THEFLOWEI<

AND.

GARDENS -OF
MADEIR

PAINTED
ELLA -I

i

DESCR

THE FLOWERS AND GARDENS
OF MADEIRA

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

THE FLOWERS AND GARDENS
OF JAPAN

DESCRIBED BY FLORENCE DU CANE

CONTAINING $0 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
SQUARE DEMY 8VO., CLOTH, GILT TOP

THE ITALIAN LAKES

DESCRIBED BY RICHARD BAGOT

CONTAINING 68 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS I^J COLOUR
SQUARE DEMY 8VOM CLOTH, GILT TOP

PUBLISHED BY

A. & C. BLACK, SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.

AUSTRALASIA

AGENTS

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
64 & 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
zos FLINDERS LANE, MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LTD.
27 RICHMOND STREET WEST, TORONTO

MACMILLAN & COMPANY, LTD.
MACMILLAN BUILDING, BOMBAY
309 Bow BAZAAR STREET, CALCUTTA

LOO ROCK, FUNCHAL

THE FLOWERS

AND

GARDENS OF MADEIRA

PAINTED BY

ELLA DU CANE

DESCRIBED BY

FLORENCE DU CANE

LOSlJb'ri"
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK

1909

Lib,

«

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. INTRODUCTION . .*'..". . . . . . . 1

II. PORTUGUESE GARDENS , . . . . 9

III. VILLA GARDENS TO THE WEST OF FUNCHAL . . 20

IV. VILLA GARDENS TO THE EAST OF FUNCHAL . . 39
V. VILLA GARDENS TO THE EAST OF FUNCHAL (continued) 54

VI. THE PALHEIRO . . . . . . . 65

VII. CAMACHA AND THE MOUNT . . , . . 76

VIII. A RAMBLE IN THE HIGHER ALTITUDES ... 83

IX. A RAMBLE ALONG THE COAST . „ . '. ';/ . 97

X. CREEPERS • » • . • •• • . . 107

XI. TREES AND SHRUBS . , . . » . . 118

XII. HISTORICAL SKETCH. . . 133

267550

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1. Loo Rock, Funchal . 4 <£ . . .Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

2. A Drinking Fountain . » . . . . 4

3. Azaleas in a Portuguese Garden . . . . .14

4. Azaleas, Quinta Ilheos . . „ .. . . 18

5. Datura, Quinta Vigia . . . . . . 24

6. A Group of Senecio . „ . . » . 26

7. Weigandia and Daisies • • . » • . 28

8. Cypress Avenue, Quinta Stanford .... 30

9. Aloes and Daisy Tree . . . . . .. .34

10. Poinsettia on the Mount Road ..... 38

11. The Scarlet Bougainvillea . . ; . . . 40

12. Wistaria, Santa Luzia . . . . ... 42

1 3. Roses, Santa Luzia . . . . ... 48

14. Pride of Madeira and Peach Blossom . .. .50

15. Quinta do Til . . . . . . .54

16. On the Torrinhas Road . • , • • • .64

17. Wistaria, Quinta da Levada . . . . . 76

18. Red Aloes . . . . . . . . . . 96

19- Almond Blossom . . . . . , » 102

20. Pride of Madeira and Daisies . . . . .104

21. The Purple Bougainvillea . . . . . .106

22. Bignonia Venusta . . . , . , .110

23. Jackaranda Tree. . . . . . . . 124

24. A Chapel Doorway . . . '. . . . . 132

vii

THE

FLOWERS AND GARDENS
OF MADEIRA

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

THE very name of Madeira (or island of timber,
as the word signifies) brings to the minds of most
people a suggestion of luxuriant vegetation flourish-
ing in a damp, enervating climate. Such, indeed,
was my own mental picture of Madeira before my
first visit to the island. I expected to find every
garden with the aspect of a fernery, moisture
dripping everywhere, and the hills clothed with the
remains of the primeval forests. The latter might
possibly still have existed had it not been for the
zeal of the discoverers of the island in making use
of their discovery from a utilitarian point of view,
and cutting clearings for the cultivation of the rich

1 1

2 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

and fertile land. In order to clear the ground of
the forests, which we are told clothed the island
to its very shores, the drastic measure of setting
fire to it was resorted to: hence the destruction
(as old historians assert that the fire raged for over
two years) of all the forests on the south side of
the island.

Some feeling of disappointment entered my
mind when I first looked on the Bay of Funchal.
As compared to the wooded appearance the north
of the island presents, the south side, viewed from
the sea, appears to have much less vegetation.
Large stretches of pine woods, it is true, have
been replanted, and though they are used for
timber, and are felled before they attain any great
size, regulations exist which oblige any person
who cuts down a tree to plant another in its place.
Though I should imagine it is more than doubtful
whether this regulation is carried out to the letter,
the plantations are replanted, or the stock of
timber would otherwise soon become exhausted.
The fact that the south side of any island is
naturally the most suited for cultivation has also
led to the destruction of the woods, and on
approaching the island it is very soon seen that
every available inch of ground is cultivated in

INTRODUCTION 3

some form or another. The cultivation may take
the form of some cared-for garden, where trees,
shrubs, and creepers from the tropics may be
flourishing side by side with more familiar vegeta-
tion, or may merely be the little terraced patch of
ground surrounding the humblest cottage, where
the harvest of the crop — be it sugar-cane, batata
(sweet potato), or yam — is eagerly looked forward
to, in order to eke out the very slender means of
its habitants.

The feelings of Edward Bowdick, as described
in "Excursions to Madeira and Porto Santo in
1823," must often have been re-echoed by many
a visitor who sees the island for the first time :
" To those who have visited the tropics nothing
can be more gratifying than to find the trees they
have there dwelt on with so much pleasure, and
which are decidedly the most beautiful part ot
the Creation ; to be reminded of the vast solitudes,
where vegetable nature seems to reign uncontrolled
and untouched ; to see the bright blue sky through
the delicate pinnated leaves of the mimosa, whilst
the wood strawberry at its feet recalls the still
dearer recollection of home ; to gather the fallen
guavas with one hand and the blackberry with the
other ; to be able to choose between the apples

1—2

4 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

and cherries of Europe (which are so much
regretted) and the banana — it is this feeling which
makes Madeira so delightful, independent of its
beautiful scenery and the constancy and softness
of its temperature."

Any feeling of disappointment that the traveller
may have experienced from his first cursory glance
at the island must surely be quickly dispelled on
landing, especially if this should be in the month
of January, when, having left the snows and frosts
of Europe behind, after travelling for four days he
is basking in the almost perpetual sunshine of
so-called winter in Madeira. Lovers of flowers —
and to those I most recommend a visit to the
island — will find fresh beauties even at every turn
of the street : the gorgeous- coloured creepers seem
to have taken possession everywhere. Hanging
over every wall where their presence is per-
mitted will come tumbling some great mass of
creeper, be it the orange Bignonia venustus, whose
clusters of surely the most brilliant orange-
coloured flower that grows completely smother
the foliage; or the scarlet, purple, or lilac
bougainvillea, whose splendour will take one's
breath away, with its dazzling mass of blossoms.
The great white trumpets of the datura, com-

A DRINKING FOUNTAIN

INTRODUCTION 5

bined possibly with the flaunting red pointsettia
blossoms, will quickly show the fresh arrival the
bewildering variety of the vegetation — so much
so that I cannot fail again to sympathize with
Mr. Bowdick, who, writing on the subject, says :
"The enchanting landscape which presents itself
flatters the botanist at the first view with a rich
harvest, and not until he begins to work in earnest
does he foresee the labours of his task. What can
be more delightful than to see the banana and the
violet on the same bank, and the Melia adzerach,
with its dark shining leaves, raising its summit as
high as that of its neighbour, the Populus alba?
It is this very gratification which occasions the
perplexity, at the same time that it confirms the
opinion, that Madeira might be made the finest
experimental garden in the world, and that an
interchange of the plants of the tropical and tem-
perate climates might be made successfully after
they had been completely naturalized there."

Since the above was written (1823) no doubt
much has been done in the way of naturalizing
plants from other countries, chiefly by the English,
who are the owners of most of the principal
gardens in and around Funchal. Many a plant
and bulb from the Cape has found a new home

6 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

in Madeira, and has spread throughout the length
and breadth of the island, straying from gardens
until they have now become almost hedgerow
flowers ; while at a higher altitude than Funchal,
plants from England and other parts of Europe
have also found a new resting-place.

It is not only to lovers of flowers, who, should
they become the happy possessors of a garden in
Madeira, will find in it a never-ending source of
enjoyment, but also to those who wish to explore
the natural scenery of the island, that I heartily
recommend a visit to Madeira. Probably no
other island of its size has such grand and varied
scenery. Being only some thirty-three miles long
and fifteen across even at the widest part, most
people look incredulous when told of the inacces-
sibleness of some of the more remote parts of the
island, picturing to themselves the possibility of
seeing the whole island in one or, at the outside,
two days by means of the now ubiquitous motor-
car. These impatient travellers had better stay
away from Madeira, for their motor-cars will be
of no use to them, the gradients of the roads being
too steep for any but the most powerful of cars,
even if the roads themselves were not paved with
the most unlevel cobble-stones. To anyone who

INTRODUCTION 7

has leisure to spend in exploring the island, merely
for the sake either of admiring its scenery, or
making a collection of the many ferns which
adorn every nook and cranny of the deep ravines,
I can promise ample reward ; always supposing
that they are sufficiently good travellers not to
consider comfortable hotel accommodation as being
an essential part of their expedition. Away from
Funchal no hotels exist in Madeira ; but if it is
the right season of the year, and a spell of fine
weather is reasonably to be expected, tent-life
must be resorted to, or the primitive accommoda-
tion afforded by the engineers' huts in various
districts, or rooms in the most primitive of village
inns.

Enthusiastic admirers of the scenery of Madeira
have compared its grandeur to that of the Yosemite
Valley in miniature : its mountain-peaks, it is true,
only range from 4,000 to 6,000 feet, but the abrupt-
ness with which they rise gives an impression of
enormous depth to the densely wooded ravines.
In an article on Madeira written by Mr. Frazer
in 1875 it will be seen that he also compared its
scenery to some of the grandest mountain scenery
in the world. Writing of an expedition to the
north side of the island, he says : " The beauty

8 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

of the scene culminated at the little hamlet of
Cruzinhas, whence we looked into a labyrinth of
dark precipitous ravines, formed by the gorges of
the central group of mountains, whose peaks, for-
tunately unclouded for a time, resembled in their
fantastic ruggedness those of the Dolomites ; but
their sides being densely wooded with the spark-
ling laurel, and the ravines themselves more
tortuous, we, I need hardly say, reluctantly came
to the conclusion that even the Dolomite gorges
could not equal them. There was none of the
splendid rock-colouring of the Dolomites, but for
deep-wooded ravines of deep mysterious gloom,
descending from pinnacled mountains, it is a great
question whether the Tyrol must not yield to
Madeira."

CHAPTER II

PORTUGUESE GARDENS

I HAVE often been asked whether the Portuguese
have any distinctive form of gardening, and in
answer I can only say that, though there is no
attempt to compete with the grand terraced
gardens of Italy or France, or the prim conven-
tionality of the gardens of the Dutch, still the
little well-cared-for garden of the Portuguese has
a great charm of its own. Here, in Madeira, their
gardens are usually on a very small, almost diminu-
tive, scale, according to our ideas of a garden. In
the mother-country, where they probably surround
more imposing houses, they may attain to a larger
scale, but of that I know nothing.

The love of gardening, unfortunately, seems to
be dying out among the Portuguese in Madeira,
and many a garden which was formerly dear to its
owner, each plant being tended with loving hands,
has now fallen into ruin and decay. The little
paths, neatly paved with small round cobble-stones

9 2

10 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

of a pleasing brownish colour, have become over-
grown and a prey to the worst pest in Madeira
gardens, the coco grass, which is enough to break
the heart of any gardener once it is allowed to get
possession ; its little green shoots seem to spring
up in a single night, and the labour of yesterday
has to be again the work of to-day if the neat, trim
paths so necessary to any garden are to be kept free
from the invader. Or the box hedges, which were
formerly the pride of their owner, have lost their
trimness and regularity from the lack of the shears
at the necessary season, and the garden only sug-
gests departed glories.

Luckily, a few of these gardens still remain in all
their beauty, and the pleasure their owners display
in showing them speaks for itself of their true love
of gardening.

The plan of the garden is usually somewhat
formal in design, and as a rule centres in a fountain
or water-tank, which serves the double purpose of
being an ornament to the garden and of supplying
it with water. The entrance to the garden is
certain to be through a corridor, with either square
cement and plaster pillars, or merely stout wooden
posts, which carry the vine or creeper-clad trellis.
The beds are not each devoted to the cultivation

PORTUGUESE GARDENS 11

of a separate flower, as would be the case in an
English garden, but single well-grown specimens of
different kinds of plants fill the beds. Begonias, in
great variety, tall and short, with blossoms large
and small, shading from white through every
gradation of pink to deep scarlet, form a most
important foundation for every Portuguese garden ;
as, from their prolonged season of blooming, some
varieties seeming to be in perpetual bloom, they
always provide a note of colour. Pelargoniums,
allowed to grow into tall bushes, in due season
make bright masses of colour, the velvety texture
of their petals seeming to enhance the brilliancy
of their colouring. Fuchsias in endless variety,
salvias red and blue, mauve lantanas, scarlet
bouvardias, and Linum trigynum, with its clear
yellow blossoms, help to keep the little gardens
gay through the winter months. The latter,
though commonly called Linum, is a synonym
of Reinwardtia trigynum and a native of the
mountains of the East Indies.

Last, but by no means least in importance, come
the sweet-smelling plants, essential to these little
miniature gardens. Olea fragrans, or sweet olive,
also called Osmanthus fragrans, must be given the
palm, as surely its insignificant little greenish-

2—2

12 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

white flower is the sweetest flower that grows, and
fills the whole air with its delicious fragrance.
Diosma ericoides, a well-named plant — from dios,
divine, and osme, small — ought perhaps to have been
given the first place, as it will never fail at every
season of the year to bring fragrance to the garden.
The tender green of its heath-like growth, when
crushed, yields a strong aromatic scent, and no
Portuguese garden is complete without its bushes
of Diosma. If allowed to grow undisturbed, it will
make shrubs of considerable size, and in the early
spring is covered with little white starry flowers ;
but as it bears clipping kindly, it is especially dear
to the heart of the Portuguese gardener, who will
fashion arm-chairs, or tables, or neat round and
square bushes, in the same way as the Dutch clip
their yew-trees. Rosemary also ranks high in
their affections, not only for its sweet-smelling
properties, but also because it can be subjected to
the same treatment. Sweet-scented verbenas are
also favourites, and in spring the tiny white flower
of the small creeping smilax suggests the presence
of orange-groves by its almost overpowering scent.
Camellias, white and pink, single and double,
are favourite flowers, but as a rule the shrubs are
subjected to drastic treatment and cut back, so as

PORTUGUESE GARDENS IS

to keep the plants within bounds and in proportion
to the size of the garden. Here and there a leafless
Magnolia conspicua adorns the garden with its
cup-like blossoms in the early spring, and a few
other shrubs are permitted within the precincts of
the garden. Franciscea, with its shiny green leaves
and starry blossoms, shading from the palest grey
to deep lilac, according to the time each bloom has
been fully developed, should have been included
in the list of sweet-smelling plants, as it has an
almost overpoweringly strong scent. The bottle-
brush, Melaleuca, with its strange reddish blossoms,
showing how aptly it has been named, and the
pear- scented magnolia, with its insignificant little
brownish blossoms, are all favourite shrubs.

Various bulbous plants seem to have made a
home under the shelter of their taller-growing
companions, and in February, freesias, which in
this land of flowers seed themselves, spring up
in every nook and cranny ; also the unconsidered
sparaxis, whose deep red and yellow striped flowers
are hardly worthy of a place. But the bright
orange tritonias and deep blue babianas are highly
prized, and in May the red amaryllis adorn most of
the gardens, in company with the rosy-white Crinum
powellei. The delicate Gladiolus colvillei, known

14 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

in England as the Bride and under various other
fancy names, open their pale pink-and- white spikes
of bloom early in May. A few plants of carna-
tions are treasured, as they are not easy to grow.
Rose-trees are given a place, many being such old-
fashioned varieties that I could not find a name for
them ; while the walls of the garden may be clad
with heliotrope, which seems to be in perpetual
bloom, or Plumbago capensis, whose clear blue
blossoms cover the plant in great profusion in
late autumn and spring. In summer the yellow
blossoms of the Allamanda Schottii appear, and
later in the year the waxy-white Stephanotis flori-
bunda and Mandevilleas will all in turn be an
ornament to the garden, though in the winter
months their glossy green foliage will have passed
unnoticed.

I consider that Azalea indica is the plant which
is most valued by the Portuguese. In the cared-
for garden it is given a most conspicuous place,
either planted in the open ground in partial shade,
or more frequently kept in pots, and tended with
the greatest care. In February and March through
many an open doorway a glimpse may be caught
of a group of gay-coloured azaleas, even in little
humble gardens which at other seasons of the year

AZALEAS IN A PORTUGUESE GARDEN

PORTUGUESE GARDENS 15

i

are flowerless. The whole horticultural energy of
the owner of the little strip of garden has been
centred in the loving care bestowed on his few
treasured azaleas. A tiny plant, not more than
a few inches in height, will be far more valued than
its overgrown neighbour, if it should happen tc
be some new variety, possibly only bearing a few
blossoms, but perfect in form, of immense size,
single or semi-double, of a brilliant rose-red, clear
pink, salmon colour, or pure white. The culture
of azaleas does not seem to be peculiar to the
natives of Madeira, as from Oporto come numerous
sturdy little trees of all the most highly prized
varieties. The effect of well-grown specimens in
pots, arranged along the stone ledge of the garden
corridor, or grouped round the stone or, more
correctly speaking, plaster seat, which generally
finds a place in all these gardens, is very pleasing,
and well repays the care bestowed on the plants all
through the heat of the summer months.

A corner of the garden must be devoted to fern-
growing, without which no garden in Madeira is
complete. In the gardens of the rich a little green-
house, or stufa is considered necessary for their
successful cultivation, but in many a shady, damp
corner of a humble cottage garden have I seen

16 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

splendid specimens of the commoner ferns grown
without that most disfiguring element. Perfect
shelter from wind and sun is, of course, necessary,
and sometimes, where no other shelter is available,
the dense shade of a spreading Madeira cedar-tree
is made use of, and from its branches will hang
fern-clad pots. Or a little arbour is formed of that
most useful of shade-giving creepers, the native
Allegra campo, or Happy Country. The plant is
also sometimes called Alexandrian laurel, though
for what reason it is hard to know, as it has no
connection with the Laurel family, but is Ruscus
racemorus. The plant throws up fresh shoots every
winter, which in their early stages appear like giant
asparagus, and grow and grow until sometimes they
reach fifteen or twenty feet in length before the
fresh pale green leaves develop. By the spring the
young leaves have unfurled, and provide a canopy
of delicate green through the summer. The growth
of the previous year can either be cut away, or if
retained, in late spring, little greenish-white flowers
will appear on the underneath of the leaves. The
plant is a native of Portugal, but may be found in
a wild state in Madeira. It is also known under
the name of Dance racemosus. One of the Poly-
podiums, called by the Portuguese Feto do metre,

PORTUGUESE GARDENS 17

or Fern by the yard, seems to be first favourite,
and splendid specimens are to be seen, each frond
measuring one to two yards in length. Gymno-
grammes, or golden ferns, are also much prized,
and the Asparagus sprengerii has during the last
few years found many admirers, with its long
sprays rivalling in length the Feto do metro.
AdiantumA and all the commoner ferns are given
a place, according to the taste of their owners.

