The streets through which we rode were quite narrow, and enclosed by balconied houses of two stories, or stuccoed garden walls, over which the graceful banana leaf bent, or a cornice of beautiful running flowers was to be seen. From the nearly closed casement pretty dark eyes peeped down upon you, pretty I fear, because scarcely any other features were visible. The native women we met in the street walked closely veiled, which none who met them desired to have done away with, if a truant zephyr once gave a sight of their swarthy faces. Your attention is attracted by the rather picturesque costume of the natives, which consists of a loose shirt drawn at the waist, knee breeches made full, white boots which are regularly chalked, and on the summit of their cranium they wear a cap of cloth bearing an identical resemblance to an apothecary’s glass funnel inverted. The manner in which the peasants retain these head coverings in their place, has been as perplexing to strangers, as how the apple got inside the dumpling was to England’s sovereign, but considering the population, it would not be uncharitable to conclude that the tension is induced by the vacuum in the noddles they surmount, on the principle of the “sucker” with which philosophic juveniles raise a brick. The continued “Boo-ah” resounding in the streets, as the driver of the sleds with casks upon them spurs up the two poor little oxen, whom a small boy leads with a string from the horn, soon convinces you that you are in the land of the elevating “Tinta,” and generous “Serchal.” Should the sled drag heavily over the stones, the small boy throws down in front of it a wetted cloth, passing over which, the runner is lubricated.
On reaching the residence of the American consul, we dismounted and partook of a lunch, which his hospitality invariably provides for his visiting countrymen. It is unnecessary to tell with what gusto, men who eighteen days before were gathered around a stove in their own land, were now in the genial air of Madeira, windows open, and perfume coming in all around from beautiful plants, partook of the rich treat of guavas, the small banana, and the Mandarin orange just plucked from the tree that thrust itself in the casement. The snack over, we ascended to the consul’s observatory; a fine glass, mounted on a tripod, swept the offing and anchorage, giving every object much nearness. Our old ship lying stately at her anchors, was just saluting with twenty-one guns the Portuguese flag floating at her fore, which was promptly returned by the fort on Loo Rock. Around and below us were patches of green-vine and trellis, amid an expanse of red tile roofs, on many of which were placed wine-casks that they might sweeten in the sun. We then descended to the wine-houses, where butt after butt of large dimensions, reached by foot ladders, of Tinta and Serchal, and “Navy,” told how the delightful grape of the island had swelled into fullness, and then been crushed into wine. Ah! Clarence, thou shouldst have lived till now.
We mounted and started for le Petite Coral, by the way of the church Nossa Senhora do Monte. The angle of ascent of the road is over twenty degrees, but the style of going up is usually to give your horse his head and his rider’s heel, and if like Putnam’s he dashes up, racketing it over the stones, and sending back fire from his heels, why it’s the way. Being bantered for a dash up by one of my messmates, and my friend the Borro Querro in the rear not being a party thereto, I regret to remark, that the last I saw of that respected individual after the start, he was engaged in performing some very sudden gyrations proximate to the roadside hedge. However, a glass of the country wine, on his joining me at the blowing place, about half-way up, enabled me to make my entire peace with him for the suddenness of my leaving. The way up was lined with vines and dogs, peasant girls and chapels, mendicants and donkeys, which would knock Mr. Laurence Sterne’s sentimental blubber all in the head. The clatter of the approaching hoofs caused the dark browed senoritas to “come unto the window,” but the horses appeared to hurry on the faster for their presence. The descent of this mountain is generally made at a rapid pace, on a rude sled, two boys riding behind and giving it proper direction. The mode of movement about the streets, is, if a foreigner and invalid, in a hammock suspended from a pole, and borne on the shoulders of two men, steadying themselves as they walk with quarter-staffs; if a native gentleman in a canopied sled drawn by unsightly oxen, which quick mode of movement will convey a very good idea of the enterprise of the people who employ it.
But we were on the way to the Church of the Lady of the Mount. It was not very long before we dismounted at the foot of the long flight of discolored stone steps that led to its front. On reaching the terrace we looked down on the view below us. The town had dwindled into a white-washed amphitheatre; the ships were not quite as much changed as the objects to the sight of Edgar from the cliffs of Dover, but appeared greatly reduced in proportion. I could scarcely believe that the Mississippi, riding at her anchors in the bay, was the floating home of over three hundred human beings!
On entering the church, we were met at the door by a pussy snuff-taking priest, whose besmeared outer garment looked as if it would have been all the better for the application of a cake of brown soap in connection with some of the clear water which coursed down the mountain past his sanctuary. The interior of the edifice displayed the most garish taste, and with its sickening amount of gilding, was embellished in the most tawdry manner. There was the customary proportion of relics, and the paintings around looked very old. Our stay was short, and after leaving a small sum for our footing, as Jack would say, we returned to our steeds, leaving the wax figure of the lady patroness of the island in a glass case in the rear, looking as demure and as indifferent to our presence as when we entered. The whilom legends of the devout tell of her, at a time when breadstuffs were scarce, having left her crystal enclosure and gone to hurry on cargoes of grain to Funchal, which, like Buckingham, were “on the sea.”
