Not melancholy—no, for it is green.
They are perfectly happy in the Arabian desert, and even in Tenerife, where others feel as if living perpetually on the verge of high fever.
To this 'little misery' were added the displeasures of memory. Our last long visit was in 1863, when the Conde de Farrobo ruled the land, and when the late Lord Brownlow kept open house at the beautiful Vigia. I need hardly say that we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves: the impressions of that good old time were deep and durable.
Amongst other things, Governor Farrobo indulged his fair friends with a display of the old jogo de canas, or running at the ring. The Praça Academica had been rigged out to serve as a tilting-yard, with a central alley of palisading and two 'stands,' grand and little. The purpose was charitable, and the performers were circus-horses, mounted by professionals and amateurs, who thus 'renowned it' before the public and their damas. The circlet, hanging to a line, equalled the diameter of a small boy's hat; and when the 'knight' succeeded in bearing it off upon his pole, he rode up to be decorated by the hands of a very charming person with a ribbon-baudrière of Bath dimensions and rainbow colours. Prizes were banal as medals after a modern war, and perhaps for the same purpose—to prevent unchristian envy, hatred, and malice. Almost any trooper in an Anglo-Indian cavalry regiment would have done better; but then he would have couched his bamboo spear properly and would have put out his horse to speed—an idea which seemed to elude the Madeiran mind. The fête ended with a surprise less expensive than that with which the Parisian restaurant astonishes the travelling Britisher. A paper chandelier was suspended between two posts, of course to be knocked down, when out sprang an angry hunch-backed dwarf, who abused and fiercely struck at all straight backs within reach.
Madeira is celebrated for excursions, which, however, are enjoyable only in finest weather. Their grand drawback is inordinate expense; you may visit the whole seaboard of Morocco, and run to Tenerife and return for the sum spent in a week of Madeiran travel. The following tour to the north of the island was marked out for us by the late Mr. Bewick; his readiness to oblige, his extensive local knowledge, and his high scientific attainments caused his loss to be long felt in the Isle of Wood. 'You make on the first day Santa Anna, on the opposite coast, a six to eight hours' stage by horse or hammock, passing through the grand scenery of the valleys Metade, Meiometade, and Ribeiro Frio.
[Footnote: Most of these places are given in Views (26) in the Madeiras, &c., by the Rev. James Bulwer. London, Rivington, 1829. He also wrote Rambles in Madeira and in Portugal in 1826.]
The next day takes you to Pico Ruivo, Rothhorn, Puy Rouge, or Red Peak,
the loftiest in the island, whose summit commands a view of a hundred
hills, and you again night at Santa Anna. The third stage is to the
rocky gorge of São Vicente, which abounds in opportunities for
neck-breaking. The next is a long day with a necessary guide to the
Paül da Serra, the "Marsh of the Wold," and the night is passed at
Seixal, on the north-west coast, famous for its corniche-road. The
fifth day conducts you along-shore to Ponta Delgada, and the last leads
from this "Thin Point" through the Grand Curral back to Funchal.'
I mention this excursion that the traveller may carefully avoid it in winter, especially when we attempted the first part, February being the very worst month. After many days of glorious weather the temper of the atmosphere gave way; the mercury fell to 28.5, and we were indulged with a succession of squalls and storms, mists and rain. The elemental rage, it is true, was that of your southern coquette, sharp, but short, and broken by intervals of a loving relapse into caress. In the uplands and on the northern coast, however, it shows the concentrated spleen and gloom of a climate in high European latitudes.
We contented ourselves with the Caminho do Meio, the highway supposed to bisect the island, and gradually rising to the Rocket Road (Caminho do Foguete) with a pleasant slope of 23°, or 1 in 2 1/3. These roads are heavy on the three h's—head, heart, and hand. We greatly enjoyed the view from the famous Levada, the watercourse or leat-road of Santa Luzia, with its scatter of noble quintas,
[Footnote: The country-house is called a quinta, or fifth, because that is the proportion of produce paid by the tenant to the proprietor.]