I cannot close this chapter without a few words
on the subject of the neat devices made by the
Portuguese out of canes or bamboo, for training
plants. In some instances it may be overdone,
and one cannot always admire rose-trees trained
on to bamboo frames in the shape of fans, crosses,
or even umbrellas ; but the little arched fences as a
support to lower-growing plants are used with very
good effect. I have copied the idea in England with
some success for training ivy-leaved geraniums in
large pots or tubs, by planting four rather stout
bamboos or canes, two feet or more in height, in
the pots, then slipping four pieces of split cane into
the hollow ends, and either forming four arches,
by inserting each end of the split length into the
hollow, or else a pagoda-like effect can be made by
taking the split canes into the middle, and then

3

18 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

slipping all four ends through a hollow piece of
cane a couple of inches long. Side arches can be
made in any number, according to the requirements
of the plant or the fancy of the gardener, by making
incisions in the stout bamboos at any distance from
the ground, and inserting the ends of the split canes.
Old carnation plants, or^seedlings which bear many
flower-stems, may be very successfully and neatly
supported in this way.

Another contrivance for the increase of their
rose-trees struck me as original, and worth men-
tioning, and possibly imitating, by those who garden
in a subtropical climate — this is their system of
layering rose-branches. My idea of layering carna-
tions, shrubs, or any other plants, had always been
to cut the plant at a joint, and peg it firmly into
the ground, covering with a few inches of fine soil ;
but the Madeira gardeners adopt a different system,
anyway, with regard to their roses. The branch
for layering is not chosen near the ground, but
often at a height of from two to four feet. The
chosen branch is passed through the hole at the
bottom of a flower-pot, or a box with a good-
sized hole in it answers the same purpose ; the
pot or box is then supported at the necessary height
on a tripod of sticks or bamboos. The branch has

AZALEAS, QUINTA ILHEOS

PORTUGUESE GARDENS 19

an upward slit made in the ordinary way, and the
pot is then filled with soil. In two or three months3
time, I was assured, the branch would be well rooted
and ready to be transplanted to its fresh quarters.
It seemed a simple method of increasing rose-trees,
which, as a rule, in climates like those of Madeira,
flourish much better when grown on their own
roots than grafted on to a foreign stock. The
same system appears to answer admirably for the
increase of shrubs and even trees, and is exten-
sively adopted for creepers, especially bougainvilleas,
which do not strike readily from cuttings ; so it is
no uncommon sight to see pots lodging among the
branches of trees, with a layered branch ready to
form a new tree.

3—2

CHAPTER III

VILLA GARDENS TO THE WEST OF FUNCHAL

THE miniature gardens described in the previous
chapter, which, as a rule, surround the more
humble dwellings of the Portuguese, frequently
only cover the small piece of ground at the back
of the town house, which is either converted
into the backyard and rubbish-heap, decorated
with old tins and broken china, or converted
into a little paradise of flowers, according to the
temperament and taste of its owner. Apart from
these are the larger gardens surrounding the villas,
or quintas, on the outskirts of the town. Most of
these gardens are owned by English residents, and
to them Madeira owes the introduction of many
floral treasures. The first impression of these
gardens, taken from a general point of view, is that
they are lacking in form, the idea conveyed being
that the original owner of the garden made it
without any definite plan in view. For that
reason they invariably lack any sense of grandeur

VILLA GARDENS WEST OF FUNCHAL 21

or repose. It is only fair to say, however, that the
landscape gardener has had many difficulties to
contend with. The natural slope of the ground
is, as a rule, extremely steep, especially in gardens
situated on the east side of the town. But the
ground by no means necessarily falls away only
in front of the house. It as often as not falls to
one side as well, which makes terracing a very
difficult and serious undertaking. To move earth
by means of small baskets carried on men's backs
is a sufficiently serious matter in the East, where
coolies are employed at a very low rate of wages,
and are accustomed to this method. But in
Madeira, where wages are by no means low, this
procedure, which is absolutely necessary, has an
important financial aspect when laying out a
garden. The result is to give the gardens the
effect of having been added to bit by bit, and
many of them are broken by slanting terraces
without any particular meaning. In common
with all foreign gardens, they lack the beauty
of English turf, as the finer grasses will not with-
stand the heat and dryness of a Madeira summer.
Natal grass, which grows from very small tubers,
is the most common substitute for turf, as it is
hardy and can be mown fairly close. Some of

22 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

the finer American grasses have been found
successful, especially for growing under large
trees, which is most useful, as nothing is so un-
satisfactory as the effect of trees growing out of
would-be flower-beds. All the beauty of the trees
is lost through the outline of the stems being
confused by the surrounding plants, which in
themselves are probably poor specimens, owing to
the fact that they are constantly being starved
through the goodness of the soil being absorbed by
the roots of the trees.

Stone balustrades are unknown in Madeira,
where cement or plaster has to take the place of
stone. Simple designs can be carried out by this
means, but, as a rule, a low wall, only about two or
three feet in height, from which rise at intervals
square pillars, originally intended to support the
wooden cross-bars of the vine pergola, finishes the
terrace and gives it a very characteristic effect.
These pillars can be creeper-clad, and either stand
alone or support a canopy of wistaria, bignonia, or
some other gorgeous creeper.

Any defect in the scheme of the gardens is amply
atoned for by the wealth of colour and abundance
of flowers they contain, at almost all seasons of the
year.

VILLA GARDENS WEST OF FUNCHAL 23

Some of the older gardens were laid out more as
pleasure-grounds, and planted with specimen trees
brought together from all parts of the New and Old
world, and in these especially the lack of good turf
is keenly felt. I am thinking of the gardens which
surround the Hospicio, which was built in 1856 by the
late Empress of Brazil, in memory of her daughter,
the Princess Maria Amelia, who died in Madeira.

The garden is well cared for, and contains a good
collection of trees and flowering shrubs. Near the
entrance are some very fine Ficus comosa and two
splendid Jacarandas, which, when they are laden
with their blue blossoms, stand out splendidly
against the dark evergreen trees ; also a very large
Coral-tree, whose grey leafless branches are adorned
early in the year with scarlet blossoms. In the
centre of the garden are two unusually fine speci-
mens of Duranta trees, whose long hanging racemes
of orange berries cause them to be much admired
all through the winter and spring months, while
in summer the branches are laden with their blue
blossoms. Dragon-trees, frangipani-trees, judas-
trees, camphor-trees, til and Astrapea viscosa, are
all to be found here, and a large specimen of the gor-
geous flame-coloured Flamboyant or Poinciana, may
be easily recognized by its flat spreading branches,

24 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

which shed their fern-like foliage before the blossoms
appear. At all seasons of the year the garden
affords a delightful pleasaunce for the inmates of
the Hospital, and can never be entirely colourless, as
the red dracenas and the bright crimson leaves of
the acalypha, which are blotches of a lighter or
darker colour, afford a welcome note of colour at all
seasons of the year and a relief to the eternal green
of the evergreen trees. The walls of the garden
are clothed with bougainvilleas, wistarias, and
other creepers, and the beds contain a variety of
plants, such as clerodendrons, hibiscus, abutilons,
begonias, azaleas, and roses. The grass edges to
the beds give the garden a character of its own, and
might well be copied in other Madeira gardens.

On the opposite side of the same road at the
top of the Augustias Hill stands the Quinta Vigia ;
the name means a look-out place or watch-post,
and no doubt the villa was so called because the
grounds command a fine position, the terrace wall
ending with a sheer descent 100 feet or more down
to the sea. The garden has a fine view of the
harbour, the Brazen Head, the distant islands of
the Desertas, and the Loo Rock, which lies imme-
diately below the cliff. The late Empress of
Austria spent the winter of 1860-61 at this

DATURA, QUINTA VIGIA

VILLA GARDENS WEST OF FUNCHAL 25

quinta, and since then the property has had
various owners. Though the garden is now
neglected, as the villa has been uninhabited for some
years, the trees remain, and together with those
belonging to the adjoining Quinta das Augustias
on the one side, and those of the Quinta Pavao
on the other, form one of the principal features
of the town of Funchal. The day is probably
fast approaching when the whole of this property
will fall into the hands of an hotel company,
but it is to be hoped that some effort will be
made to save the trees. From far and near the
splendid specimens of Araucaria excelsa form a
very important feature in the landscape, as they
have attained an immense size. I am told that
Mr. William Copeland first introduced these
Norfolk Island pines to Madeira, and planted those
at Quinta Vigia. They seem to have taken kindly
to their adopted country, though not, of course,
attaining to the gigantic height of 150 feet, as
they are said to do in their native land. The
garden also contains a good specimen of Araucaria
braziliensis. One of the largest cabbage palms
in the island stands near the entrance, and the
garden is rich in rare trees. Grevilleas, with
deep orange bottle -brush -like flowers ; schotia,

4

26 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

with its deep crimson-red blossoms ; magnolias ;
the deciduous Taxodium distichum, mango-trees,
and hosts of others, adorn the grounds. Among
the shrubs are pittosperums, with their leathery
grey-green leaves and greenish-white sweet-scented
blossoms ; also francisceas and great quantities
of Euphorbia fulgens, whose long wreaths of
orange-scarlet flowers remain in beauty all through
January and February. Here are to be seen
pittangas, or Eugenia braziliensis, the myrtles of
Brazil, with their small shiny foliage and little
sweet-smelling white flowers, resembling the com-
mon myrtle, only borne on slender stalks ; the
ribbed orange -coloured fruit is not only very
decorative to the shrub, but is valued as a
great delicacy among the Portuguese. Murraya
exotica has flowers closely resembling orange
blossoms in form and fragrance, and appears to
flower in spring and autumn. The verandah of
the house is clothed in creepers, among which
are Allemanda schottii, with its pure yellow
blossoms, the deep crimson-flowered Combritum ;
Thunbergia laurifolia, with its lavender-coloured
flowers; and Ehyncospermum jasminoides, whose
tiny white starry flowers fill the whole air with
their delicious fragrance late in April.

A GROUP OF SENECIO

VILLA GARDENS WEST OF FUNCHAL 27

Large bushes of the sweet-scented diosma and
a small heath are a feature of the garden, while
the great number of rose-trees are a legacy of one
of its English owners, and in spite of the fact
that they are now no longer carefully pruned,
they flower in great profusion on immense bushes
in December, and again in April.

Near the entrance some large masses of purple
and scarlet bougainvillea are to be seen, and by
the middle of March the great buds of the immense
and rampant-growing solandra are swelling, and
in a few days the greenish-white trumpet-shaped
flowers will have opened. The beauty of each
individual blossom is short-lived : when newly
opened it is of a greenish-white, which gradually
turns to a deep cream colour, and then, alas !
to a most unsightly brown. Unfortunately, the
plant shares with thunbergia its ungraceful habit
of retaining its blossoms in death, which mars the
beauty of the freshly opened flowers. Large
clumps of the yellow-flowered Senecio grandifolia
are very effective when the great loose heads of
blossom are at their best in February. The plant
has fine foliage, and though many people despise
it and regard it as a weed, on the outskirts of
the garden or hanging over a wall it is certainly

4—2

28 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

worthy of a place. Like its humble relation the
common groundsel, it has an objectionable habit
of scattering its fluffy seed to the four winds of
heaven as soon as the plant is out of flower.
This, to be sure, could be avoided by cutting
off the old flower-heads as soon as they are
over, but would be rather a Herculean task in
gardens where it has spread into great beds.
The plant is impatient of drought, and its foliage
soon flags in the heat of the sun unless its roots
are well supplied with moisture, and it will be
discovered that its roots run far in the ground
in search of it, which, combined with its practice
of seeding itself in undesirable situations, makes it
a dangerous plant to introduce unawares to a
garden, as, once established, it is there for good.

Farther to the west of the town are the gardens
of Quinta Magnolia, which cover an extensive area,
largely increased by the present owner, until they
now extend down the slope of the hill to the
bed of Ribeiro Secco, or the Dry River. To those
interested in the culture of palms these grounds
will be of great interest, as the collection is a good
one, and includes some very fine specimens, seen to
great advantage, standing on slopes of the nearest
approach to turf which the island can produce.

dKA .

WEIGANDIA AND DAISIES

VILLA GARDENS WEST OF FUNCHAL 29

Some of the cabbage and date palms have at-
tained an immense size, and are a great ornament
to the landscape, and some fine groups of the
curious screw pine, Pandanus odoratissima ; it has
peculiar flat leaves and an uncouth flower, which
bears a strong resemblance to the body of a dead
rabbit hanging from the plant ! The grounds com-
mand fine views, and were laid out for the present
owner by an English landscape gardener. There is
a curious cave or grotto formed out of the natural
rock, clothed with ferns and mosses, which no
doubt remains cool and damp through the summer,
and forms a welcome retreat from the fierce heat
of the sun.

Close by are the grounds of Quinta Stanford, or
Quinta Pitta, as it was originally called by its first
owner. The gardens have been very much enlarged
by their present owner ; banana plantations have
gradually vanished, and the grounds no longer
present the cramped appearance from which they
formerly suffered. New-comers to Madeira, as a
rule, express great surprise that the gardens are
not larger and generally only cover such a very
small piece of ground. The value of the land for
agricultural purposes — formerly for growing vines,
then, possibly, for banana cultivation, and now for

30 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

sugar-cane — is no doubt largely responsible for this,
and also the great difficulty of acquiring a piece of
ground of any considerable size in the neighbour-
hood of Funchal. In many cases even one acre
may be owned by several different landlords, land
being divided into incredibly small holdings.

In this respect the owners of Quinta Stanford
are to be envied, as the house stands well sur-
rounded by its own ground, out of sight of the
too common unsightly fazenda and its inevitable
squalid cottages. From the terrace in front of the
house the view is unrivalled, comprising a fine view
of the sea and an unbroken view of the mountains
behind the town of Funchal. It is easily seen that
the garden is tended with unceasing care by its
present owner, and near the entrance some judi-
cious massing of shrubs and flowering trees has in
a very few years well repaid the planter ; some
large clumps of weigandias, Astrapea pendiflora,
and bushes of common white marguerite daisies of
mammoth proportions give a broader effect than is
usual in most Madeira gardens. To my mind, the
very greatest praise should also be given to the
owner for having planted an avenue of cypresses,
almost the noblest and grandest of all trees,
especially when seen under a southern sun, and

CYPRESS AVENUE, QU1NTA STANFORD

VILLA GARDENS WEST OF FUNCHAL 31

their absence in the landscape of Madeira is keenly
felt. The Portuguese see no beauty in them, and
only connect them with death, for which reason
they are scarcely ever seen except in cemeteries.
From the astonishing growth which the young
trees at Quinta Stanford have made in a few years,
it is evident that the soil is very favourable for
their culture, and it seems almost incredible that
more owners of gardens, who must have seen what
Italy owes to her cypresses, should not have planted
them in Madeira ; but it is to be hoped that even
now others may follow the excellent example set
before them at Quinta Stanford.

The owner of the garden has much to tell of the
successes and failures he has made, not only with
imported plants, in the hopes of inducing them to
find a new home in Madeira, but he journeyed far
and wide to make a collection of the native ferns,
of which there are a great quantity. Many of
them, removed from the cool, damp air of their
mountain homes, pined and died a lingering death
in the air of Funchal, which was too hot and dry ;
and the atmosphere of a stufa, or greenhouse, is
unsuited to the hardier ferns.

Some interesting experiments have also been
made with rock-plants, in order to see whether it

32 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

would be possible to induce any of our favourite
Alpine plants to adopt a home in warmer climes ;
but I fear, though some may survive for a year or
two, in the end they will grow steadily smaller,
until they dwindle away and cease to exist. So 1
am afraid the making of a rock-garden in the sense
which we in England regard a rock-garden — i.e.,
an artificial arrangement of rocks, clothed with
carpets and cushions of flowering Alpine plants-
will never be possible in Madeira. Here the rock-
garden must remain as Nature intended it to be—
rocks and cliffs, interspersed with prickly-pear,
agaves, cactus, some of the larger saxifrages,
and such native plants as Echium fastuoswn.

The gardens owned by the English suffer, as a
rule, somewhat severely from the absence of their
owners just at the season of the year when they
require the closest care and attention, and this may
possibly account for the failure to acclimatize many
of these imported treasures. If they could be
tended with loving hands, screened from the
fiercest of the sun's rays, given exactly the amount
of water they require, no doubt there would be
many less failures; but the ignorant Portuguese
gardener probably either starves the plant by
entirely omitting to water it, especially if it is

VILLA GARDENS WEST OF FUNCHAL 33

unlucky enough to be out of reach of the hose,
or else he drowns it with too much water, until
the ground surrounding it becomes a swamp : for
the conditions suitable to a rock-plant would be as
unknown to him as the conditions required by a
bog-plant.

Some tree-ferns in a sheltered corner make a
very good effect, and seem likely, from the strong
growth they have made in a few years, to become
very fine specimens.

On the terrace near the house are beds of
begonias, roses, geraniums, heliotropes, sweet olives,
and the garden flowers common to most Madeira
gardens, while the walls are clad with a succession
of creepers ; so all through the winter months the
garden remains a feast of colour.

Eighteen years ago the ground which is now the
beautiful garden of the Palace Hotel was nothing
but rocky, waste ground, bare of vegetation, except
for the clumps of prickly-pear, agaves, and cacti
which take possession of all the rocky ground along
the shore. For situation the garden is unrivalled,
and though the garden lacks the care and attention
which naturally are bestowed on a private garden,
the luxuriant growth, especially of the creepers,
has converted the formerly waste ground into a

5

34 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

beautiful jungle of flowers. The garden is devoid
of any fine trees, except for the ficus trees, a few
oaks, and a stray cypress or two which surround
the Dependence, which was formerly a private
house ; it stands at the very edge of the pre-
cipitous cliff, where the unceasing roar of the surf
rings in one's ears as it dashes almost against its
very walls. In front of the main building are some
large cabbage palms, affording welcome shade and
shelter, which have made astonishingly rapid
growth, as only ten years ago they were merely
items in flower-beds, and I little thought that on
my second visit to the island, some seven years
later, they would have become an important feature
in the garden.

Early in December, when the whole island is
fresh and green after the autumn rains, and
presents more the aspect of spring than late autumn
or even winter, the view from the garden is sur-
prisingly beautiful. The cliffs have broad stretches
of the brilliant red-flowered Aloe arbor escens, with
its large rosettes of glaucous grey-green leaves,
which makes the plant always ornamental, even
when it is not adorned with its hundreds of scarlet
flower spikes. Some people say it was always
indigenous to the island, and found its home in the

ALOES AND DAISY-TREE

VILLA GARDENS WEST OF FUNCHAL 35

Santa Luzia ravine. Whether this is really the case
I feel doubtful, as Mr. Lowe, in his " Flora of
Madeira," quotes it as one of the plants which has
become naturalized, though probably originally
introduced. Growing on the cliffs the flowers
show to great advantage, standing out in sharp
contrast to the deep blue sea below, but it is a
great ornament wherever it grows, whether in
clusters overhanging a wall where its rosettes of
leaves overlap each other in thick tufts in endless
succession till there seems no reason why they
should ever stop, or clothing the rocky ground on
the hillside among the pine-trees.

At the same season the Franzeria artemesioides,
or daisy-trees, as they are commonly called, are in
full beauty. The best method of treating these
trees is to cut them back when they have done
flowering, as the large clusters of daisy-like flowers
appear on the long shoots of young wood. When
their flowering season is over, they lose their large
grey-green leaves, so it is lucky that the tree can be
so treated, or the long bare branches would make
them unsightly at other seasons. The hedges and
bushes of Plumbago capensis attain to mammoth
proportions when they can escape the attention of
the gardener's ruthless shears, and are laden with

5—2

36 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

their lovely soft blue blossoms in late November
and December. Then comes a season of rest,
though the plant is seldom entirely devoid of
colour, and in early spring fresh shoots give
promise of a wealth of blossom again in April
and May.

Bougainvilleas have been planted with a lavish
hand, but unluckily with no regard for colour. I
sometimes wondered if the Portuguese gardeners
are all colour-blind, as it is by no means uncommon
to see a bright purple bougainvillea planted side by
side with a scarlet one, and as likely as not, inter-
laced with a flaming orange bignonia, while the
bright pink Charles Turner geranium grows happily
below. In Madeira gardens colour runs riot, and
I own that the prolonged flowering season of
many of the creepers and shrubs makes the colour
scheme more difficult than it is in our English
gardens.

