LEA VES FROM A MADEIRA GARDEN BY THE SAME AUTHOR A RIVER OF ETC. NORWAT f- LEAVES FROM A MADEIRA GARDEN By CHARLES THOMAS-STANFORD, f.s.a. WITH SIXTEEN FULI-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY. MCMX Secotid Edition WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES. /V\ I (oT 6lo 1^ -) 1 0 TO THE MEMBERS OF THE LI BR ART ASSOCUriON 19E7722 PREFACE PERHAPS no apology is needed for this trivial story of an uneventful winter in an inconsiderable island. Madeira has indeed been long a household word in Great Britain. Its generous wine has played an important part in producing the hereditary goutiness of the nation ; and its genial climate is remembered in many families as having mitigated the sufferings of an invalid relation. It is perhaps less generally known that its mountain scenery is not sur- passed in beauty, that much of the finest vegetation of the world flourishes and flowers there during the winter months, and that the gardens in and around Funchal are, for brilliance and charm, scarcely to be matched elsewhere. It is possible that in these days of widespread delight in gardening it may interest some to read of the life, largely horticultural, of a vii ^3 Preface voluntary exile in this most favoured climate ; and to draw some picture from it of a wealth of vegetation, unknown in Europe, to be met with at a distance of three and a half days' steaming from Southampton. I have made no attempt to produce a handbook to, or systematic account of, Madeira. This has already been done by the late Mr. Yate Johnson far better than I could aspire to do it. I have confined myself to somewhat inconsequent, and I fear sometimes irrelevant, jottings on many subjects, and if I have stated my own opinion rather freely on some controversial topics, I hope I have not trodden upon any one's corns. This hope applies especially to the remarks I have made with reference to what I consider the failings and mistakes of the Portuguese Government, especially in its fiscal system. For our kind hosts the Portuguese people here, for my Portuguese friends, acquaintances, and servants, I feel little but liking and respect ; and what I have said is less than is commonly said among themselves by those whose education and knowledge of the world make them competent to judge. Many books have been written in English viii Preface about Madeira. This is not surprising, as for more than two centuries the island has been the resort of our countrymen for business, health, or pleasure, and was for a short period under "^he British flag. Most of these books are serious works, written by scientific men, and dealing with the climate, the meteorology, the flora, and other natural features. Of the rest, many have been produced by casual visitors, who, on the strength of a stay of a few weeks and a perusal of previous authorities, have felt qualified to enlighten the public. Such persons sometimes have an irritating trick of writing about well-known places with an air of having discovered them. The following pages do not fall into either class. I do not assume to impart any information of value ; and as it has been my good fortune to pass many winters in the island, I cannot plead ignorance as an excuse for my shortcomings and mistakes. C. T.-S. IX PAGE CONTENTS CHAPTER I THE RETURN The return — Situation of Madeira — Some essential facts — Tourists — Communications ancient and modern — Bay of Funchal — View of the town — Conditions of life — Excessive State regulation — Exchange — "The Inno- cents Abroad " — The British flag — The man who talked nothing but Madeira ..... i CHAPTER n FUNCHAL AND ITS GARDENS The gardens of Madeira — Mr. W. Robinson's views — Terraced formation — Wealth of vegetation — Soil — Temperature — Plants in flower — Aims in gardening — The town of Funchal — Lack of modern improve- ments— Old-world charm — Religion and proselytism — Cleanly aspect — The strangers' quarter — Onx S^iiinta — A picnic — List of Christmas flowers . . .19 CHAPTER HI TOWN AND COUNTRY DELIGHTS Fireworks and the New Year — The Casino — Roulette — Systems — Morality and gambling — The mountains — Levadas — An Excursion — Monte — Running cars — Ribeiro Frio — Metade valley — Ancient disregard of mountain scener}' — Modern cult of mountains — Ma- deira's volcanic origin ...... 42 xi Contents CHAPTER IV THE GARDEN IN MID-WINTER page The creation of a garden — Rapid growth — Absence of lawns — Climbing plants — Orchids — Over-watering — Ignorance of gardeners — A Russian episode — Per- quisites — Our gardeners — Good manners of lower classes — The servants' view — Botanical names of plants — Florists' names — The weather .... 62 CHAPTER V PLAGUE AND RIOT Sanitary shortcomings — Plague scare — A dubious epidemic — Lazaretto sacked — