Funchal has several handsome churches, the altar pieces of which are highly ornamented with paintings, silver lamps, and railings, together with richly carved and gilt figures, &c.
There are, on the island, about twelve hundred secular priests, governed by a dean and chapter, with a bishop at their head.
Funchal towards the sea side, is protected by a parapet wall, properly called the musketry parapet: the fortifications consist of a castle erected upon a steep rock, on the west side of the harbour, and is within a few yards of the shore; it is very ancient, and mounts nine guns of different calibre. This fort returns the salute of the different vessels of war, anchoring in the roads; and the castle serves for a state prison.
There is one small vegetable and fruit market, but the cattle, beef, and fish markets, are miserable.
The prisons are ill constructed, badly governed, and insecure. They are altogether a disgrace to the island.
All the towns and villages, of which there are several, are invariably situated on the sea coast.
The country is too uneven for wheel carriages, except just in the town and its vicinity; the mode of travelling, therefore, is on horseback, or on mules, and in palanquins or hammocks.
The native inhabitants of Madeira are commonly of a middling stature, well limbed, and of a darker complexion than the inhabitants of the colder climates of Europe, possessing a warmth of feeling with more volatile humour than is usual in the phlegmatic constitutions of people of more northern countries, they are courteous in their dispositions, and are very polite in their manners among themselves, as well as towards strangers. The females display great taste in adorning their hair, the blackness of which corresponds with their dark expressive eyes, and gives them a very interesting appearance; they are almost universally distinguished for the whiteness of their teeth, the smallness of their feet, and their finely turned ancles.
The convulsive state of Europe, for so many years, occasioned such an increased demand for the wines of Madeira, that they have, in consequence, advanced to nearly treble the price at which they were sold at the commencement of the French revolution. The cause is removed, but the effect is still continued, by the impolicy of the British merchants, who out-bid each other in their purchases from the land proprietors and wine-jobbers: this rise in the price of wine has produced an increase of income to the landholders, and thus (to use the language of one of their own writers) many now live in splendour, whose parents were content with the simple manners of their neighbours on the opposite coast of Barbary.—Both sexes dress now in the highest style of English fashion: while most of the principle families have their card and music parties, routes, balls, &c.
There is no imprisonment for debt, and condign punishment is never inflicted in Madeira; for certain crimes the criminal is sometimes banished to the Cape de Verds, and when the crime is death, according to the Portuguese law, the felon is sent prisoner to Lisbon, there to await his fate.