The great clumps of Crinum Powellei are a
remarkable feature of this garden, when late in
April the great bulbs send up their spikes of either
pure white flowers or white delicately flushed with
pink. The flowers come in six to ten in an umbel,
on stems three to five feet in height, and are very
freely produced — large clumps sending up a dozen or

VILLA GARDENS WEST OF FUNCHAL 37

more flower-heads at the same time. The bulb has
long narrow green foliage, which is very ornamental.
The flowers have a delicate but somewhat sickly
scent ; the plant is a native of Natal, and, like
others of its compatriots, has taken kindly to the
climate and soil of Madeira.

It would be impossible to enumerate all the host of
other plants the garden contains — creepers, shrubs,
flowering trees, besides roses, begonias, geraniums,
heliotropes, in an almost endless list — while the cliffs
have remained a natural rock-garden. In the clefts
of the rocks giant agaves occasionally throw up
their great flower-heads fifteen feet or more in height,
and then the plant, as if exhausted by the supreme
effort in the climax of its existence, dies ; but it is
quickly replaced by hundreds of others, as the seed
of the monster flower has found fresh ground in
every nook and cranny. Besides the agaves, clumps
of prickly-pear, or Opuntia tuna, with its curious
succulent growth clothed with poisonous thorns,
some wild saxifrages and tufts of Echium fastuosum,
known as Pride of Madeira, have all found a home.

This garden is the last one of any interest on th
west side of the town, as beyond lie only a fe^
modern villas in the worst possible taste, with no
grounds worthy of the name of a garden; but

38 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

almost opposite to the hotel in the grounds of Casa
Branca for a few short weeks in the year the avenue
of Poinsettia pulcherrima interspersed with date
palms and clumps of strelitzias is worth seeing. The
poinsettia blooms are almost the largest I have ever
seen, measuring quite eighteen inches in diameter
from point to point of the scarlet leaves. Like the
daisy-tree, the poinsettia flowers on the young
wood, and throws out fresh branches six to ten feet
long, which can be cut back in January, when the
beauty of the blossoms is gone and the foliage
becomes an unsightly yellow and at length drops
altogether. When seen growing in all their
luxuriant and garish splendour, it is difficult to
remember that it is the same plant that one has
seen in a weakly and attenuated form in our
English stove-houses, with one poor little flower-
head at the end of a single stem imperfectly clad
with sickly foliage. Poinsettias seem to rejoice in
rich soil, and they appear to revel in the liberal
feeding of the adjoining banana plantations, which,
no doubt, they deprive of a good deal of nourish-
ment ; but they well repay their owner, as in the
glow of the western sun they provide a veritable
feast of colour all through December.

POINSETTIA ON THE MOUNT ROAD

CHAPTER IV

VILLA GARDENS TO THE EAST OF FUNCHAL

ON the east side of the town lie many quintas with
good gardens, especially up the very steep Caminho
do Monte, or Mount Road, as it is commonly
called by the English. The road itself at some
seasons of the year is converted into a veritable
garden, as its high wall is so clothed with over-
hanging creepers which have strayed from the
gardens behind, that it presents more the aspect
of the terrace wall of a flower garden than that
of one of the most frequented highroads of a
town. At a height of between 500 and 600 feet,
just below the level road which crosses it, which is
known as the Levada da Santa Luzia, several villas
seem to vie with each other as to which can con-
tribute the greatest wealth of plants to decorate
the walls. Possibly the best moment to see the
road is in December, when the gorgeous mass of
colour provided by the great shrubs of poinsettias

39

40 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

hanging over the walls of the Quinta Santa Luzia
is in all its splendour. Side by side with the
scarlet blossoms come the great white trumpets of
the daturas, hanging in horizontal rows. Below,
the deep rose-coloured buds of the bougainvillea
have not yet unfurled, so there is no jarring note
in the scheme of colour, as the immense bank of
plumbago, with its soft blue blossoms, harmonizes
admirably. On the other side of the road, as if
determined to continue the effect of the flaming
red, is a great cluster of Aloe arbor escens, with
their spikes of red flowers — not, it is true, as brilliant
in colouring as their opposite neighbours, the poin-
settias, but very beautiful in themselves. These,
with clumps of sweet-scented geraniums, echiums,
and many other plants, clothe the walls of the
garden of the Quinta da Levada. But the stream
of gorgeous colour is not yet complete, as the Bou-
gainvillea spectabile, with its brick-red blossoms, is
already giving promise of glories to come in a very
short time. This plant, which covers the corridor
and hangs over an old garden well at Quinta Sant
Andrea, is the finest specimen of its kind in the
island. From the immense size of its stem, it is
easily seen that the plant must be a great age, and
for many years has borne its burden of blossoms

THE SCARLET BOUGAINVILLEA

VILLA GARDENS EAST OF FUNCHAL 41

and called forth the admiration of untold numbers
of tourists through successive winters, as they make
their noisy descent in the basket sledges or running
cars from the mount.

In a few weeks the road is turned into a golden
road. The poinsettias and aloes will have shed
their blossoms, and are soon forgotten, as the
brilliant orange bignonia clothes many a wall and
corridor, and in its turn attracts all attention. By
April the wistaria takes its place, and the road
becomes all mauve, as nowhere in the whole of
Funchal are there so many beautiful wistarias
collected together; all along this road they seem
to have been planted with a lavish hand. Possibly
the soil is especially suited to them in this district,
as I have often heard owners of gardens in other
parts of Funchal regret that they have never been
able to establish this most beautiful of all creepers
in their gardens.

It is small wonder that the sight of these flower -
clad walls fills many a visitor to the island with a
longing to see the gardens they enclose.

The palm must be given to the garden of Santa
Luzia, as not only does it cover a much larger
expanse of ground than any other, but the owner
takes so much individual interest in almost every

6

42 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

plant in the garden, that here, as it is always said
flowers grow better for those who love them,
everything seems to flourish and grow at its
best. Like all good gardeners, she has not been
deterred by the failure of a plant one season or
the failure to import a new treasure at the first
attempt, but has given hosts of plants a fair trial,
often rewarded with success in the end, though
naturally failing in some cases. Plants have
been sent to her from all parts of the world, and
the island owes many of its flowery treasures to
this garden, which was originally their nursery
and trial ground. One of the most remarkable
instances of this is Streptosolen Jamesonii, origin-
ally introduced to this garden, but which only
succeeded the fourth time it was imported, and
has now spread, until there is hardly a humble
cottage garden in the whole of Funchal which is
not decorated with its orange bushes in the winter
months. The garden has been much enlarged of
late years, and gradually terrace after terrace has
been added to it, many of them forming a complete
little garden in themselves. From the lie of the
ground in a steep slope in two directions, and
possibly from the fact that the garden has been
added to gradually, it shares the difficulty I have

WISTARIA, SANTA LUZIA

VILLA GARDENS EAST OF FUNCHAL 43

described elsewhere, and had no very imposing
scheme to start with.

The entrance to the garden leads one to expect
a wealth of flowers in the garden below, as a vision
of pink begonias with a profusion of blossom, tall
feathery bamboos, and long hanging ferns, greets
the eye at the very door. On the terrace in front
of the house stands one of the finest wistarias. It
clothes the whole wall, makes a purple canopy to
the corridor, climbs up the square pillars, and has
even taken possession of the flagstaff, so in the early
days of April the whole air is filled with its deli-
cate bean-like scent. The beauty of its blossoms
is short-lived, and possibly for this reason is all the
more appreciated. A few short days and the heat
of the sun will have taken all the colour out of its
purple tassels, the leaves will begin to appear, and
all its glory is departed. Some of the winter-
flowering creepers last in beauty so long — for weeks
or almost months — such as the bougainvilleas
and Signonia venustus, that if such a thing were
possible, one becomes almost wearied of their
beauty, and passes them by almost unnoticed.
But with wistaria it is different : it must be
noticed and appreciated at once or not at all, as the
colour changes and fades with every passing hour.

6—2

44 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

Possibly April is the best month to visit this
garden, though at no season is it without flowers,
but March, April, and May are the best months of
the year in all Madeira gardens. In some ways
the autumn here seems as though it ought to be
spring. Late in September or early in October
the gardens go through the tidying up, pruning,
and cutting back, which is generally done in our
English gardens in early spring, and are made
ready to reap the full benefit of the heavy autumn
rains. Here during the summer everything has been
left to grow as it will : the roses put forth long,
rank, flowerless growth ; the creepers grow out of all
bounds ; geraniums grow " leggy," with long leafless
stems ; the heliotrope has flowered itself to death,
and must be cut back in order to make fresh growth
for the coming season. The gardens by the end of
the long, dry summer must present the aspect of an
overgrown jungle, and according to the judicious or
injudicious pruning in September and October will
greatly depend the failure or success of the garden
for the rest of the year. This also is the season
for sowing seeds, and probably the best moment
for starting newly imported treasures ; it is most
important that all these operations should be got
through early in October, as by November it is

VILLA GARDENS EAST OF FUNCHAL 45

soon evident that it is not really spring ; the sap is
not really rising, and through December, January,
and February, it lies more or less stagnant and
dormant, so unless seedlings and cuttings have
made a good start before then, they will grow but
little during those three months. The same will
apply to plants which have been cut back ; they
should have made fresh shoots before the middle of
November, or they will remain more or less bare
and unsightly throughout the winter. By the
time when most of the English owners return to
their gardens in late November or early December,
all traces of the necessary cutting should have
vanished, and though the garden may not be gay
with flowers, it should be full of promise of glories
to come. But it seems hard to train a Portuguese
gardener to get through his pruning at this season,
and to have done with it for the time being, as,
according to his ideas, pruning should be done
apparently promiscuously, at any and every season
of the year, and he is never happy without a
pruning-knife in his hand, as often as not dealing
death and destruction to a plant when it is in full
beauty.

In the lower part of the garden a small pond,
shaded by a weeping willow, whose parent was

46 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

grown from a cutting brought from Longwood,
provides a home for the white, pink, and blue
water-lilies, which, with a large clump of papyrus,
speedily remind one that one is in subtropical
regions, where no breath of winter will ever reach
the water sufficiently to bring death to the blue
lilies which we in England know as pampered
flowers, and can only grow by providing them with
a warm bath, heated by artificial means.

On one of the terraces broad sheets of the mauve
Virginian stock — with us an unconsidered little
flower, but here, from the sheer wealth of its
blossoms, providing a mass of colour — lead to a
little Iris garden. Only the white Iris Florentina
and a deep purple Iris Germanica really seem to
flourish, so the beds are filled with these two kinds
only. Iris Pallida and many of the other beautiful
varieties of Iris Germanica have refused to make
a home here, so the two kinds only have been
retained, and for a few weeks in late December and
early January the little garden is all purple and
wrhite. The purple weigandia flowers and the
white of the Porto Santo daisy- trees help to carry
out the colour scheme. The walls of the little
garden are clad with the old Fortune's yellow
roses, called by some Beauty of Glazenwood, and it

VILLA GARDENS EAST OF FUNCHAL 47

is certainly one of the roses which thrive best in
Madeira, bearing its burden of yellow and pink-
tipped blossoms in the spring. On the corridor
above a host of creepers flourish, but the blossoms of
the Burmese rose were new to me. Its large single
blooms open a delicate lemon colour, which gradu-
ally turns to white, and its shiny foliage is also very
ornamental ; but I fear its constitution will never
stand the cold of our English winters, or even if it
survived the cold, the warmth of our summers would
not be sufficient to ripen the wood enough to make
it flower. I believe it to be the same rose which
has been grown with some success on the Riviera
under the name of Rosa gr°andiflora. Near by is
its fellow-countryman, the Burmese honeysuckle,
suggesting a monster form of French honeysuckle ;
the foliage of its long twining branches closely
resembles it, only on a very large scale, and the
white trumpets of its blossoms, instead of being one
or one and a half inches long, are from four to five
inches in length. The heavy scent is almost over-
powering, coming at a season of the year when the
air seems to bring out the scent of the flowers to
such an extent that they become almost offensive.

The garden is so full of interesting trees and
shrubs that it would be a hopeless and never-

48 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

ending task to attempt to enumerate them all,
but the curious trunk and roots of all that remains
of a formerly grand specimen of a Bella Sombra,
or Phytolacca dioica, attract the attention of all
new-comers. From the uncouth root have sprung
numerous fresh branches, but they can never make
a fine tree like their original parent. As a foliage
plant Monstera deliciosa, a native of Mexico, makes
a fine group where it can be allowed sufficient
space to throw out its long aerial roots, by which
it will firmly attach itself to a wall or bank. It
must have been these strange roots which gained
for it the first part of its name, as its deeply
perforated dark green leathery leaves are no
monsters, and I imagine it owes the second part
to its fruit, which I have seen described as being
" succulent, with a luscious pine-apple flavour."

There is a very fine specimen of Bombaoc, or
silk cotton tree, which has a peculiar growth,
and in June is covered with fluffy white blossoms.

At again a lower level on yet another terrace
is a little sunk garden, which seems to provide
a never-ending wealth of colour and blossom.
Between its box-edged beds run narrow walks,
paved with flag-stones, a welcome relief to the
usual paving with little round cobble-stones, and

ROSES, SANTA LUZIA

VILLA GARDENS EAST OF FUNCHAL 49

certainly pleasanter to walk upon, and in spring,
when flowers spring up in every direction, many
a little treasure appears between the stones. One
I remember I could never regard as a weed, though
many people seemed merely to look upon it as
such, was Anamoiheca cruenta, a tiny little bulb
which bears very brilliant salmon-pink blossoms
in clusters of five or six, each with a deep crimson
mark in it. It is a native of the Cape, from where
it was no doubt originally imported, and seems to
sow itself freely. The borders are devoted to
large clumps of such plants as eupatoriums,
salvias, euphorbias, pelargoniums, albizzias, justicias,
begonias, crinums, and imantophyllums, while in
the centre of the garden rose -beds carpeted
with freesias, and beds of the dark purple helio-
trope, pink begonias, and lilac stocks, provide
good masses of colour. Over the wall at one
end of the garden, which is the boundary wall
of the garden proper, hang great bushes of
poinsettias, daturas, and large clumps of echiums,
and on the top of the low wall on the other side,
large pots of azaleas, diosmas, begonias, and ivy-
leaf geraniums stand with very good effect.

Yet another of these little terrace gardens has
been devoted entirely to the culture of blue and

7

50 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

white flowers, which is a pretty idea, though true
blue flowers are scarce. Blue salvias and solanums,
justicias and linums are a good foundation for
the garden, which, again, has paved walks, into
whose cracks innumerable treasures have sown
themselves. Freesias, violets, which, though not
true blue, are too sweet to be ruthlessly weeded
out, and forget-me-nots seem to flourish between
the stones. Plumbago and Solanum crispum clothe
the walls on one side, and the chief treasure
of the blue garden, Echium fastuosum, provides a
forest of great blue spikes all through March.
This plant, which is a native of Madeira, and is
generally called Pride of Madeira, finds a home
among the cliffs on the seashore, but in a cultivated
state it is a much more beautiful plant. It is
raised from seed, and the plants seem to be at their
best about the second year, producing innumerable
large feathery spikes of bloom of a very bright
blue. There seem to be different strains of it, as
occasionally it is merely a dingy grey, and I have
never seen it so good a colour in its wild state, nor
with such large heads of bloom, so it is to be hoped
that this garden variety will be perpetuated, though
it is possible that it is merely the soil which affects
its colour, in the same way that it affects the colour

PRIDE OF MADEIRA AND PEACH BLOSSOM

VILLA GARDENS EAST OF FUNCHAL 51

of the hydrangeas. Even the little fountain in
the centre of the garden carries out the scheme of
colour, as the water reflects the deep blue sky
above, and the fountain itself is made with blue and
white tiles, and makes one regret the good old days
when tiles, with their patterns in soft harmonious
colourings, were used architecturally and let into
walls in panels. There are still a few to be seen in
the grounds of the Santa Clara Convent, and on the
tower of the church, showing that in former days
Funchal had probably more architectural beauty
than it has to-day.

In April and May the garden seems a feast of
flowers in whichever direction you turn your eyes,
though there are some good stretches of mown
grass to relieve the eye and give a sense of repose.
The corridors are clad with roses, among which at
this moment the large single white Rosa Icevigata,
with its shiny foliage, is one of the most beautiful.
It resembles the Macartney rose, and is often
mistaken for it. The plants are seldom entirely
without bloom all through the winter, but it is
early in April that it becomes a sheet of starry
blossoms. Being only half-hardy in England, the
climate of Madeira suits it admirably ; in fact, I
remarked that as a rule it is the roses which are

7—2

52 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

tender in England which thrive best in Madeira.
Among the best are the old General Lamarque,
which grows rampantly and seems to take care of
itself. Its great clusters of snow-white blossoms
come in masses in December, and again in April
and May. Safrano, Souvenir d'un Ami, Georges
Nabonnand, Souvenir de la Malmaison, and Adam,
are among the old favourites, though some of the
newer kinds of that most beautiful class of roses —
Hybrid Teas — seem to take kindly to the climate.
It is useless to attempt to grow any Hybrid
Perpetuals : they may bloom fairly well the first
year, but never again. I have seen good blooms on
many of the Hybrid Teas, such as Antoine Rivoire,
Madame Abel Chatenay, and others, though never
attaining to the perfection of English roses. Possibly
the pruning may be at fault, and if the trees were
better pruned, better flowers would be the result ;
but their rampant growth makes them, no doubt,
difficult to deal with, and it would be a serious under-
taking to cut away all the weak wood from the very
large bushes, and certainly the ordinary Portuguese
gardener makes no attempt to do so. As a rule, he
merely clips the trees, shortening back all the
growth equally in the month of January. I believe
by a careful system of pruning a succession of roses

VILLA GARDENS EAST OF FUNCHAL 53

might be obtained all through the winter, and if, as
soon as one crop of bloom was over, the tree was
carefully and judiciously cut, a fresh crop could be
got in from six weeks to two months.

There are several roses which are to be found in
most of the gardens to which I could never put
a name : one in particular I can recall, with a
beautiful clear, bright pink blossom, touched with
a deeper red on the back of the petals, which
I frequently admired and endeavoured to get
correctly named ; but no one knew its name, and
at last a friend said : " Why worry about its name ?
We just call it * The most beautiful rose that
grows ' " — and it seemed indeed a good name for it.

CHAPTER V

VILLA GARDENS TO THE EAST OF FUNCHAL

(continued)

THE Quinta do Til is one of the oldest villas in
Funchal, and a description of it is to be found in
" Rambles in Madeira and Portugal," published
anonymously in the early part of 1826, in which
the writer says : " The Til is a villa in the Italian
style, and possesses much more architectural pre-
tensions than any I have seen here ; but it has never
been finished, and what has, bears evident symptoms
of neglect. The name comes from a remarkably
fine til, one of the indigenous forest trees of the
island, which stands in the garden, ingens arbos
faciemque simillima lauro : it is, I believe, of the
laurel tribe. In the court, too, is an enormous
old chestnut, the second largest in the island."

The effect of the garden never having been
finished is due to the fact that the balustrade
of the lower terrace still remains carried out in
wood instead of stone, or at least cement and

54

QUINTA DO TIL

VILLA GARDENS EAST OF FUNCHAL 55

plaster, as was no doubt intended originally. Pos-
sibly the death of the original owner caused the
property to change hands, and fall into the posses-
sion of one who had no sympathy with costly
garden architecture. The garden has lost much
of its Italian characteristics, as, though not men-
tioned in the above description, the lower garden
was formerly planted entirely with orange-trees,
and four large cypresses stood like sentinels near
the fountain. Disease killed the orange-trees, as,
indeed, it has killed almost all the orange-trees in
the island, and the cypresses are also gone, so the
garden is now entirely a flower-garden. On the
upper terrace the trunk still remains of the chest-
nut-tree mentioned in the above description ; it
must have been of gigantic proportions, as the
trunk measures many yards in girth. It now
supports a single Banksia rose-tree, which is
wreathed with its little white starry blossoms in
early spring. The chestnut-tree has been replaced
by a Magnolia grandiftora, which has grown into
an immense tree, and is now probably one of the
largest in the island. In June, when its large
leathery white blossoms expand, it fills the air,
especially near sundown, with its almost over-
powering fragrance.

