your toboggan up the hill on his back.

We shot out on the level at last, and started on a little tour of the town. Laura and I wandered away alone, and stopped at little shops, and tried to transact business, and finally bought a clay water-jug for a hundred and twenty reis, which is to say sixpence, which is to say twelve cents. Money in Madeira is calculated in reis, just as it is in the Azores, and the sound of the word suddenly recalled the visit of the Quaker City "Pilgrims" to those islands, and the memory of Blucher's disastrous dinner-party.

But they will take anything that looks like money in Madeira, rather than miss a trade, and when a person who has been accustomed to calculating dollars and cents is suddenly confronted with problems of reis and pence and shillings and half-crowns and francs, he goes to pieces on his money tables and wonders why a universal currency would not be a good thing.

All the streets in Madeira have that dainty cobble paving, and all the sidewalks are laid in the exquisite mosaic which makes it a joy to follow them. The keynote of the island is invitation. Even a jail we saw is of a sort to make crime attractive. I hasten to add that we examined only the outside.

We were adopted by a guide presently—a boy whose only English was the statement that he could speak it—and were directed quietly but firmly toward places where things are sold. We tried to impress upon him in such languages as we could think of that we did not want to buy anything, and that we did not care much for a guide, anyway. We said we wanted to see bougainvillea—a lot of bougainvillea, in a great mass together, as we had seen it from the ship. He nodded excitedly and led us away, but it was only to a place where they sold embroideries which we did not care for, though they were cheap enough, dear knows, as everything is cheap here—everything native at least.

When our guide grasped the fact at last that we did not want to do any buying, he became sad, weakened gradually, dropped behind, accepted a penny, and turned us over to another guide of the same sort. We wandered about Funchal in that way until it was time to embark, adopted by one guide after another, and abandoned to our fate when they realized that we were not worth anything in the way of commissions from the merchants and very little in any form. We did get a guide at last who knew where the bougainvillea house was, but it was too late then to go to it. It did not matter; there were flowers enough everywhere and bougainvillea on many walls.

The place did not lose its charm with close acquaintance. It seemed entirely unspoiled. We saw no suggestion of modern architecture or European innovation—no blot anywhere, except a single motor-car—the only one, I believe, in Funchal. There is but one fly in the ointment of Madeira comfort—the beggars. They begin to beg before they can walk, and they call, "Penny! Penny!" before they can lisp the sacred name of "Mamma." However, one good thing has come of our experience with them. They have prepared us for beggars elsewhere. We are hardened, now—at least, we think we are. The savor of pity has gone out of us.