VILLAGE OF FAYAL.
At last, after a ride of eight hours, we reached St. Anna, an extensive village, with a large church and some brick buildings prettily situated in flower-gardens, the most stately of which was—the inn. The good cheer and repose found here for a few hours of the night, compensated in some degree for the fatigues of the past day, and prepared us for those to be encountered on the morrow.
The frequent fogs prevalent in Madeira during the month of June, render it indispensable to start early in the morning, if the traveller wishes to enjoy the beauties of the scenery. At 2 a. m., therefore, our cavalcade set out, followed by a host of boys and porters carrying provisions and instruments for observations. Nature was still buried in sleep, the air quiet and motionless; the full moon, shedding her pallid light over sea and mountain, feebly shadowed forth the outlines of the hedges and bushes of roses, fuchsias, and hortensias, that lined the narrow path, and brought out dimly in faint relief the ghost-like white figures which, standing at the doors of their poor cabins, looked inquisitively at the riders, that were already so early on their way. The path led up to the mountains in steep and numerous windings, sometimes on soft ground through ravines, sometimes on solid basalt, or over the uneven surface of indurated lava. And when at last, emerging from deep glens, steep precipices, and rocky walls, all yet buried in the shades of night, the blue star-spangled sky burst upon us in all its beauty and grandeur, the effect was almost overpowering. A faint glimmer of light appeared on the distant horizon, masses of vapour moved over the ocean, and rising mists gathering into clouds, undulated like the surface of an agitated sea. It was only along the ridges of mountains and through the ravines, that one might glance between mist and land down to the calm boundless expanse of water at our feet.
At 4 o'clock a halt was made near a solitary hut, called Choupana, at a height of 4400 feet, when the horsemen dismounted, and left their horses behind, preferring to reach on foot the termination of their journey.
EL HOMEM EM PÉ.
We had just climbed up some steep basalt rock and reached an open spot, when the first rays of the sun tinged the eastern sky. Beaming in all his majesty on the sharply-defined clouds that hovered beneath, they sparkled like so many ice-capped peaks of Alpine glaciers; and when the great luminary ascended higher, distributing mingled light and shade in such gradations of tint as only Nature's cunning hand can mingle, the chaotic masses of vapour assumed the appearance of gigantic islands and lofty towering mountains, whilst a chorus of feathered songsters rung cheerfully out from the depths of the wooded valleys. The path wound along a precipitous declivity, grown over with tangled Til-trees, past a group of basaltic columns, which rose isolated to a height of 40 feet above the beautiful grassy carpet that clothes the ground, and in the crevices of which an old laurel, the last of its genus at this height, had taken root. The natives call this singularly-shaped group Homem em pé, or the man standing erect.
Arrived at an open space of meadow ground, the Barreiro, or Encumiada Caixa, a gigantic rocky ridge, suddenly rises to a prodigious height, from a frightful abyss of almost fathomless depth. We now hastened across a plain covered with lava, to the rough basaltic summit of the Encumiada Alta. Safe on an eminence[32] above yawning gulfs, beneath a deep blue sky, in the brilliancy of a lovely morning sun, we abandoned ourselves to the thrilling impressions of the magnificent picture which nature here brought forth of earth, rock, and manifold vegetation. Towards the south an immense mountain ridge, with serried peaks (called Torres and Torinhas), rises to a height of 6000 feet, declining almost imperceptibly on the left hand, whilst on the right it descends abruptly in terraces, with perpendicular walls of rocks 1000 feet in height, connected by an inaccessible ridge with the imposing, stupendous, cupola-shaped summit of the Pico Ruivo. All this is disclosed to the eye within a radius of little more than two miles. Deep clefts and ravines run from the rocky crevices, and unite in a gloomy and profound abyss of 3000 feet, which forms the mouth of the ravine of Ribeiro Secco. Similiar chasms open to the right and to the left, and when they are too distant to be distinguished by the eye, dark shadows rising on the rocky walls indicate the deep crater-like basin of the Curral, and the gulfs of the Metade river, and the Ribeiro Frio. It would seem as if the whole island has, in a series of fearful convulsions, burst from a single central point in all directions; as if entire mountains had sunk into the deep, or had, by the action of torrents permeating their crevices, been converted into rubble, and carried as sand and fragments into the ocean.
[32] 5883 feet, according to the geologist's barometrical measurements.