56 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

The upper terrace is laid out with beds, sur-
rounded by box hedges a foot or more in height,
which are filled with an infinite variety of well-
grown plants. The garden is very sheltered, and
never seems to suffer from the strong, rough winds
which those in a more exposed and open situation
feel so keenly. Here there comes no rude blast
from the east to strip the leaves off the great
begonia plants, and their brittle foliage and heavy
flower-heads remain unbruised and untorn, while
many a neighbouring garden has suffered severely
at the hands of a winter storm. Each plant is a
perfect specimen in itself, and is the result of many
years' care and attention. New-comers to the
island are apt to think that in this glorious climate
plants are very quickly established, that cuttings
will make large plants in at most a few weeks, seeds
will spring up in a night — in fact, that gardening is
so easy that it is small wonder that gardens filled
with plants such as we find here are to be found.
Personal experience has taught me that as a rule
plants are rather slow to establish, cuttings strike
slowly and take a long time to make their roots,
especially in the winter months, and the same
applies to seeds unless they are sown in early
autumn. Once established — say the second year —

VILLA GARDENS EAST OF FUNCHAL 57

plants, especially creepers, will make astonishingly
rapid growth, but patience is required at first,
though well rewarded in the end.

It is evident that this garden is tended with
loving hands, and all the necessary alterations and
pruning are done under the close supervision of its
owners. Their collection of begonias is a large
one, and they seem to thrive better in this garden
than anywhere else in Funchal, and appear to be
in perpetual flower. Pelargoniums of the varieties
known in England as Show Pelargoniums, and
not of late years much cultivated, new favourites
having ousted them from the greenhouse, are here
grown into large bushes, many of them five and six
feet in height. It is only growing freely in this way
that one has any idea of the beauty of many plants
which we only know cramped in the narrow area
of a six-inch pot. In Southern Italy I remember
these same varieties of pelargoniums were grown
hanging over terrace walls, and possibly were even
more beautiful than when receiving artificial
support.

It would again be impossible to enumerate all
the plants in this little garden, but it brings to
my mind's eye a vision of fuchsias, bouvardias,
a beautiful deep mauve lantana, the clear yellow

8

58 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

Linum trigynum, and hosts of sweet-scented plants,
such as verbenas, sweet olives, sweet - scented
geraniums, diosmas, and many others.

The lower terrace is almost entirely a rose-
garden, the Til garden having always been famous
for its roses.

If a few plants of a new rose are imported, the
stock can be easily and quickly increased, as the
budding of roses, or even grafting, seems an easy
matter in this country. The buds take quickly,
and the stock may be either that of Rosa Bengkal-
ensis, which has become naturalized in the island,
or any rose which has been proved to have a good
constitution may be utilized as a parent. As I
have remarked elsewhere, the branch which has
been budded is as often as not layered in its turn,
and in a few weeks will have rooted, and can be
detached from the parent plant ; there seems no
reason that, once a new variety has been proved
to have taken kindly to the climate and soil, a
good stock should not be procured and a large
group of the same kind planted together, whereby
a much better effect is always obtained.

A creeper-clad corridor leads to the group of
trees which have given their name to the quinta.

Just above, on the Levada da Santa Luzia, is

VILLA GARDENS EAST OF FUNCHAL 59

the gate of the Quinta Palmiera, which takes its
name from the large palm-tree which rears its
head proudly and stands alone in the grounds.
The path leading to the house winds up the side
of the hill, through grounds which for many years
had been out of cultivation, until the property
changed hands a short time ago ; but as the ground
had always been left in more or less its wild and
natural state, it suffered less than if it had been a
cultivated garden.

It is a beautiful piece of rocky ground, and on
one side a group of Pinus pinea, stone, or parasol
pines, stand towering over a grand cliff which rises
abruptly from the river-bed. In November the
rocks are covered with the red spikes of the
blossoms of the Aloe arbor escens, and the effect
with the great pines and cypresses beyond is one
of indescribable beauty. This is the only villa
which can boast of the possession of fine cypresses,
and here one realizes the ornament they would be
to the island if they were more lavishly planted.
The ground near the house is admirably suited
for broad terracing, and a splendid effect could
be obtained by leaving the cypresses standing
out against the distant sea. But the rock being
so very near the surface, and the absence of

8—2

60 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

soil, combined with the lack of any means of
carting, would make terracing a very serious under-
taking.

The grounds contain many very fine trees —
among others, a very good specimen of the de-
ciduous cypress, Taxodium distichum, which is also
called the swamp, or Mississippi cypress, as the
whole valley of the Mississippi is clothed with these
trees. In summer they are of a splendid deep
emerald-green, which gradually turns to a bronze-
red colour in autumn, and by December the trees
are bare.

At the back of the house there is one of the
largest coral-trees in Funchal, and a very large
til-tree stands immediately in front of the house.

Among other villas with good gardens, the
Deanery, which has long been noted for its fine
collection of trees, and the Achada, cannot be
omitted. The Deanery, standing in a very sheltered
situation at the foot of the Santa Luzia ravine, has
proved an admirable trial-ground for trees, shrubs,
and plants which have been collected by its present
owner. From all parts of the world rare and in-
teresting plants have been brought, and some have
been raised from seed on the spot. The following
description of the place was written in the early

VILLA GARDENS EAST OF FUNCHAL 61

part of the year 1826 by a traveller in Madeira
and Portugal, and shows that even in its early days
the garden was well cared for :

"To-day we have removed to Deanery, our
country-house. The house is a very pretty one.
It has not long been built, and, in fact, only a
portion of the apartments has as yet been used for
residence, but there are more than enough for our
accommodation. The situation is delightful —
scarcely a quarter of an hour's walk from Funchal,
and enjoying, from its comparative elevation, a
beautiful view down the valley to the city (which,
though so near, is scarcely visible from the orange-
trees and cypresses that embower us), and to the
bay and coast and the blue Desertas beyond.
Close on the west is the Santa Luzia ravine,
the farther side of which rises to a considerable
height, its cliffs terraced, in the way I previously
described, into little gardens and vine-grounds,
and crowned by the trees and trellises of the
Achada Quinta.

" Our great luxury, however, is the garden. It
is one of the largest and most beautiful in the
island. A spacious vine corridor runs round nearly
its whole extent, under the green arches of which
in summer, you may either ride or walk in cool

62 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

ness, while the interior space forms a ' leafy
labyrinth,' in which trees and shrubs, flowers and
fruits of every clime are here crowded into a
wilderness of shade and beauty. The higher part
of the ground, upon which stands the house, is
elevated considerably above the rest, and is divided
from it by a terrace of considerable height. This
circumstance is of very happy effect for the beauty
of the garden : it in a manner doubles its extent,
and multiplies its variety ; while the wall of the
terrace, in some parts nearly twenty feet high,
affords an admirable field for every species of
tropical creeper, to luxuriate, as it were, at full
length, and to put forth its leaves and blossoms
to the sun, in all the fearlessness which such a
climate and aspect justify.

" Above the house the ground rises another step,
and the boundary of the garden here is a wall of
native rock, which is already half veiled with the
trees and trailing plants interposed to relieve its
ruggedness. The freshness of the scene is com-
pleted by the tanks, always copiously supplied
with running water, and which a little trouble
might, I think, bring into play as fountains."

Across the ravine, but at a very much higher
altitude, stands the Achada, in a commanding

VILLA GARDENS EAST OF FUNCHAL 63

position on, as its name implies, a stretch of
level ground. The road leading to it from the
town, known as the Caminho da Sao Roque, as
it eventually leads to the village of that name,
is almost as steep as the Mount Road, and a
very pretty view of the town is visible between
its creeper-clad walls, with the picturesque church
and tower of Santa Clara in the distance. The
Achada has also long been famous for its garden
and grounds. It formerly belonged to an English
family, who probably planted most of the rare
trees, palms, and Dracaenas, and the large magnolia-
trees for which it has become famous. The
property then changed hands, and for some years
belonged to a Portuguese family, but is now
again in English hands. The following is by the
same unknown author of the above description of
the Deanery in 1826 : " The English merchants all
have mansions in the city, but they commonly
live with their families in the country-houses in
the neighbourhood of it. To-day we have been
returning visits, which has taken us to some of
the finest of these quintas. One of them is the
Achada. The situation is delightful: it stands
on a level, the only one in the environs, just
above the city, and thus enjoys an advantage

64 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

in respect to surface possessed by no other.
The grounds are extensive, rich in fruits and in
flowers, and surrounded by alleys of vine trellises.
These vine corridors, as they are called, are
common to all the gardens, and in summer,
when the plant is in leaf, must be peculiarly
grateful."

ON THE TORRINHAS ROAD

CHAPTER VI

THE PALMEIRO

ABOUT an hour's ride from the town, at a height
of some 1,800 or 2,000 feet, is the Palheiro,
formerly known as Palheiro de Ferreiro (Black-
smith's Hut), the principal country place in the
neighbourhood of Funchal, belonging to the same
owner as the Quinta Santa Luzia. The road leads
past many smaller villas, whose gardens have most
of them fallen into decay, and only undergo a
hurried process of tidying when their Portuguese
owner comes to spend a few weeks away from the
summer heat of Funchal.

Palheiro was not entirely laid out by its present
owner, though the grounds have been very much
enlarged and improved, and the house itself, having
been destroyed by fire a few years ago, has been
lately rebuilt. Some letters from Madeira, written
by J. Driver and published in 1834, give the
following interesting account of Palheiro, which in
those days belonged to the family of Carvalhal.

65 9

66 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

" The grounds of Senhor Jose de Carvalhal are
the finest in the island, possessing a level surface,
which is very difficult to be met with here to any
extent. This place was recommended to us for
our first ride into the country, and after some
delay in making choice of the ponies and burro-
quieros that we intended afterwards to patronize,
we made our way eastward out of the city.
Crossing a bridge over the deep bed of a river,
we saw the ruins created by the great flood in
1803, when several hundred inhabitants were
swept into the sea. We now ascended a steep
and narrow road for a distance of two or three
miles, passing several of the merchants' houses,
from all of which there is a commanding and
beautiful view of the city and the bay. The
Palheiro, lately the residence of Senhor Carvalhal,
by far the richest hidalgo of the island, has been
confiscated by the Miguelite Government. Senhor
Carvalhal himself had some difficulty in effecting
his escape ; however, he got on board an English
vessel in the bay, and is now residing in London.
Upwards of 700 pipes of very choice and old
wine were at once taken from his cellars, and
sent to Lisbon to be sold on Government account.
The house was ransacked, and his grounds are now

THE PALHEIRO 67

(though this is of recent occurrence) fast going to
ruin. There are a few soldiers stationed near the
house to prevent any material damage, and these
are now the only persons to be seen on this once
splendid estate. The park, if we may so term it,
is more in the English style than we expected to
find it ; but when we came to the orange, lemon,
pomegranate and shaddock groves, which are in
fine foliage and planted in the best order, we at
once saw the effect of these Southern climes.
The flower-gardens, though not abounding in that
variety we might expect, are well arranged, but
begin to show more of the ' fallen state ' of things
than the other parts of the grounds. The house
itself is not on a large scale, yet it is built in good
style and keeping with the place, as well as the
chapel, which is a neat edifice at a short distance
from the house. Senhor Carvalhal used to employ
more than two hundred men on the estate, for the
purpose of keeping it in order. He was a kind
landlord, and much respected throughout the
whole of the island. Let us, then, hope that
Portugal will soon have a fixed Government, and
that Senhor Carvalhal will return to his country,
and again have the pleasure of enjoying his estates."
The hope here expressed was fulfilled, and the

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68 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

family continued to live there until the estate
changed hands and became the property of the
present owner, in 1884.

Although on first acquaintance it is true that
the grounds suggest those of an English park,
possibly from the welcome presence of turf, and
also from the fact that at that high elevation the
deciduous trees are leafless throughout the winter,
like Mr. Driver, we shall very soon discover many
trees and shrubs that could not be grown in even
the most southern parts of England, though many
English shrubs and flowers flourish in the warmer
climate.

There are two roads leading from the outer gate
to the house. The lower road winds through a
long avenue of camellia-trees, whose branches in
January and February are laden with their single,
double and semi-double blossoms, ranging in colour
from pure white, through every shade of pink, to
deep red. Along the higher road, beneath the
trees, broad stretches of the deep green leaves of
the Amaryllis belladonna give promise of beauties
to come. In summer all trace of their foliage
vanishes, and early in September the deep red
stems and sheath of their flowers begin to appear.
By the end of September their blush-coloured

THE PALHEIRO 69

flowers will have developed ; and so profusely do
they flower that all through October in these
higher regions the land is transformed by their
rosy loveliness. Like the garden of Santa Luzia,
Palheiro has been made the trial-ground of many
an imported treasure, and many which did not
flourish in the warmer and drier regions have
succeeded admirably in the cooler and damper air
of the hills.

The flower-gardens certainly show no signs of the
" fallen state of things " under their present owner-
ship, and a small enclosed garden a short distance
from the house is a perfect treasure-house ; though
naturally at its best in spring and summer, it is
never devoid of flowers. Here English daffo-
dils, pansies, and polyanthuses grow side by side
with many a bulb and plant which will just not
stand the rigours of our English winters. The
large-flowered violets, Princess of Wales and other
varieties, flower in their thousands from November
till April, with blooms so large that they suggest
violas more than violets. Freezias and ixias have
seeded themselves in the grass slopes of this little
favoured garden, where the beds are enclosed by
trim box hedges. At the corners or angles of the
beds the box is cut into all sorts of fancy shapes,

70 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

such as pyramids and ninepins. In the beds grow
large masses of the pale yellow sparaxis, anemones
of every shade, single, semi-double, or double, and
the graceful little Cineraria stellata, in an infinite
range of soft colouring. Or a whole bed is devoted
to the deep purple Statice, the beautiful white
Alstroemeria peregrina, or some other chosen
flower which gives a definite note to the colour
scheme. In March two fine specimens of Magnolia
conspicua are covered with their cup-like white and
lilac blossoms, and stand out in sharp contrast to
the deep emerald-green of \heAraucaria braziliensis,
which forms an admirable background to them, and
is in itself one of the most beautiful of all trees.
Near the magnolias a large shrub of Cantua
buxifolia, with its bright red tube-like blossoms
hanging in graceful bunches, provides a brilliant
patch of colour. The lilac Iris fimbriata, with its
branches of delicately veined flowers, seems to
flourish in the shade, and though its individual
blossoms are short-lived, they are so freely produced
that for many weeks in the late winter and early
spring the plants remain in beauty. One could
linger for many a long hour in this peaceful spot,
resting in an arbour completely formed of the
clinging, twining Muhlenbeckia, which has grown

THE PALHEIRO 71

into so dense a thicket that it provides welcome
shade and shelter, or wandering from one little
terrace to another, examining the endless treasures
the beds contain ; for, as the garden has a wealth
of flowers all the summer, there are many things
which, from being out of flower, might pass un-
noticed.

Great beds of Azalea indica, and trees of different
varieties of mimosa, bending under the weight of
their golden blossoms, remind one that this is no
English garden, while glades and banks show long
vistas of white arum lilies, as Richardia or Calla
^Ethiopia are commonly called. Here these
African lilies, which are also called lilies of the
Nile, are completely naturalized, and bloom con-
tinuously for at least five or six months of the year.

A deep dell, shaded by mahogany and other
trees, has provided a home for the tree-ferns of
Australia, New Zealand, and Africa, and in some
twelve or fourteen years they have made such
astonishingly rapid growth that the little ravine is
suggestive of the celebrated fern-tree gullies of
Australia or Tasmania. The ivy, which hangs from
tree to tree in long ropes, replaces the lianes of a
tropical forest, and the banks are clothed with
woodwardias and other ferns, while a few of the

72 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

rarer native wild -flowers, such as the monster
buttercup, Ranunculus grandifolia, and the giant
fennel, have been introduced, and are thoroughly
in keeping with their wild and natural surroundings.
A path winds down the little valley following the
bed of the stream, and on emerging from the deep
shade of the fern-trees, broad masses of naturalized
plants are revealed with every turn of the path.
On a grassy slope, over which tower two or three
grand old stone pines, thousands upon thousands
of golden lupins have sown themselves. A single
specimen of a plant may often hardly be regarded
or considered worthy of notice, but the same plant,
when seen in great masses, may call forth universal
admiration because of the wealth of colour it
provides. In summer the agapanthus will send
up innumerable heads of clear blue flowers, while
the little Fuchsia coccinea seems to flower bravely
at all seasons of the year. In order to show that
even in this favoured land it is possible to have
failures in the gardens, and importations from other
climes do not always succeed, some rhododendrons,
even the common ponticum, were pointed out to me
as never having made themselves at home, and in
a shady corner hundreds of our English primroses
had been planted, but had pined away and died.

THE PALHEIRO 73

In another part of the garden the beautiful
rhododendrons from Java are being given a trial ;
but possibly, just as the climate is too hot for the
hardier varieties, it may prove too cold for those
from tropical regions. The variety known as
arboreum, with its large heads of deep crimson
flowers, appreciates the climate, and has no spring
frost to cut its blossoms, which so often mars the
beauty of this very early-flowering rhododendron
in England, where, for this reason, it only succeeds
in sheltered situations. The large white variety,
which is commonly called the Himalayan rhodo-
dendron, though, more correctly speaking, it is
known as Edgewortkii, flourishes here. It was
introduced from Sikkim to Europe in 1851. It
is a shrub of somewhat straggling growth, with
large wide-open pure white flowers, sometimes
tinged with yellow or blush; they are produced
in small clusters, not more than three or four
together, and diffuse an overpoweringly strong
scent.

Among new importations are a collection of
Japanese cherry-trees, including the beautiful and
graceful weeping variety and some of the double-
flowered kinds, also the deep pink plums, which
should all prove a success, as in the little flower-

10

74 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

garden described above a large double -flowered
pink peach-tree is the pride of the garden when
in blossom.

Besides these so-called fruit-trees, which are only
cultivated for their beautiful blossom, and bear
no fruit, many fruit-bearing cherries, plums, and
peaches have been planted in the more prosaic
part of the garden ; but the stone fruit, is only
a partial success. The peaches seem to deteriorate
when the trees have been more than a few years
in the island. Possibly the pruning is at fault, or
the fruit forms and ripens too quickly ; and when
the plum-trees are laden with fruit, a leste — the
cruel, hot, scorching wind which the natives dread
in summer — will blow for a few days, and shrivel
the fruit and spoil the whole crop.

The orange - groves have vanished, destroyed
by disease, which gradually spread from Funchal
throughout the island, up to the higher land. The
lack of enterprise common to all Southern races
being a marked feature among the Portuguese,
no combined effort was ever made to check its
devastating progress.

The garden has no definite boundary, no un-
sightly garden fence, which is the stumbling-block
of so many gardens. One can wander down

THE PALHEIRO 75

through the pine woods, or up the hill, where,
looking west, the whole bay and town of Funchal
lies spread out like a map before you, or, looking
east, the distant islands seem to provide a never-
ending variety to the view. Sometimes the islands
look dark against the sky, which means storms
ahead ; or sometimes they are wrapt in a soft haze,
which means a promise of fine weather; or the
setting sun may have caught and kissed them with
her last departing rays, and made them blush a rosy
pink, and one is tempted to linger and watch the
light gradually fade ; but it is time to turn home-
wards, as in these Southern latitudes twilight is
all too short, and darkness descends quickly over
the land.

10—2

CHAPTER VII

CAMACHA AND THE MOUNT

THE road past Palheiro leads, through pine woods
and long stretches of yellow broom and golden
gorse, to the little mountain village of Camacha.
Probably the village has become noted for its
flowers from the fact that many English people,
in the days when travelling was not so easy, used
to make this place their summer-quarters, instead of
returning to England, as they mostly do in these
days of quick travelling.