The descent to the Coral—a deep mountain gorge of singular and circular formation—is by a narrow shelf of a road cut in the face of a precipitous hill, and running in inclined planes. One does not entirely fancy the task of going down; but then the horses are rough-shod, with reference to such places, are remarkably sure footed, and move instinctively with much caution. On getting to the bottom, the road by which we had just come looked like a mere thread-line on the face of the cliff that hung over us. Its depth is some sixteen hundred feet, and you look up to the azure above you as from an immense pit. We stopped at a small mill situated at the lowest point of the Coral, to give our horses a little time to blow, and our borro querros a little country wine, which was likewise patronized by ourselves. I noticed around clumps of pines planted for fuel, and a number of exquisite flowers growing spontaneously. We ascended from the Coral by a road equally as narrow and precipitous as the one by which we had gone down, only proving less clear; a large rock which had caved from the bank nearly barricaded the path, and on reaching it my horse, whose reputation I subsequently ascertained to be one for shying, came quite near treating himself and rider to a Tarpean fate. On reaching the top, we were refreshed by a breeze redolent with perfume, and turned into a road enclosed on either side by hedges of bona fide geranium. It is feeding on this sweet plant that imparts to the meat of the native cattle, when eaten, a peculiar flavor; and the honey of the bee who gathers his sweets from it, is strongly impregnated with its pleasant odor. No wonder that the attenuated invalid should resort to thee, beautiful Madeira, to revive his drooping spirits. We returned to the city in the evening, by a road running past pleasant gardens, and by a bridge that spans the canal which receives the quickly-swollen mountain streams, and put ourselves in charge of mine host of Guilletti’s.
The next day I landed near the governmental house, where was staying as a guest the invalided empress mother of Brazil, who had, with a broken constitution, gone to Madeira, since to die. I visited the charitable hospital of the place, which fronts on the grand plaza. No sight can be more loathsome than the one to be seen in the wards of a Portuguese hospital, unless it be that of the dead mendicants that you pass in the streets of some of the cities of China. The most terrible ailments that flesh is heir to, and the greatest suffering that “age, ache, and penury, can lay on nature,” were present all around. And then there were others in whom the flame of life, after flickering lowly, had just gone out. I was very willing to get away from the apartment, and after descending to a dimly-lighted chapel below, where a solitary priest was engaged in prayer for the repose of the dead and dying above, and glancing at its characteristic decorations, I left the building. The edifice itself is quite an extended one, though it has no architectural beauty to attract attention. Over its main entrance, cut elaborately in a massive block of stone, are the royal arms of Portugal.
My next place of visit was to the local prison, through which I was accompanied by a sergeant. The inmates, who were composed of both sexes, confined for offences of smuggling a bar of soap, up to those of a graver character, are allowed to indulge in any handiwork for which they are competent, and the product of their hands, tied on the ends of poles, is thrust through their prison-windows into the street, of which they solicit the purchase by the passer-by. But not even in the prisons are you exempt from the “por sua suade”—the interminable solicitation for alms; and the distance which the prisoner may be from you is no barrier, as he is provided with a small car which, with a pole, he can push to his outer grating, and as quickly withdraw. I can mention a circumstance to show with what little sense of degradation or hesitancy this thing of alms-asking is indulged in by a dago population. I was sitting in front of the consul’s, conversing with some friends, when quite a genteel and tidily-dressed person, rejoicing in a much better pair of patent-leathers than I could muster, approached us and solicited alms, and was quite pertinacious in his request. I had heard of the Spanish beggars on horseback, who solicited aid of pedestrians on the ground that they had more need of assistance than other people because they had to support their beast as well as themselves, but I had never met with anything quite as deliberate until I encountered my patent-leather-shoe friend at Madeira.
And now we have been at Funchal two days, and the third, on which we are to take our departure for St. Helena, has arrived. In taking leave of the pleasant isle of vine and bower, the writer regrets that he can not, for the benefit of those of a more sentimental mood than himself, follow the example of others, and say something about the Santa Clara convent, that stands embosomed by deep foliage on the hill, and tell in touching tones about the fair and unhappy Donna Clementina, who, besides being admired because Heaven had vouchsafed to her a visage blonde, when those around were brunette, was also loved for other qualities, for which vide her devotees—how she “would be a nun,” and how she “wouldn’t be a nun;” and how some “young Lochinvar,” who they say came “out of the west,” once wished to do something both romantic and desperate, and rescue the fair lady from the holy precincts where, it was represented, she was most unwillingly detained; but, with Mr. Aminadab Sleek, in the play, “we are really afraid we can’t.”
Good-by, Madeira, whose tropical beauty was so fresh to me, and the picture of whose loveliness will be ever in mind.