One garden I can recall which, though now
neglected, still shows how it was once well cared
for. Though the turf is no longer mown, and the
box hedges have lost some of their trimness, the
beds are still full of what were once treasured plants.
The rose-garden no longer sees the knife of the
pruner, but the trees grow and flower at their own
sweet will, in careless disorder. It is a very lovely
disorder, but it is always sad to see a garden once
tended with the greatest care fall into other hands,

76

WISTARIA, QUINTA DA LEVADA

CAMACHA AND THE MOUNT 77

who know nothing of the art of gardening. In
spring the garden was full of jonquils and narcissi,
and later on sparaxis and ixias. Near the house
great bushes of Romneya coulteri were covered
with their delicate white poppy -like flowers in
summer. The plant seemed to have become
thoroughly established, and threw up suckers in all
directions, even through the paths of hard-beaten
earth. From the grounds there are lovely views
of the sea ; and probably the garden looks its best
when the agapanthus sends up its flowers in
hundreds, and the hydrangea bushes are laden
with their bright blue blossoms — as blue as the
sky above or the sea below ; or, again, in October,
when the belladonna lilies are flowering in their
thousands.

I think the love of gardening must have spread
from these English gardens to the native cottage
gardens. The English probably encouraged the
cottagers to cultivate their plants, as from these
little gardens come all the flowers which are to
be bought in Funchal. A few flower-sellers will
trudge seven long weary miles down to the town,
nearly every day of the week, with a heavy basket
of flowers on their heads, which they have collected
from many a cottage garden. Naturally these

78 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

flowers are not of the best, and it is very much
to be regretted that some enterprising person does
not start a shop or garden where cut flowers and
plants could be bought. Many a time have I been
asked where, in this land of flowers, good cut flowers
can be procured, and the answer has had to be
" Nowhere." Would-be purchasers have to satisfy
themselves with the contents of these baskets which
are brought to the hotel and villa doors, and their
contents are far from satisfactory. Beyond arum
lilies, violets, and irises, a few indifferent daffodils
and poor roses, there is little to be got. The women
will complain that they have not a large sale for
flowers, and it is in vain that I have told them that
the real reason of it is that their flowers are so poor.
Nosegays of a mixture of a dozen flowers, in as many
colours, naturally find no market ; but good flowers,
I feel sure, would have a large and ready sale at
reasonable prices.

The little gardens at Camacha are gay with
common flowers : large bushes of white marguerites
and trees of the early-flowering red Rhododendron
arboreum give colour to the village even in early
spring, and in summer it is naturally much more
flowery. On every bank and hedgerow grow
bushes of hydrangeas, with their flaunting blue

CAMACHA AND THE MOUNT 79

blossoms, while great clumps of belladonna lilies
transform the whole landscape, and the country
seems to blush a beautiful rosy-pink.

The road between the two most popular summer
resorts, Camacha and the Mount, runs through pine
woods and long stretches of golden gorse to the
Pico d'Infante, from where a very fine panorama of
the Bay of Funchal is to be seen by turning aside
a few yards from the road. Just beyond this point
the path strikes the Caminho do Meio, another
steep road leading down to the town. Near the
eucalyptus and pine groves is the Quinta Bom
Successo, one of the most beautiful of the outlying
properties, which, from its elevation, escapes the
summer heat, while its sheltered and sunny aspect
makes it a pleasant residence through the winter
months. The large grounds extend to the edge of
the ravine, and a view of surpassing loveliness is
suddenly brought before one at the very end of the
terrace. The river roars and tumbles below, and
the ragged cliffs throw deep mysterious shadows,
while the more distant hills are wreathed with light
transparent mists. The sides of the cliff have been
transformed into a wild garden, as many plants
have strayed from the garden proper, and have
either seeded themselves or been cast over the

80 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

precipice as discarded plants, where they have
taken root and clung to life in some cranny
between the stones. Within the grounds a rocky
bank is covered with great stretches of the red
Aloe arbor escens, blue agapanthus and vast clumps
of belladonnas, all growing in careless profusion.
The garden has long been noted for its orchid-
houses, where plants have been brought from all
parts of the world, and also for the pine-houses,
from which hundreds of pines are cut annually.
Showing that, though at a comparatively high
altitude, the garden is sheltered and warm, two
natives of Burmah, the giant honeysuckle, which
in May is wreathed with its strong-scented trumpets
and the Burmese rose, both flourish, and in a few
years have made astonishingly rapid growth.

The road to the Little Curral leads past a grove
of Mimosa cornuta — which is smothered with its
fluffy balls of yellow blossoms in early spring — to
the valley itself. Every fresh turn of the steep
zigzag path opens out fresh views, and at every step
a new fern or little wild-flower is to be seen
nestling between the damp mossy stones. Down
near the bed of the river, which tumbles over great
boulders in a roaring torrent after heavy autumn or
winter rains, a large colony of arum lilies begin to

CAMACHA AND THE MOUNT 81

unfold their pure white flowers in November, and
continue in one unceasing succession until the late
spring or early summer. The path winds up the
opposite hill-side, through a group of peasants' huts,
where yapping dogs and begging children for a few
minutes mar the harmony and repose of the scene,
and then again the path enters another silent valley,
until the little village of the Mount is reached.
A colony of countless little quintas, which have
sprung up under the shelter and protection of the
Church of Nossa Senhora do Monte, has of late
years become a more favourite summer resort than
Camacha. The air may not be quite so pure and
cool, but the proximity of the town and the con-
venience of the funicular railway are, no doubt,
responsible for its growing popularity.

The principal villa, the Quinta do Monte,
formerly owned by an Englishman, has large
grounds, planted with many rare trees and shrubs.
The property has changed hands ; the house is
no longer inhabited, and the garden is falling
into decay. As the grounds were always more
pleasure-grounds than actual flower-gardens, it
has suffered less than a smaller garden, which
misses the personal care of its owner. The
camellia-trees are an immense size, and have out-

11

82 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

grown the little garden centring in a sundial,
in which they were, no doubt, originally planted as
small shrubs in beds with neat box hedges. Here
are to be found tree-ferns, long rows of agapanthus,
and a great plantation of mimosa-trees, which is quite
a feature in the landscape in early spring, when
they are laden with their balls of yellow blossoms.

In every direction in this district large clumps of
the foliage of the belladonna lilies are to be seen
in winter, on every bank, in every little garden :
giving promise of their glories to come in the
waning summer months. But in the grounds of
Quinta da Cova they are probably to be seen at
their very best, as here they have been more
collected together, and broad stretches of them
carpet the ground in thousands, beneath the
chestnut - trees. I remember once hearing a
traveller remark, who had passed through Madeira
in August, on his way to the Cape, and returned
again early in October, that when he first saw the
island "it was all blue," alluding to the effect of
the agapanthus and hydrangea blooms, and when
he returned it had changed, and was "all pink,"
from the masses of belladonna lilies.

CHAPTER VIII

A RAMBLE IN THE HIGHER ALTITUDES

THE Church of Nossa Senhora do Monte is the
starting-point of many an expedition made by those
who have a wish to see more of the beauties of the
island than can be done within the restricted area
of Funchal. Should the Metade Valley be the
point chosen, or the bleak Pico Ariero, with its
enchanting views, or should the traveller be bent
on a longer tour, and be proposing to make the
little village of Santa Anna his headquarters for
seeing the beautiful scenery of the north side
of the island, the road up to a height of some
4,500 feet will be the same. Gradually the steep
path winds its way through the fir woods, which
in the early morning while the dew is still on
them, exude a delicious aromatic scent, and the
bushes of the little red Fuchsia coccinea and Rosa
Benghalensis, with its small double pink flowers,
and the clumps of belladonnas on the banks, which
at first give the landscape the appearance of a

83 H_2

84 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

ruined garden, are left behind, and the vegetation
changes completely.

The pine woods consist chiefly of plantations of
Pinus maritima, or pinaster, which have been planted
for practical purposes, and have replaced the more
beautiful chestnut woods, which were wantonly
destroyed. These pines, being of rapid growth, are
soon cut down, and provide timber for firewood,
garden and vine trellises — in fact, are strictly
utilitarian. The roots and stumps are burnt on the
ground, and then possibly a crop of some sort is
sown before the fresh pine seed is put in. This
system has been the means of saving some of the
more valuable and beautiful native trees, which at
one time were ruthlessly felled ; and even the forests
in the interior, so necessary for the preservation of
the water-sources, were threatened with destruction.
Interspersed with the plantations of pine-trees are
broad stretches of the common broom, which is
sown extensively on the mountain-sides, either for
the purpose of being cut down for firing, or to be
burnt on the spot every five or seven years to
fertilize the ground, and cause it to produce a
single crop of wheat or batatas. The twigs and
more slender branches are commonly used for
making into faggots, and numbers of country-

A RAMBLE IN THE HIGHER ALTITUDES 85

people, especially young girls and children, within
reach of Funchal gain a scanty and hard-earned
living by bringing daily into the town, often from
great distances, bundles of giesta, as the natives
call it, to be used for heating ovens and igniting
the larger firewood. Doubtless the species was
originally introduced into Madeira, though it is
proved to have existed there for over 150 years,
and now is so extensively diffused that it appears
to be perfectly naturalized ; in spring it floods the
mountain-sides for miles with seas of its golden
blossoms. The very fine and delicate basket-work
peculiar to Madeira is manufactured from the
slender peeled twigs of the broom.

Gradually ascending to the higher altitude, those
who can tear their eyes away from the beautiful
view of the Bay of Funchal and the curiously
shaped hills above the villages of Santo Antonio
and Santo Amaro will notice that by the roadside,
in the moisture exuding from between the rocks,
the innumerable ferns and the common foxglove,
which at a lower altitude were so abundant,
will gradually vanish. The myrtles, formerly so
fine, are now unfortunately becoming almost
scarce, owing to their injudicious destruction for
ornamenting churches and adorning religious pro-

86 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

cessions, after a height of 3,000 feet are no longer
to be seen, and the country gradually becomes barren
of vegetation. Rocks of basalt and red tufa appear,
and the long sweeps of turf are only broken by
large bushes of a heath, called, I believe, Erica
scoparia, which, from being constantly eaten off by
the mountain sheep and goats, gets a curiously
distorted and stunted growth, though they eventu-
ally attain to a large size, and have such venerable-
looking stems that they are suggestive of the dwarfed
trees of the Japanese. Then comes the region
of the Vaccinium Maderense, or padifolium, which
varies in appearance according to the season. In
winter it has crimson foliage, then it bears waxy
bell-shaped blossoms, and in autumn is covered
with almost black berries. From the situation in
which it grows, exposed to the full blast of the
north wind which sweeps over that stretch of
country, it also has a bent and distorted appearance ;
and the dampness of the air — as, more often than
not, at this altitude a white mist envelops the land
— causes its stems to be covered with the Usnea
lichen, which waves from one tree to another like
masses of long green hair.

A turn in the road, at an altitude of some 4,800
feet, just beyond the rest-house at the bleak spot

A RAMBLE IN THE HIGHER ALTITUDES 87

known as the Poizo, reveals a grand chain of
mountains, with deep ravines running down to the
sea. The traveller's path will wind, in zigzag
fashion, down the steep mountain -side, and
gradually the Vacdnium will be left behind and
the beautiful ravine of Ribeiro Frio is entered —
thickly wooded with many varieties of the laurel
tribe, which in their turn have their stems clothed
with lichen.

To collectors of wild-flowers and ferns these
mountain expeditions are a never-ending joy, as,
according to the different seasons of the year,
innumerable treasures are to be found. A ramble
along the many levadas, or water-courses, will
well repay the collector, as at all seasons, ferns,
mosses, lichens, lycopodiums, and hosts of other
moisture-loving plants, are to be found ; while in
June and July, when the wild-flowers are in all
their glory, many rare and interesting plants
will appear. The levada which runs through
the Metade Valley was formerly the home of
the Orchis foliosa, the orchis known everywhere
as peculiar to Madeira, and its bright purple spikes
brightened the dense masses of green. Of late
years the plant has become scarce, probably
ruthlessly uprooted by passers-by, or in order to

88 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

be offered for sale in the town of Funchal. In
describing this beautiful ravine, over which towers
Pico Ruivo and the Torres, both some 6,000 feet
in height, Miss Taylor, who was a great authority
on native ferns, says : " Many rare and beautiful
ferns will be found, growing both close to the
running water and on the mountain-sides above the
levada. Trichomanes radicans and Hymenophyl-
lum Tunbridgense grow in great abundance ; also
Acrostichum squamosum, Pteris arguta, Asplenium
umbrosum, Woodwardia radicans, and numberless
others. Lichens of every sort and mosses — Lyco-
podium suberectum and Selaginella Kraussiana —
seem to fill up every available space and crevice,
and engage the hands and delight the mind of
the collector."

The more arid path to Ariero will not provide
such treasures for the collector, who must content
himself with the views of surpassing loveliness
down to the deep, wooded ravines, which as the
shadows begin to lengthen after midday, grow
more mysterious -looking, getting grander and
more beautiful as their deep blue turns to
purple; and gradually the haze, which is certain
to come before nightfall, fills the valleys and
blots out the sea beyond. The rare orchis

A RAMBLE IN THE HIGHER ALTITUDES 89

Goody era macrophytta is said to be found in
this district, with its beautiful pure white spikes,
and here and there thickets of a low-growing
indigenous, mountain ash, which in September
bears fragrant white flowers, to be followed by
brilliant scarlet berries in early winter.

From just beyond the rest-house at the Poizo
a long turf ride of some four or five miles leads
to the Lamaceiros, and is a welcome relief after
clattering over the eternal cobble-stones. A long
round, over country where seas of golden gorse,
when it is in bloom, delight the eye and nose
and make a beautiful foreground to the enchant-
ing views, leads eventually past wooded glens,
either over the Portella down to the village
of Santa Cruz, or through the village of Camacha
back to Funchal. A levada near the reservoir
at the Pico d'Assoma is again rich in ferns, and
Miss Taylor says : " The lover of ferns will perfectly
revel in the wealth of lovely Hymenophyllums
which clothe the stems of old laurels: here and
there a mass of rock, perfectly cushioned with
Hymenophyllum Tunbridgense ; here and there
a carpet of Hymenophyllum Wilsoni and Davallia
Canariensis and Polypodium vulgare growing in
masses on the trees. Nephrodium Oreopteris here

12

90 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

grows in great abundance, the one place besides

Pico Canario where it is to be found in Madeira.

Nephrodium Fraenesecii and Nephrodium dilatatum

here grow very large and perfect. The levada is

fringed with Asplenium monanthemum, Cystopteris

fragilis, and countless treasures. In July the Orchis

foliosa blooms in great spikes of bright mauve.

In this neighbourhood Acrostichum squamosum and

Trichomanes radicans grow well."

Probably nearly every levada in the island would
repay exploring, but some are very inaccessible and
require a steady head. One of the most beautiful
is certainly that of the Fajao dos Vinhaticos, which
could disappoint no one, and can be seen by staying
at the village of Santa Anna, or, better still, at the
engineer's house on the levada itself.

On the north side of the island the vegetation is
mostly the same. The rough and precipitous path
which winds through the Boa Ventura Valley up
to the Torrinhas Pass is clothed mostly with trees
belonging to the laurel tribe. From the Pass itself
some of the grandest views in the island are to
be seen. The grandeur of the rocks and the
splendid vegetation, the profusion of ferns and
wild -flowers, hare's-foot ferns hanging in long
fringes from the stems of the evergreen trees, the

A RAMBLE IN THE HIGHER ALTITUDES 91

variety of lichens, some of a deep orange colour,
make the long ascent an endless source of delight
to lovers of Nature, and, provided the weather is
fine and the valleys free of mist, I know no more
beautiful expedition.

If the traveller is returning to Funchal, he will
gradually descend from this high altitude (close on
6,000 feet), down past the Church of Nossa Senhora
do Livramento (Our Lady of Deliverance), through
the valley of the Grand Curral, up the steep zigzag
road opposite, and back to Funchal through the
village of Santo Antonio. The region of the
laurels and ferns, dripping with moisture, is left
behind when the traveller turns his back at the top
of the pass on the beautiful Boa Ventura Valley,
and he will gradually return to the region of the
heaths, pine woods, broom, and gorse.

When the village of Santo Antonio is reached, a
marked change in the vegetation will be noticed.
There are many Spanish chestnut-trees, whose fruit,
being very popular with the natives, is sold in bushels
in the town in autumn and early winter ; and, the
district being a very warm one, on the banks and
in the hedgerows by the wayside the prickly -pear,
agaves, and cactus will begin to appear, while large
clumps of pelargoniums, sweet-scented geraniums,

12—2

92 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

and lantanas have strayed from gardens and sown
themselves in every direction. In April the
beautiful Ornithogalum Arabicum, bearing its white
starry blossoms with jet-black centres, may be seen
growing wild, and I have been told that the pure
white Lilium candidum is to be found in a wild
state, though I have never come across it myself.

Between Santo Antonio and Santo Amaro the
earliest strawberries which are brought into the
market in Funchal are grown, making their
appearance in favourable seasons late in February,
though at that season they have little flavour, and
generally only find favour in the eyes of the tourists,
who are attracted by their inviting appearance as
they are offered for sale in little fancy baskets. If
some enterprising person would make some ex-
periments with growing the plants on rather steep
banks or slopes, as I have seen done elsewhere in
temperate climates, in order that the plants may
get the full benefit of the sun, I feel almost certain
that far better early strawberries could be obtained :
the sun would draw out that watery flavour from
which they suffer. But it is always hard to induce
a cultivator of any nationality to try new methods,
and in vain one preaches, and is only met with
pitying looks of incredulity and the remark that

A RAMBLE IN THE HIGHER ALTITUDES 93

the crop, whatever it happen to be, has always been
grown in the same way, however bad a way it may
be, by the present owner, his father and his grand-
father before him, and what was good enough for
them is good enough for him.

There are more vines grown here than in any
other neighbourhood, though, in consequence of the
numerous attacks of disease — two scourges having
several times threatened to completely destroy the
vineyards : the dreaded Phylloxera insect, which
attacks the roots of the vines, and also O'idium
Tuckeri, which settles on the leaves and fruit —
together with the depression in the wine trade,
vines are far less grown than formerly. Being
trained over corridors — or latadas, as they are called
in Madeira, pergolas, as they would be called in
Italy — the effect is not only very pretty, but seems
practical, as, being at a sufficient height from the
ground, a labourer can work underneath them, and
it is not uncommon to see another crop, growing
between the vines, though this practice of over-
stocking the ground is no doubt responsible for
the failure of many a crop. The vines are pruned
in February, though not to any great extent, and
in April start into growth, and soon clothe the
corridors with fresh young leaves and long twining

94 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

tendrils. The flowers come in May, and by August
the vines are laden with fruit ready for the harvest,
which in early seasons begins in the lower regions
late in August and continues, according to the
altitude, until October.

The cultivation of vines and bananas, which were
also grown at one time to some considerable extent,
has been almost entirely replaced by that of sugar-
cane, which, in consequence of the current rate
fixed by the Government being a very high one,
is at the present time a very profitable crop.

The cultivation of sugar-cane in the island dates
from very early times, as in Cadamosto's Voyages
he writes that he visited the island in 1445, only
twenty- six years after its discovery, and says :
" Zargo caused much sugar-cane to be planted in
the island, which has done well, and from which
they have made sugar." Mr. Yate Johnson says :
" The cane is thought to have been introduced from
Sicily about 1425, at the instance of Prince Henry.
The first plantation was made on the site of the
Cathedral, and did so well that the cane spread to
other localities. Matters proceeded so rapidly in
those days that in 1453 a mill was erected for crush-
ing the canes by means of water-power. . . Prince
Henry was a good business man, and knew what

A RAMBLE IN THE HIGHER ALTITUDES 95

he was about in making a bargain, for it was
stipulated that he should receive one-third of all
the sugar produced. Another stipulation was that
the mill was to be placed where it would not be an
annoyance to others, a regulation which, it is to be
regretted, is not enforced at the present day. It is
not known where this first mill was built, but it is
more likely to have been in Funchal than anywhere
else." By 1498 the production of sugar is said to
have increased to a very large extent, and then
came troubles in the trade. The introduction of
the cane to the West Indies and its extensive
cultivation there caused increasing competition in
European markets, and led to a heavy fall in price ;
but notwithstanding this, the cane continued to
increase in Madeira, and by the end of the fifteenth
century a large number of slaves were employed,
both as labourers on the land and in the mills,
which by now had increased in number to 120, on
the southern side of the island.

Early in the sixteenth century disease came, in
the form of a grub which eats into the cane, and
the plantations suffered severely from its ravages,
though many attempts were made to check its
depredations. Possibly this, combined with the
abundant production in the West Indies, caused

96 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

the sugar-growing in Madeira to become so un-
profitable that the mills dwindled down to only
three in number, and the cultivation of vines for a
time reigned supreme. This, in its turn, received
so severe a check through the grape diseases in
1852, that the cane was once more restored to
favour and again extensively planted. The cultiva-
tion increased, and new crushing machinery was
imported from England ; steam-power replaced the
more primitive methods of water-power, or working
the mills with bullocks only. After the revival,
for a time the cane was only used for its juice, to
be distilled into spirit (aquardente), but gradually,
new sugar -making machinery having been im-
ported, its manufacture was resumed and con-
tinued, until it has now reached the vast amount
of about 2,500 tons per annum.

Different kinds of cane have been introduced, and
if the cultivation is to be continued at the present
enormous extent, artificial manures will have to be
largely employed to prevent the soil becoming ex-
hausted. The cane — I may say luckily — cannot be
grown above an altitude of about 1,700 feet, or it
would seem as if there would be no end to its culti-
vation, which by no means adds to the beauty of
the island, and to my mind is an unsightly crop.

RED ALOES

CHAPTER IX

A RAMBLE ALONG THE COAST

THE vegetation along the seashore is naturally very
different to that at a higher altitude. Wherever
it has been found possible, the ground has been
brought into cultivation, even up to a height of
2,500 feet. Pressed by the ever-increasing popula-
tion, and the consequent need of more food for
more mouths, the country- people are continually
bringing into cultivation fresh patches of ground.
No minute piece seems to be wasted, and many an
odd corner and neglected patch which, from its
steepness or the poor quality of soil, escaped cultiva-
tion in years gone by, being rejected as incapable
of bringing any return for the vast labour which
has to be applied to it in the first instance, has been,
as it were, pressed into service of late years. The
larger expanses of cultivated ground have been
utilized for the profitable and ever-increasing sugar
crop, and these tiny terraces, when the stones have
been dug out or the rock blasted, and walls built

97 13

98 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

to support possibly only a few square yards of the
levelled ground, will grow a scanty crop of some
article of food. Thus bit by bit the cultivation
has crept up the hills, and has done much to mar
the beauty of the island. The peasants are very
primitive in their modes of cultivation, and as long
as the ground receives occasional irrigation during
the hot, dry months, and the surface is roughly
broken with their native hoe, it is all they consider
necessary, and are strongly averse to every kind of
innovation. It is small wonder that even in such a
climate the crop suffers ; the earth becomes im-
poverished and the vegetables produced are of a most
inferior quality. Their principal root crops are the
ordinary potato ; the sweet potato (Batata edulis), a
plant of the convolvulus family ; and the inhame,
a kind of yam. The sweet potato is one of their
staple articles of food, and the native appears to
consume an inordinately large quantity of batatas.
The tuberous roots yield three or even four crops
annually. In situations where the ground can be
kept constantly so supplied with moisture as to
be in a swampy condition, the inhame (Colocaria
antiquorum) is grown even up to a very high eleva-
tion, some 2,500 feet. It is quite different to the
West Indian yam, and belongs to the arum family ;

A RAMBLE ALONG THE COAST 99

indeed, its leaves at once suggest those of arum
lilies, only the roots are edible. These are another
most important article of food. Other crops are
haricot beans, the ripe seeds of our French beans,
whose young pods are nearly always in season ; but
with the Portuguese it is the ripe seeds (feijoens)
which are most valued for making their sopas, or
vegetable soups. Lupines, lentils, and the chick-
pea (the grao de bico of the Portuguese), broad-
beans, and peas, come into market in the winter
months, but are of very poor quality and singularly
tasteless, even when gathered young, which it is very
difficult to persuade the peasant cultivator to do.
That they need not be poor in quality and flavour,
if more pains were taken in their cultivation, is
proved by the fact that in private gardens where
fresh seed is imported from England or America
excellent peas can be grown. Another most im-
portant article of food is derived from several
varieties of the pumpkin tribe, and in summer over
every trellis, and even on the straw roofs of the
peasants' huts, the gourd-bearing plants are trained,
and their aboboras, as they are called, are care-
fully tended. Mr. Lowe writes : " For at least six
months in the year (August to January) the
aboboras constitute almost one-third of the daily

13—2

100 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

nourishment of all classes ; and from their facility
of combination by boiling with fatty substances,
together with their large supply of saccharine,
besides their farinaceous material, afford a most
nutritious food, evinced by the surprising muscular
power of the Madeiran peasantry." The pear-
shaped, green, wrinkled fruit called pepinella
(Secfiium edule), or chou-chou by the English, is
not unlike a cucumber, and yields a constant supply
in the winter months. Spinach, cabbages, and cauli-
flowers are, I believe, only grown for the require-
ments of the English, and to provision the passing
ships, and with these the list of vegetables closes —
and somehow is a disappointing one — and many an
English person longs for the fresh vegetables from
a home-garden.

Nor is the list of fruits a long one. The orange-
tree has practically died out. The apathy of the
native made him consider the task of fighting
the disease called scale, induced by an insect,
too arduous a one, as constant washing of the
trees is necessary to prevent its ravages ; and he
remained content to see all the orange-groves
disappear, and the fruit is now imported from
the Azores, Portugal, and even South America.
At one time, we are told, the vast banana planta-

A RAMBLE ALONG THE COAST 101

tions gave quite a tropical aspect to the gardens
about Funchal ; they have been largely replaced of
late years by sugar-cane, and are no longer so
extensively cultivated as the facilities due to
cold storage on ships flooded the European
market with bananas of the West Indies. Several
varieties are grown, but the fruit of the silver
banana, a tall growing kind, is most prized and
fetches a higher price than that of the dwarf
Musa CavendishiL In an old account of Madeira,
printed in Astley's " General Collection of Voyages
and Travels," the following curious account of
the plant appears : " The banana is in singular
esteem and even veneration, being reckoned for
its deliciousness the forbidden fruit. To confirm
this surmise they allege the size of its leaves.
It is considered almost a crime to cut this fruit
with a knife, because after dissection it gives a
faint similitude of a crucifix ; and this they say
is to wound Christ's sacred image."

Sufficient lemons and citrons are grown to
supply the requirements of the island. The
custard apple, Anona cherimolia, ranks high
among the island fruits, and is hailed with delight
when it first appears in the market in late autumn.
In common with the guava, it was originally

102 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

imported from America ; while the mango, whose
fruit leaves room for much improvement, came
from India. Guavas are extensively used, either
uncooked, stewed, or possibly in the most favourite
form, made into a clear, transparent jelly. The
loquat bears abundantly, and as it is very readily
increased from seed, has become a very common
tree, though I do not consider the fruit to be as
good as those of the Italian loquats. The pittanga,
mentioned previously, being the fruit of a kind of
myrtle, Eugenia Braziliensis, and the avocado pear,
an insipid fruit, generally eaten with pepper and
salt, are both, to my mind, fruits which require an
acquired taste in order to appreciate them. Among
European fruits, the best is possibly the fig, of
which there are several varieties, the most popular
having a nearly black fruit. The trees, which grow
mostly near the seashore, assume curiously distorted
and stunted shapes, and spring from the clefts in the
rocks, often overhanging the sea. They are par-
ticularly noticeable on the road between Funchal
and the seaside village of Camara do Lobos.
Granadillos, the fruit of different varieties of
passion-flowers, some having purple fruit, others
orange, suggest an exaggerated gooseberry, as the
fruit when cut has much the same appearance, with

102 OF MADEIRA

the mango, whose

iprovement, came

•y used, either

-it favourite

v. The

tdily

?non

e as

The pittanga,
kind of

and

juire an
tte them. Among

ALMOND BLOSSOM

meties, the most popular
t nearly black lVu.it The trees, which grow

!y near the seashore, assume curiously distorted
and stunted shapes, and spring from t the

rocks, often overhanging th< par-

ticularly noticeable on the road be
and the seaside villag a&Htfft

Grauadillos, the fru

on-tiowers, some , others

orange, suggest an exagv , the

fruit wjien cut has niu ppearance, with

A RAMBLE ALONG THE COAST 103

large seeds embedded in a pulpy consistency, The
insipid fruit of the common cactus, or prickly-
pear, is much relished by the natives in hot
weather, who, I was assured, gather it in the early
morning, and before handling it, roll it about
under their callous feet in a tub of water to get
rid of the spines. The Cape gooseberry, the fruit
of Physalis Peruviana, is prized for making pre-
serves, and the plant has become naturalized.
Many of our European fruits are cultivated, but
produce fruit of a very inferior quality, the trees
being seldom, if ever, pruned, and receiving little
attention ; but apples, pears, plums, apricots, and
peaches, all come into the market in the course
of the summer and autumn, while strawberries
continue in bearing from the end of March till
September.

The fruit-trees are more valued for the beauty of
their blossoms than their fruit by the English as a
rule ; and in spring, when the peach and apricot
trees are laden with their pink blossoms, the
country near the seashore, especially on the east
side of the town, is very beautiful. The rocky
nature of the ground in many places has made
cultivation impossible, and stretches remain where
the natural rock, covered with crustaceous lichens,

104 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

appears. The shallow soil only provides a home
for cactuses, which grow to an immense size ; but
now and then a peach-tree or a little colony of
almond-trees have found sufficient soil in which
to get a hold. The trees may be twisted and
distorted, storm-bent by the strong winds that
sweep in from the Atlantic, but for that reason
are all the more picturesque; while here and
there a group of stone-pines, or a group of
cypresses — sentinels, guarding a little silent grave-
yard— give variety to the landscape, and stand
out in admirable contrast to the deep blue sea
below. Such plants as an occasional Euphorbia
piscatoria, a cheiranthus, a lavender, (Lavandula
pinnatd), the Madeira stock (Mathiola Maderensis],
some of the sedums, Sonchus pirmatus, of the sow-
thistle family, a native of the island, and a long list
of other more or less insignificant wild-flowers, may
all be noticed. But by far the most beautiful
and showy is the Echium fastuosum, pride of
Madeira, which is to be seen on the cliffs along
the New Road, though never with as large and
perfect heads of bloom, or so deep in colour, as
when cultivated. Another variety, candicans, has
flowers of a darker blue, but is only to be found in
the hills. Among this rough ground, and unfortu-

PRIDE OF MADEIRA AND DAISIES

A RAMBLE ALONG THE COAST 105

nately in many a ravine and wall which was
formerly clad with ferns and plants of a far more
interesting nature, the rank-growing Eupatorium
adenophorum seems to have taken complete
possession, and threatens to become a very
serious eyesore and enemy to the natural vegeta-
tion. The Portuguese have christened it Abun-
dancia, and it is well named, as there seems to be
no end to its abundance ; its dirty-coloured fluffy
heads of blossom spread their seed in all directions.
It was an evil day when it was first introduced to
the island as a treasure, carefully installed in a pot.
Other horticultural pests have been introduced in
the same way, such as the rosy purple Oxalis
venusta, whose little flowers are pretty enough in
their way, but its far-spreading roots have become
a most troublesome weed in cultivated ground ; and
the yellow double-flowered Oocalis cornuta is even
worse, taking complete possession in some places of
any sort of grass-land. The dreaded coco, a grass
growing from a tiny bulb, which throws out long
and far-reaching roots, runs in the ground, till
once thoroughly established, there is no end to it ;
this also was imported, probably accidentally, not
much more than twenty years ago. The most
serious of all pests in the island, the tiny black

14

106 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

ants, the despair of house-keepers, fruit-growers
and gardeners alike, were also imported from
Brazil, and have gradually spread from the lower
to the higher altitudes, until now I believe there
is scarcely a district left in the island which is free
from their ravages.

THE PURPLE BOUGAINVILLEA

CHAPTER X

CREEPERS

THE year opens in Madeira with a wealth of
blossom, as in the month of January the bougain-
villeas, for which Madeira is so justly famous, will
be in all their flaunting beauty. It is true that the
lilac-coloured Bougainvillea glabra will have already
shed most of its blossoms, as it is a summer-flower-
ing creeper, but it is replaced by so many other
varieties that its pale beauty is forgotten. The
brick-red coloured Bougainvillea spectabilis — which
must have the full force of the sun upon it in order
to bring out its colour to the best advantage, being
apt otherwise to look a false colour — when grown
over pergolas, or corridors as they are called in
Madeira, or allowed to wander at will over a wall
or bank, provides a gorgeous mass of colour. I
had seen bougainvilleas in other countries, but only
grown against walls, and closely cropped by shears,
in order that the wood might be sufficiently ripened
by the heat of the summer to insure its wealth of

107 14—2

108 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

blossoms. Here such care is not necessary, and
the natural beauty of the plant can be seen to
full advantage where it has escaped the ruth-
less shears of the Portuguese gardener. Branches
of blossom, ten, fifteen, or even twenty feet
long, show the strength with which the plant
grows ; in fact, many a splendid specimen has
had to be sacrificed, for fear it should undermine
a terrace-wall or shake the very foundations of a
house.

To the landscape gardener who is fastidious as to
the scheme of colouring in his garden, the placing
of all the varieties of bougainvillea (called after the
French navigator, De Bougainville) forms one
of his chief difficulties. Each in itself seems too
beautiful to be discarded ; but, unless the garden
is of considerable extent, I would recommend the
owner of the garden to harden his heart and make
his choice of the colour he prefers and stick to it,
only growing the one variety in some great mass,
be it as the gorgeous canopy of his corridor, or
clothing his garden-wall.

Many persons give the palm for beauty to the
deep magenta variety, speciosa, as it stands alone
for colour. In all the kingdom of flowers I know
no other blossom of the same tone of colour ; it is

CREEPERS 109

a thing apart, this royal purple flower. No one
who has seen the plant which covers the cliff below
the fort can ever forget its beauty. Seen from
the sea, it stands out like a purple rock in the
middle of the city. By the middle of January
it will be in all its gaudy, garish splendour, the
admired of all beholders.

It can well be imagined how these two varieties —
the one brick-red, the other deep magenta — would
strike a jarring note in any garden if growrn side by
side, or even within sight of each other. And do
not imagine that Madeira only boasts of these two
coloured bougainvilleas in its winter season. From
these two have sprung many others — seedlings, no
doubt, hybridized in a country where the heat of
the sun will ripen most seeds. So now there are
rosy reds, lighter or darker, to choose from, shading
through a range of colour which, like the beauty of
its parents, seems to stand alone.

The plant has, I consider, two enemies in the
island. One is the ordinary uneducated Portuguese
gardener, who seems to think that the art of garden-
ing consists in so closely pruning a creeper or shrub
that all the natural grace and beauty of the plant is
lost for ever, as often as not choosing the moment
for this cruel treatment when the plant is in full

110 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

flower. Though Nature has done her best to
protect the plant from the hand of man, by giving
it long, hooked thorns, which are exceedingly
sharp, and, I believe, somewhat poisonous, even
this has not been sufficient, and many a beautiful
specimen have I seen maimed and dwarfed beyond
repair in a few hours by an ignorant and over-
zealous gardener. Its second enemy is rats, which
unfortunately have a great love for the bark
on the stems of old plants, and many a plant
narrowly escapes destruction at their hands, or
rather teeth.

The second place in the list of creepers for the
New Year must be given to the flaming orange
Bignonia venusta, a native of South America, with
its dense clusters of finger-shaped flowers. This
has now become the commonest of all creepers in
Madeira, and there is hardly a road in the neigh-
bourhood of Funchal where all through the month
of January there is not a stretch of wall bearing
its gaudy burden, or a mirante (as the arbour or
summer-house dear to the hearts of the Portuguese
is called) without its roof of golden blossoms. There
is a long list of bignonias and tecomas — a family so
closely allied to each other as to be almost united —
whose full beauty is for a later season ; and only

B1GNON1A VENUSTA

CREEPERS 111

stray blossoms of the deep red Bignonia cherare,
with its long yellow-throated trumpets, appear in
the winter months, but sufficient to give promise
of glories to come in the month of April.

In the same month the close-growing Tecoma
flava will become wreathed with its golden-yellow
trumpet flowers, clothing many a wall and straying
across tiled roofs, as it is so neat and clinging in its
habit that it never becomes so heavy a mass as
to damage buildings. Its companion at the same
season is Tecoma Lindleyana, bearing large mauve
trumpet flowers, with a throat of a lighter shade.
The individual flowers are of extremely delicate
texture, and are beautifully veined with a slightly
darker shade of purple. Yet another tecoma un-
furls its blossoms late in the month of April, but is
not so often met with as the two former varieties,
possibly because the plant, when out of flower,
presents rather an unsightly and straggling appear-
ance ; but no one can fail to admire the pure
white and yellow throated blossoms of this Tecoma
Micheliensis, as it is most commonly called, though
I believe it has a second, and possibly more correct,
name.

For May and June is reserved, probably, the
most beautiful of all the tecomas, jasminoides. The

112 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

plant is an ornament at all seasons ; its beautiful
glabrous foliage seems to retain its freshness at all
seasons of the year, and when the plant is covered
with its bunches of large white blossoms, each with
its deep red-purple throat, which seems to reflect a
shade of purple on to the white petals, it is one of
the most beautiful of all creepers.

From the list of winter creepers the Thunbergia
laurifolia, with its bunches of grey-blue gloxinia-
shaped blossoms, cannot be omitted ; though the
beauty of the plant is somewhat spoilt by the habit
of the dead blossoms hanging on instead of falling,
and marring, by their brown, shrivelled appearance,
all the freshness of the newly developed flowers.
The plant always recalls to my mind the reason
given by the Japanese for not admiring the national
flower of England — the rose — as they complain that
it clings with ungraceful tenacity to life, as though
loath or afraid to die, preferring to rot on its stem
rather than drop untimely; unlike the blossoms
of spring, ever ready to depart life at the call of
Nature. Such is certainly the case with thunbergia.
The creeper is also a dangerous poacher, and, unless
kept within bounds, will soon smother and over-
whelm any shrub or tree that it may take possession
of, though never in Madeira attaining to the vast

CREEPERS 113

proportions that it assumes in Ceylon or other
tropical countries, where it takes possession of even
the tallest forest-trees, and hangs its long trailers
from one tree to another, and on and on again, in
one dense tangle. The white variety does not seem
to have been introduced to Madeira, and its pure
white blossoms recall gardens in St. Vincent and
other West Indian islands.

Yet another creeper whose flowering season
belongs to the winter months is the scarlet passion-
flower, Passiflora coccinea. By the end of January
the plant will be covered with a few fully opened
flowers, many half-developed flowers and innumer-
able buds giving promise of its future splendour.
On first acquaintance, one is deceived into thinking
that in a few days' time the plant will be a sheet of
scarlet blossoms, but such is not the case : each
individual flower is short-lived, and by the time
the half-developed blossoms have opened, the fully
expanded blooms of yesterday have vanished. Thus
its flowering season is a prolonged one, but it never
attains to any very gaudy splendour.

By the last days of March the racemes of that
most beautiful of all creepers, Wistaria chinensis, or
sinensis, will have begun to lengthen, and gradually
clothe the whole plant with a pale purple canopy.

15

114 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

The vine — as it is called the grape-flower vine,
from the resemblance of its blossoms to a bunch of
grapes — is a native of China and Japan, and also
of parts of North America, which accounts for the
fact that it received the name of wistaria (by which
it is known all over the Western world) from one
Caspar Wistar, a medical professor in the University
of Pennsylvania. In Japan the plant is known as
fuji, and is so universally admired that, in common
with many other flowers, it is made the excuse for
many a flower-feast, when hundreds, thousands,
and even tens of thousands of pleasure-seekers will
hold their revels, or sit quietly sipping their tea
under a roof of the royal fuji. Though in Madeira
it is not the fashion of the country to hold flower-
feasts, or to make flowers the theme of poems and
plays, or to regard wistaria as an emblem of gentle-
ness and obedience, as is the case in its Eastern
home, yet in this land of its adoption it comes in
for its full share of admiration. Corridors and walls
which have been passed by unnoticed through the
winter months, having been only clad with the
long, bare, leafless branches, the last leaves having
fallen early in December, suddenly become trans-
formed, and for a few short days — all too short,
alas ! — become the centre of attraction in the

CREEPERS 115

garden. Like in Japan, the wistaria season begins
with the white wistaria, which has been christened
in the Western world Wistaria Japonica, and
"it would seem as though this modest white
wistaria had been allowed by Nature to bloom
so early, for fear she should be overlooked and
not appreciated when her more showy successor
flings her purple mantle over the land." There
are good specimens of this early white variety in
the gardens of the Quinta da Levada and the
Quinta do Val.

The variety known as Wistaria multijuga, for
which Japan is so justly famous, as it appears to be
the only country where its full beauty can be seen,
has been introduced with but little success to the
island. It is true that it will grow, and grow
strong, but its long racemes of thin, pale, washed-
out-looking flowers are but a sorry sight to those
who have ever seen the far-famed Kameido Temple
grounds in Tokyo, when the vines, with their long
purple tassels, often over three feet in length,
clothe the long trellises and almost smother the
guests who sit feasting beneath them, gazing across
at the long vista of mauve blossoms reflected in the
water below. But even in Japan this far-famed
multijuga variety is only to be met with in certain

15—2

116 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

districts and as a cultivated form, and is never seen
clambering from tree to tree in a wild state, like
the chinensis variety. The wistaria season closes as
well as opens with a white-flowered form both in
Japan and Madeira, as the variety known as macro-
botrys, with its very long racemes of white blossoms,
prolongs the beauty of the fuji feast at the cele-
brated Kameido Temple ; and here in Madeira,
though only one or two plants of it exist, it is the
last to retain its beauty.

The summer months will have their own creepers,
though not such showy ones as the winter and
spring months ; but if they are lacking in colour,
many of them atone for that by their delicious
fragrance. To these belong Rhyncospermum jas-
minoides, or Trachelospermum, as I believe it is
more correctly called, whose white starry flowers
fill the whole air with their almost overpower-
ing scent. The plant is a native of China and
Japan, where it may be seen growing in a per-
fectly wild state in hedgerows. There is another
variety called angustifolium whose blossoms are
much the same, but the foliage differs, and this
kind is said to prove hardy when grown against a
wall in the South of England. The well-known
Stephanotis floribunda, called in its native country

CREEPERS 117

the Madagascar chaplet flower, unfurls its heavy-
scented waxy blossoms in the summer months.
Allamanda schotii, hoyas, with their clusters of
waxy red blossoms, mandevilleas, and hosts of
others, are seldom seen in their beauty by the
English owners of gardens.

CHAPTER XI

TREES AND SHRUBS

THE list of indigenous and naturalized trees and
shrubs growing in Madeira is such a long and
varied one that it is not surprising that Captain
Cook, in his account of his first voyage, should
have said : " Nature has been so liberal in her gifts
to Madeira. The soil is so rich, and there is such
a variety of climate, that there is scarcely any
article, either of the necessaries or luxuries of life,
which could not be cultivated there."

The place of honour among the island trees must
be given to those belonging to the laurel tribe,
of which there are a great number, and splendid
specimens still remain in the country, survivors of
the wholesale destruction of the primeval forests.
To this tribe belongs the til, one of the most
beautiful of evergreen trees, its shiny green leaves
contrasting admirably with the light grey bark of
its stems. The old trees grow to a very large size,
and in the Boa Ventura Valley and along the road

118

TREES AND SHRUBS 119

to Sao Vincente there remain some grand old
specimens, the immense girth of whose trunks
speaks for itself of their great age. The true name
of this so-called laurel appears to have been a
matter of some uncertainty, as Miss Taylor, in
" Madeira : Its Scenery, and How to See It," classes
it as Oreodaphne feet ens, describing it as "the
grandest of native trees "; while Mr. Bowdick, in
1823, says : " The til has been confounded with
Laurus fastens, from the strong, disagreeable odour
of the wood when first cut. It is very valuable for
its timber, being extremely hard and tough. It
would appear that the Portuguese call both Laurus
fcetens and Laurus cupuleris til, as they say there
are two kinds of til, and both are equally fetid."
In the damper regions beautiful lichens grow
luxuriantly on the stems of the trees, and ferns
have found a home in the cracks of the bark. The
value of its timber has no doubt been responsible
for the destruction of the trees. When polished, the
wood is of a very dark colour, almost as black as
ebony.

The vinhatico, whose wood is the mahogany of
Madeira and closely resembles it, is another of the
native trees, and again I find it classed as Laurus
indica by Mr. Bowdick, who describes it as one of

120 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

the island's most valuable products, while Miss
Taylor describes it asPersea indica. The wood, when
cut, is of a deep red colour before being polished.
It is a fine forest tree, and has, as a rule, light
green foliage, though it occasionally turns crimson.
It has given its name to one of the most beautiful
bits of scenery in the island, as the Levada dos
Vinhaticos, running above the village of Santa Anna,
passes through some of the grandest scenery in
Madeira. Professor Piazzi Smyth has gone so far
as to assert, in " Madeira Spectroscopic," that some
of the largest ships of the Spanish Armada were
either built of, or internally decorated with, the
wood of the tils and vinhaticos of Madeira. This
would appear to be a flight of imagination, or a
revelation of the learned man's inner consciousness,
as it is difficult, if not impossible, to find any
grounds for such an assertion, there being no docu-
ment extant stating what timber was employed for
the building of that celebrated fleet.

The laurel familiar to us under the name of
Portugal laurel, Cerasus lusitanica, assumes the
proportions of forest trees, and when I saw it in
spring, covered with its long racemes of creamy-
white flowers, it quickly dispelled the aversion
with which I had always regarded the stumpy,

TREES AND SHRUBS 121

blackened specimens pining under the smoky
atmosphere of suburban shrubberies.

Laurus Canariensis is a fragrant form of laurel,
and the country-people extract oil from its yellow
berries.

Picconia excelsa^ the Pao branco of the Portu-
guese, is generally to be found in the same districts
as the til-trees, and attains to a height of forty
or fifty feet. Its hard, heavy white wood, being
in great demand for the keels of boats, is very
valuable. Like many other native trees, it is for
this very reason rapidly becoming scarce, as its
destroyers, having no thought for the future, omit
to cultivate it from seed, which grows readily.

The Clethra arborea, or lily of the valley tree, as it
is called by the English, on account of the resem-
blance of its spikes of creamy- white flowers to those
of a lily of the valley, fills the whole air with its
delicious though somewhat heavy fragrance when
the tree is in flower in summer. Yet another
fragrant tree peculiar to Madeira is the Pittosporum
coriaceum, which has been christened the incense-
tree, as early in April the air, especially near
sundown, is filled with the almost overpowering
scent of its clusters of small greenish -white flowers.
The bark is very smooth and even, and of a light

16

*

FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

ash colour. The tree is now somewhat rare in its
natural state, but is frequently seen in gardens,
where it has no doubt been transplanted from its
original home among the rocks, as Mr. Lowe, in
his ''Flora of Madeira," remarks how he only noticed
it growing on high rocks or in inaccessible places.

One of the first trees which is sure to strike the
the eye of the new-comer is the dragon-tree, or
Draccena draco, on account of its peculiar growth.
From having been a common tree on the island it
has now become a rare one in its native state ; in
fact, the only ones I have ever seen under those con-
ditions are a few sole survivors on the rocks beyond
the Brazen Head, where formerly they grew in
great numbers. Now by their quaint growth they
give a distinctive feature to many a garden, and it
is consoling to know that they are easily raised
from seed. Mr. Bowdick, in writing of the tree,
says : " The dragon-tree was considered by Hum-
boldt as exclusively indigenous to India, but I am
inclined to think it is also natural to Porto Santo,
and perhaps to Madeira — not from the few speci-
mens which now remain on these islands, but from
the account of Cadamosto, who visited Porto Santo
in 1445, and writes that the dragon-trees of Porto
Santo were so large that fishing-boats capable of

TREES AND SHRUBS 123

containing six or seven men were made out of the
trunks, and that the inhabitants fattened their pigs
on the fruit ; but he adds that so many boats,
shields, and corn-measures had been made out of
them, that even in his time there was scarcely a
dragon-tree to be seen in the island."

The stem exudes a gum, and the following
account of the means of collecting it is taken from
a Portuguese account of " The Discovery of
Madeira," written in 1750 : " All over the island
grows a tree from which the dragon's blood is
procured. This is performed by making incisions
in the bark, from whence the gum issues very
plentifully into pots hung upon the branches to
receive it. The people use it as a sovereign remedy
for bruises, to which they are very much exposed
by traversing their rocky country ; and this, with
one panacea more, completes their whole materia
medica — that is, balsam of Peru, imported from the
Brazils in small gourds by their annual ships.
These two, they imagine, have power to cure almost
all disorders, especially those that are external."

Among other native trees, the beautiful Taocus
baccata and the Juniperus oxycedrus, with its great
spreading silvery -green branches, cannot be omitted.
The former has become almost extinct, and the

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FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

jumper is also becoming rare, from the reckless
way in which the trees have been cut to be used
for torches. The fragrant red wood is split into
lengths, and several bound together, for this pur-
pose. In gardens their dense growth makes them
admirably suited to form an arbour, in the absence
of the ubiquitous mirante, as they provide shelter
from the wind and perfect shade.

Another evergreen tree, which, though not a
native tree, is very commonly to be seen in and
about the town of Funchal, is the Ficus comosa,
which, as its name implies, is a beautiful tree,
though, from its having such far-spreading hungry
roots, it is more suited to the roadside than to
gardens. A peculiarity of the tree is the slender-
ness of its stem in comparison to the immense
length and weight of its very spreading branches ;
its bark is a very light grey colour, and is in
admirable contrast to the very smooth and shining
leaves, which are dark green above and pale
beneath, produced in masses on the slender rather
hanging branchlets. Two very fine specimens of
these trees stand alone on the Rodondo, near the
Quinta das Cruzes, from where a very fine view of
the town is to be seen from under their immense
spreading branches.

JACKARANDA-TREE.

TREES AND SHRUBS 125

The camphor-trees are at their best in spring,
when they are covered with their delicate young
green shoots, generally of a very light green, but
occasionally having brilliant red shoots. The trees
attain to a large size, though not assuming the
gigantic proportions which they reach in their
native land, Japan. That most uninteresting of
all trees — the plane-tree — has been planted along
the beds of the rivers in the town ; and the
oaks are in almost perpetual foliage, as the young
leaves appear before the old ones have really
fallen.

Grrevillea robusta is common in gardens, where,
having shed its leaves in winter, the trees are showy
in the early summer months, being covered with
yellow flowers ; but the palm for flowering trees
must be given to the Jacaranda mimosafolia, a
native of Brazil. Having also shed its long fern-
like foliage in the late winter months, early in May
the tree bursts into a cloud of blue blossoms, almost
as blue as the sky above. The tree is a fairly
common one in and about Funchal, and the " blue
trees," as they are generally called, are the admired
of all beholders during the few weeks they are in
bloom. Nature has done well in ordaining that the
foliage should fall before the tree blossoms, as the

126 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

full beauty of the flower is thus seen unshrouded
by leaves.

The list of flowering trees is a long one, but I
cannot help mentioning a few others which are
ornaments to the gardens when in bloom. The
dark red of the Schotia speciosa blossoms also adorn
a leafless tree. The tree, which was called after a
Dutchman, one Richard van der Schot, in its
native country — subtropical Africa — is commonly
known as the Kaffir bean- tree, no doubt because its
blossoms are more suggestive of bunches of red
seeds or beans than flowers.

There are a few specimens of the gorgeous
Poinciana regia, which flowers in summer ; its
peculiar flat, spreading branches are easily recog-
nized. No one who has ever seen these magnificent
trees in all their gaudy splendour in tropical regions
can ever forget their beauty. They deserve their
name, the royal peacock flower, though they are
more commonly known as flamboyant-trees, from
the likeness of their leafless branches, clad with
brilliant orange-red nasturtium-like blossoms, to
flaming torches. In Madeira the tree does not
attain to its full beauty, as possibly the difference
between the climate of its native home — Madagascar
— and that of Madeira is too great. Here the less

TREES AND SHRUBS 127

showy variety, known as Poinciana pulcherrima,
thrives better.

At the same season the uncouth growth of
the bare and leafless frangipani or plumeria trees
bursts into blossom — white, cream-coloured, or pale
pink — and fills the air with its heavy fragrance,
recalling the oppressive, almost stifling, atmosphere
of Buddhist temples in Ceylon, where frangipani
blossoms are almost regarded as sacred to Buddha,
and are always called "temple flowers."

Of the coral-trees there are several varieties :
Erythrina corallodendron, a native of the West
Indies, has large spikes of deep red blossoms on
leafless light grey stems ; and Erythrina crista-
galli, a native of Brazil, also bears scarlet blossoms.
Besides the flowering trees, there are so many
shrubs which contribute such a wealth of colour to
the gardens, especially in the winter months, that
it is hard to decide which are most worthy of notice.
The gaudy orange-coloured Streptosolen Jamesonii,
which was only introduced into Madeira a com-
paratively short time ago, has now become one of
the commonest, but none the less beautiful, of
winter-flowering shrubs. Like many other plants
which 1 had only known pining in the unfavourable
atmosphere of an English greenhouse, it is almost

128 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

impossible to recognize the streptosolen of the green-
house, with its dull orange and yellow blossoms, as
the same plant when grown in the sunshine of
Madeira. The soil is no doubt partly responsible
for the difference in colour — a fact I have noticed
with many other plants, but certainly in the case
of streptosolen the change is most remarkable — and
the intense brilliancy of its large heads of blossom
attract the attention of all new-comers to the
island. The shrub is sometimes known as JSrowallia
Jamesonii ; and a blue variety which has lately
been introduced from the Cape seemed to closely
resemble the family of browallias. Should it prove
to have as vigorous a constitution as the orange
variety, it will be another great acquisition to the
island, as its blossoms are of a deep clear blue.

Astrapcea pendiftora, or tassel-tree, as it is often
called, from the resemblance of its great balls
of pink blossoms hanging on a long slender
stalk, has handsome foliage, and assumes the
proportions of a large shrub or small tree in a short
time, as it appears to be of very rapid growth. 1 find
it difficult to share the almost universal admiration
that it awakens when in flower, as its beauty is
much marred by the tenacious habit of its dead
blossoms, which cling to life to the bitter end, and

TREES AND SHRUBS 129

spoil all the freshness of the newly developed
blossoms. The balls of blossom, in shape remind-
ing one of huge guelder roses, start by being a
greenish-white, which gradually turns to a deep
dull pink, and in death to a most unsightly brown.
Astrapcea viscaria attains to the size of a large
tree, and in April bears a burden of pink blossoms,
also in round balls ; it is a native of Madagascar,
which seems to be the home of so many of the
most beautiful flowering trees.

Among purple flowering shrubs, for the beauty of
its individual flowers and purity of colour, Lasian-
dra or Pleroma macrantha, with its large deep violet-
purple blossoms, deserves a place in every garden.
The plant cannot be reckoned amongst the most
showy of the flowering shrubs, as it does not bear
many blossoms fully expanded at the same time,
though, as the flowers are very freely produced at
the ends of the branchlets, its flowering season is a
prolonged one. The plant appears to be a native of
Brazil, which is another home of many of the most
beautiful of flowering shrubs.

Wigandia macrophylla attains to the size of a
small tree ; its large, loose heads of lilac-purple
flowers, somewhat resembling paulonia blossoms,
and its handsome foliage, combine to make it

17

130 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

a most ornamental plant and a valuable acquisi-
tion all through the winter and early spring. To
Brazil we owe another favourite shrub, Frandscea
latifolia, as it is commonly called, though it appears
to belong to the Brunsfelsias, a family of shrubs
called after one Otto Brunsfels, who was first a
Carthusian monk and afterwards a physician. The
clear lilac blossoms have a distinct whitish eye,
and as they fade, turn to a greyish-white, so the
shrub appears to bear white and lilac blossoms at
the same time. The blossoms are deliciously
fragrant, though many people consider their scent
to be too strong and overpowering. A well-grown
specimen attains to eight or ten feet, and has
pleasing shiny green foliage.

The light crimson-flowered Hibiscus rosa sinensis,
which ornaments most gardens in tropical or sub-
tropical regions, has also found a home in Madeira,
and the long white trumpet-flowering Brugmansia
suaveolens, more commonly called daturas, natives
of Mexico, have found so congenial a home that the
shrub may almost be considered to have become
naturalized. Growing at the bottom of many a
ravine rich in vegetation, the shrub will appear to be
in a perfectly wild state, bearing a fresh crop of
leaves and blossoms with every new moon, and filling
the air at nightfall with their heavy scent.

TREES AND SHRUBS 131

The blossoms of the daturas are known as bellas
noites by the Portuguese, though the night-scented
flowers of Cestrum vespertinum seem to share
the name with them ; occasionally, it is true, the
latter are deemed masculine, and are therefore
called boas noites. The following interesting
description of Brugmansia or Datura suaveolens is
taken from Mr. Lowe's "Flora of Madeira," written
in 1857 : " The flowers are slightly fragrant by day,
but much more powerfully and diflusedly so after
sunset and through the night, when, by moonlight,
they display an almost radiant or phosphorescent
snowy- whiteness, and expand more fully, falling into
elegant thick horizontal rows or flounces on the
trees or bushes. Nothing can exceed their grace
and loveliness when in full luxuriance and perfec-
tion, which it may be said to attain at intervals
of four to five weeks continuously, from June to
November or December. The tree is esteemed
noxious, and therefore in Madeira of late years has
been banished from gardens and near proximity
to houses. This idea perhaps originated from an
accident which occurred some forty years ago,
when two or three children, having eaten a few of
the seeds, escaped by timely medical assistance,
with no further harm than the effects of an

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182 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

overdose of Atropa belladonna. Still, there is
something perceptively oppressive in the evening,
in too long or close inhalement of the powerful
aromatic fragrance of the flower."

The peculiar flowers of Strelitzia regina, intro-
duced to Europe from South Africa during the
reign of George III., and named, in honour of
Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburgh Strelitz, never
fail to attract admiration. The plant is also called
bird of paradise flower and bird's-tongue flower —
both suitable names, as the gaudiness of its blue
and orange flowers must have been responsible for
the former, while the resemblance of the flower to
a bird's head with a bright blue beak shows its
likeness to the latter. The plant has long, narrow,
oblong leaves, of a dull greyish-green, of a pecu-
liarly tough texture, and a good clump some four
or five feet high is very ornamental. Strelitzia
august a, as its name implies, is of more majestic
growth. It has large foliage, not unlike a banana,
and clumps attain to twelve or fifteen feet in height.
The blossom is more curious than beautiful, being
of so dark a purple as to be almost black ; but, for
the sake of its foliage, it is always worth a place,
and may well be called a noble plant.

A CHAPEL DOORWAY

CHAPTER XII

HISTORICAL SKETCH

THOUGH this volume does not profess to be in any
sense a guide-book to the Island of Madeira, yet it
seems as though even those visitors to the island,
who may only wish to study its flora and sylva,
will more fully appreciate their wanderings by
learning something of its history.

Very little is known of the early history of
Madeira. Though some historians assert that even
the early Phoenicians found their way there during
some of their adventurous voyages, there seems
to be little foundation for such assertions. Others
at a later date claim for Madeira the honour of
being Pliny's Purpuria, or Purple Land, an honour
to which the Canaries also lay claim, though it
seems probable that Madeira has more right
to the distinction, as Humboldt gave new life to
the theory by describing in glowing terms the
beauties of its hazy mountains, shrouded in purple
and violet clouds. A less romantic reason for the

134 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

name of Purple Land is also given, and merely
relates to the fact that King Juba in the days of
Pliny contemplated the possibility of extracting a
purple dye, called " gsetuliaii purple," from the juice
of one of the numerous trees or plants which grew
on the island. This theory is supported by its
upholders by the fact that Ptolemy mentions an
island in this part of the Atlantic Ocean called
Erythea, or Red Island, which again may possibly
have reference to the dye. After these early days
there is no trace of the island in history for hundreds
of years, so it is more than problematical as to
whether the Purple Lands had any connection
with Madeira.

There seems to be no end to the number of
legends and vague theories as to the discovery of
the group of islands. An Arab historian relates
the discovery of an island (possibly Madeira) by
an expedition of his people in the eleventh century,
who gave it the name of El Ghanam. These
travellers, known as the " Almagrarin adventurers,"
set sail from Lisbon with the intention of discover-
ing something. Their name, meaning the " finders
of mares' nests," is suggestive of fabulous tales.
After being driven across unknown seas they came
to a district of " stinking and turbid waters," which

HISTORICAL SKETCH 135

at first frightened them back ; and it is suggested
that, as the soil of Madeira shows traces of volcanic
disturbances — as, indeed, does the whole formation
of the island — these disturbed waters might well
have been in its neighbourhood.

In the fourteenth century both the French and
Spaniards claim to have touched at the islands ;
but if such were the case, it seems unlikely that
their discovery would have been relegated to
oblivion, though in the Medici map in Florence
the group of islands now known as Porto Santo,
Madeira, and the Desertas appear, under the names
of " Porto Sto," " Ila Legname," and " I. Deserta."
If these names were inserted when the chart was
made (A.D. 1351), the Genoese might claim to have
been the true discoverers ; but as the names are
merely Italian translations of the Portuguese, it is
more likely that they were added after their present
owners had taken possession of them.

It is through the medium of another legend, as
some still call the romantic story of Machim and
his lady-love, Anna Arget, or Harbord, that we
appear to arrive at the true history of the discovery
of Madeira. The story, though it is more sugges-
tive of fabulous romance than history, has been
accepted as being the medium of the tales of

136 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

the unsurpassed beauty of the island coming to
the ears of the enterprising Portuguese navigator
Joao Gonsalvez Zargo. The tale relates how one
Robert a Machin, in the reign of Edward III.,
fell in love with a beautiful young lady of noble
family named Anna d'Arget. Being endowed
with great wealth as well as beauty, her parents
destined her for a greater match, which was
accordingly arranged. Though the lady returned
her young lover's affection, she was compelled, in
an age when the daughters of a great house had
little voice in the choice of their husbands, to
marry the nobleman chosen by her parents. In
order to insure that their plans should not be
frustrated, the lady's parents went so far as to
arrange that her lover Robert should be im-
prisoned until after the marriage. When he was
liberated he heard from a friend of the fate of his
lady-love, and lost no time in following her to
her new home and arranging for their elopement.
This took place by sea, the adventurous couple
embarking at Bristol, hoping to make the coast of
France. Contrary winds arose, and we are told
that, after enduring great perils and hardships for
thirteen days, Robert and Anna, accompanied by
a few faithful followers, came to " a pleasant but

HISTORICAL SKETCH 137

uninhabited land, diversified by hills and vales,
intersected by clear rivulets, and shaded with pine-
trees."

Dr. Caspar Fructuoso, in his work entitled " As
Saudades da Terra," written in 1590, tells of the
lovers' great joy when, "on the morning of the
fourteenth day, when they had been hourly expect-
ing destruction, and were in a hopeless and
exhausted condition, they saw a dark object before
them, which they imagined might be land, and
when the sun rose they perceived that their
surmises were correct and their hopes fulfilled. As
they drew near, they saw that the mountains rose,
as it were, almost directly from the water's edge
in many places. The almost perpendicular cliffs
seemed to preclude any landing, except where
the grand ravines opened right down to the sea.
It was into one of these openings of enchanting
loveliness that Machim directed his vessel to be
steered, and, casting anchor, a boat was most
eagerly launched. Machim and some companions
hurried on shore, and they soon returned with such
an encouraging account that he took his beloved
Anna from off the vessel where such terrible and
anxious days had been passed, and landed on a
shore where he hoped he should, with such com-

18

138 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

forts as still remained to him, procure for her,
for a time at least, some repose, refreshment, and
security."

For some time the party devoted their time to
exploring their immediate surroundings, in a land
which appeared to them a haven of rest and of
surpassing loveliness. They penetrated into forests
of great extent, to points on the mountain -tops
from whence a succession of wooded ravines and
steep mountain-sides, clothed with a luxuriant and
ever- verdant vegetation, delighted their eyes ; the
mountain streams giving life to a scene where,
except only for the songs of countless birds and the
hum of insect life, all was still. No four-legged
animals or reptiles were to be seen. Fruits in
abundance seemed as if awaiting them, and in the
crannies of the rocks they found honey possessing
the odour of violets. An opening in the extensive
woods, which was encircled by laurels and flowering
shrubs, presented an inviting retreat, and a tree of
dense shade, the probable growth of ages, offered
a verdant canopy of impenetrable foliage. In this
spot they determined to form a residence from the
abundant materials with which Nature supplied
them. This state of innocent happiness was not
destined to last long, as, though apparently serenely

HISTORICAL SKETCH 139

contented with their surroundings as long as the
vessel anchored close at hand suggested a possible
retreat and return to the outer world, disaster
befell them, for one night a storm arose and their
ship was driven out to sea. This calamity so
greatly distressed the fair lady that she became
completely prostrated by the shock, and in a few
days she died in her lover's arms. Machim, in his
turn, died of grief a few days after, having spent
the intervening time in erecting a memorial to his
much-loved Anna. The dying man dictated an
inscription recording their sad story, concluding
with a request that if any Christians should at any
future time form a settlement in that island, they
would erect a church over their graves and dedicate
it to the Redeemer of Mankind, a request which,
it will be seen, was afterwards carried out, when
" Machim's tree " was supposed to have furnished
sufficient material for the building of the whole
chapel.

Their survivors not unnaturally set about build-
ing a boat in which to escape from the land which
by now was filled with sad associations for them,
and eventually they succeeded in reaching the coast
of Morocco. Here a worse fate awaited them, as
they fell into the hands of the Moors and became

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140 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

slaves. They are said to have joined some of their
fellow-comrades who had been on the ship when
she was driven out to sea. Their past and present
adventures, and the descriptions they gave of the
beauty of this fairy island, attracted the attention
of a fellow-slave, a Spaniard named Juan Morales,
an experienced pilot.

Morales treasured all this information, and was
eventually ransomed through the intervention of
his Sovereign. On his return to Spain he was
taken prisoner by the Portuguese, and carried off
to Lisbon by Joao Gonsalvez Zargo, the celebrated
navigator, who lost no time in informing his patron
Prince Henry of the tales he had heard from
nis prisoner of the fertility and beauty of the un-
discovered island.

Prince Henry was the son of John I. of Portugal,
and a nephew of our Henry IV. He was called
" O Coiiquisador," and the Portuguese are justly
proud of him, as through his love of exploration
and adventure he added largely to their dominions,
and lent a ready ear to rumours of undiscovered
lands. Zargo had no difficulty in persuading his
patron to fit out an expedition, which he himself
was appointed to command. On June 1, 1419, he
set sail for Porto Santo, which had been discovered

HISTORICAL SKETCH 141

two years previously by the Portuguese. The
colonists on the island related how, in one par-
ticular direction, there hung perpetually over the
sea a thick, impenetrable darkness, which was
guarded by a strange noise which occasionally
made itself heard. With the usual superstition of
the age, various reasons were ascribed to these
mysterious signs. We are told " by some the place
was deemed an abyss, from which whoso ventured
thither would never return ; by others it was called
the Mouth of Hell. Certain persons declared it to
be that ancient island Cipango, kept by Providence
under a mysterious veil, where resided the Spanish
and Portuguese Christians who had escaped from
the slavery of the Moors and Saracens. It was
considered, however, a great crime to dive into the
secret, since it had pleased God to signify His
intention to reveal it by any of the signs which
were mentioned by the ancient prophets who spoke
of this marvel."

Being less superstitious and more adventurous
than these benighted colonists, Zargo determined
to fathom the mystery of this so-called impene-
trable darkness. Setting sail one morning with a
fair wind, by noon his hopes were fully realized,
and he found the mysterious veil to be nothing

142 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

more than heavy clouds hanging over the densely
wooded mountains on the north of the island — a
state of things very commonly seen to this day
when approaching the island from the north.
Like the unfortunate couple Machim and Anna,
he was filled with joy and delight when he saw
the grand mass of mountains rising abruptly from
the sea. The party soon found themselves sailing
along a glorious coast, with grand cliffs, cut by
deep densely wooded ravines, coming down to
the sea.

On the morning of June 14, 1419, having
anchored for the night in a sheltered bay, which
exactly corresponded with the description given
by Morales, who accompanied the expedition, of
Machim and Anna's resting-place, Zargo and some
of his followers landed — and this is the first
authentic account of the discovery of Madeira.

The party spent some days exploring this rich
and fertile acquisition to the Crown of Portugal,
and on July 2 Zargo, accompanied by two priests
who formed part of the expedition, held a cere-
monious service of thanksgiving for the discovery
of the island, taking formal possession of it in
the name of the King of Portugal. Mass was
celebrated and a service was held on the spot

HISTORICAL SKETCH 143

which was supposed to be the grave of the two
lovers. The final ceremony consisted in the laying
of the foundation-stone of a chapel dedicated, in
accordance with Machim's request, to the Redeemer
of Mankind.

Before returning to Portugal to announce the
joyful news of his discovery, Zargo explored the
coast, and named various points and bays with the
names they still bear at the present day. Machim's
bay was named Machico, and may claim to be the
oldest settlement. The most eastern point of the
island had already been named Ponta de Sao
Lourenso when the travellers rounded it — some say
because Zargo, calling for the aid of St. Lourenso,
after whom his ship was named, jumped into the sea
at this point and landed ; others assert that the point
was merely named after one of his companions who
bore the saint's names.

Santa Cruz was so named because at this spot
the party found some large trees lying on the
shore, torn up by the elements, out of which they
formed a large wooden cross. Porto do Seixo
owes its name to the freshness and purity of
its spring water, for which it is still famous ;
and the explorers were so struck by the great
springs of pure water which gush out of a grand

144 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

mass of rock, that they took back with them to
Portugal a bottle of the water as an offering to
Prince Henry.

Rounding a prominent headland which was then
clothed with numerous dragon-trees, and remained
famous for them for many hundreds of years,
though now only one or two of the trees are left,
flocks of tern were startled from their resting-place
by the strange and unknown noise of oars, and
flew all round the boats, even alighting on their
occupants. The headland therefore received the
name of Capo do Garajao, or Cape of the Tern,
though at the present time it is better known to
the English under the name of the Brazen Head.

From this point they saw a fine expanse of
country, and at once settled that this would be the
best spot on which to build the future city. As
the district was remarkable for the thick growth
of fennel, which in Portuguese is called funcho,
the site of the new town received the name of
Funchal.

Ribeiro des Soccoridos (river of the rescued) was
the name given to a place where two of the party
lost their footing whilst attempting to cross a river,
and would have been swept into the sea if their
companions had not come to their rescue. Praya

HISTORICAL SKETCH 145

Formoso was aptly named " beautiful shore." The
extent of their wanderings on this occasion seems
to have led them to the great cliff which towers
some 2,000 feet above the sea, so they named
the cape Cabo Girao. Having been startled by
seeing some seals leaping out of caves in a bay
before they approached the great cliff, they named
the spot Camara do Lobos, or Wolves' Lair, which
is the site of the picturesque village which was
afterwards built in the sheltered situation.

From this time the history of the island is no
longer wrapt in mythical legends, and it seems
certain that in the following year (1419) Zargo and
one Tristao Teixeira were permitted to return. They
divided the island into two comarcas, each taking
command of one : Zargo became the Capitao, and
Teizeira the Donatorio, and they portioned out the
land among their followers. Zargo founded the
town of Funchal, and the two Captains had
complete jurisdiction granted to them by the
Crown, though they had to appeal to their
monarch in cases of life and death. Zargo lived
to enjoy his command for forty-seven years, and
his tomb is still to be seen in the church of the
Convent of Sta. Clara, which was founded by his
granddaughter, Donna Constanca de Norouka, in

19

146 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

1492. Fructuoso gives an account of some of the
first inhabitants of the island, and tells us that the
first children who were born in the island were the
son and daughter of Gonzalo Ayres Fereira, one of
Zargo's companions, and they were christened
Adam and Eve. Adam, the first man, founded
the Church of Nossa Senhora at the Mount.

The wife of Christopher Columbus being the
daughter of Perestrello, the Governor of the
neighbouring island of Porto Santo, possibly led to
Christopher Columbus visiting Madeira. The house
which he was said to have occupied during these
visits, the property of Jean d'Esmenault, was ruth-
lessly destroyed in the year 1877 to make room for
new shops. The American Consul of that date,
evidently sharing the love of the rest of his country-
people for souvenirs, carried away to America many
of the architectural treasures of the house, such as
the carved window-frames and ornamental stone-
work. Thus Funchal lost one of her most interest-
ing relics of the past.

In the year 1566 Funchal suffered at the hands
of a French naval expedition which had been fitted
out by Peyrot de Montluc, son of the Marshal, for
the purposes of exploring unknown lands and seas,
according to the spirit of adventure which was the

HISTORICAL SKETCH 147

fashion of that age. Meeting with storms, which
probably diminished the number of his crew,
Montluc put into Madeira, with the intention, it
is said, of recruiting his force ; but being eyed with
suspicion, as belonging to the navy of a foreign
country, he professed to have been insulted, and
attacked the town. The city appears to have
been feebly defended, although Montluc must have
met with some resistance, as over 200 of the
inhabitants lost their lives. Very little is known
as to the strength of the invading force, but it is
certain that great damage was done to the town by
the Huguenot invaders, as they were, of course,
described by the Catholics. The churches seem to
have suffered severely, as the plunderers no doubt
expected to find treasure in their vaults. Having
thoroughly ransacked the town and terrified the
inhabitants, who mostly fled to the country, the
expedition departed before assistance came from
Lisbon, but not before the leader Montluc had
been mortally wounded. In 1580 the island, being
a Portuguese possession, fell with its mother-
country under the rule of Spain — a state of affairs
which lasted some eighty years. Madeira seems
to have been little affected by the Spanish yoke,
the most important alteration in its government

19—2

148 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

being the abolition of the office of Captains and
the appointment of a Governor of the island — an
office which the Portuguese confirmed when it
again came under their sole power, and is continued
to this day.

The eighteenth century appears to have been a
more peaceful epoch in the history of the island,
though it is recorded that Captain Cook, when
starting on his voyage round the world in the
Endeavour, bombarded the fort on the Loo Rock
as a protest against an affront which he said had
been offered to the British flag.

During the seventeenth century many English
families settled in Madeira, as, in consequence of
the marriage of Charles II. with Catharine of
Braganza, British residents were afforded special
favours and privileges, which enabled them to
develop the wine trade. Dr. Azevado says that
a document exists in the municipal archives of
Funchal showing that during the negotiations for
the royal marriage, there being some delay in the
final decision of King Charles, the Queen Regent
of Portugal was willing to cede the island of
Madeira as part of her daughter's dowry. Other
more important possessions having been ceded,
Madeira remained a Portuguese colony, and only

HISTORICAL SKETCH 149

came under the protection of the English when, in
1801, in order to protect their allies from the
aggressions of the French, the island was garrisoned
by English troops. The Peace of Amiens saw
the withdrawal of the British forces ; but when
war broke out between England and France, in
1807, Madeira again came under British protec-
tion, when Admiral Hood occupied the island
with a force of 4,000 men. Mr. Yate Johnson,
in his " Handbook on Madeira," tells us how he
himself had seen the original signatures of the
principal inhabitants taken on this occasion, by
which they individually swore " to bear true alle-
giance and fealty to His Majesty King George III.
and to his heirs and successors, as the island should
be held by his said Majesty or his heirs, in con-
formity to the terms of the capitulation made and
signed on the 26th December, 1807, whereby the
island and dependencies were delivered over to his
said Majesty." The island, though garrisoned by
the English until the restoration of general peace
in 1814, was restored to her rightful owners four
months after the above oath of allegiance was
signed.

The year 1826 was a troublous time for Madeira,
as the island did not escape the civil war which

150 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA

raged in Portugal in consequence of the Miguelite
insurrection. Property was confiscated, the owners
being thankful if they escaped with their lives ; and
even after the country had resumed the monarchy,
it took some years before the island returned to its
former tranquillity and prosperity.

THE END

BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GU1LDFORD

THE

FLOWERS AND GARDENS
OF JAPAN

PAINTED BY ELLA DU CANE
DESCRIBED BY FLORENCE DU CANE

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fascinating title. Its pictures are all of them beautiful, and admirably re-
produced, and the letterpress matches them well."

Guardian. — " Miss Ella Du Cane catches no little of the Japanese spirit,
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preference to our cruder European methods of manipulating sharply
contrasted tints, its careful study of line, and its studied suppression of all
hardness. . . . The whole forms a singularly attractive gift-book."'

Daily News. — " This is so charming a collection of the dainty landscape
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grateful for it even if it had not been more. It is, however, as well a
pleasant and informative discourse on the ritual of Japanese gardening in
general, and on the many gardens in particular, which the writer has been
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Scotsman. — "Prose and pictures together make an uncommonly pretty
posy, which would grace even the most severe library. ' '

Liverpool Courier.—" Horticulture in Japan is bound up with the poetry
and folk-lore of the people, and Miss Du Cane brings out this association
in a most delightful fashion. In fact, her writing weds the practical and
poetical most attractively. The book is illustrated in colour by Miss Ella
Du Cane, and her pictures are wholly exquisite impressions. If anything
could induce us to imitate the Japanese gardener, these dainty water-colour
sketches should."

Observer. — " The literary pages are entertaining, the plates are delicious.
. . . The book as a whole is vivid and fragrant with masses of wistaria,
azalea, iris, lotos, chrysanthemums, and the airy glories of cherry, peach,
and plum. Miss Ella Du Cane's pictures are, indeed, so daintily done —
instance at random that bewitching glimpse called 'Wistaria at
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PUBLISHED BY A. AND C. BLACK . SOHO SQUARE . LONDON

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Globe. — " Especially noteworthy for the lightness and delicacy of the
artist's touch, and the felicity of her colouring as appropriate to the
scenery it represents. The text is a capable accompaniment, supplying
much information of a useful and interesting character."

Standard. — "'The Italian Lakes' have, perhaps, never been more
superbly depicted in all the richness of glowing colour than in the
illustrations to this attractive fine art volume. We take up the book, and
in a moment London and all its fogs are forgotten, and we seem to escape,
as by magic, from the madding crowd, to one of the fairest regions in
the world. . . . Mr. Bagot has quick eyes for the picturesque, and writes
with admirable restraint in the romantic mood."

Evening Standard. — " Mr. Bagot reveals that skill in description that
makes his work at once fascinating and distinctive. . . . Miss Du Cane's
tastefully reproduced water-colours are among the most pleasing of any in
the whole series. They reveal strength and delicacy, and have the great
merit of giving one a true notion of the actual and normal colour of the
places."

Aberdeen Journal. — " Miss Du Cane's water-colours are most charming.
She has caught perfectly the peaceful spirit of the beautiful scenes she
represents. She revels in the flowers and the brightness and gaiety of it
all. . . . The letterpress by Mr. Bagot is very good— quite the kind of
thing that is wanted in the books of this series."

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seen this lovely part of Europe a just and vivid idea of its beauties, while
Miss Du Cane's work does the same for him by means of another and
a beautiful medium. Her pictures are charming, and the reproduction
would seem to be perfect. ' '

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atmosphere and grace, and the reproduction is as good as it can be in the
present stage of the art. Mr. Bagot also is a discriminating and useful
guide. ... As a companion for a visit to the lakes, and a memento of it
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PUBLISHED BY A. AND C. BLACK . SOHO SQUARE . LONDON

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
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Return to desk from which borrowed.
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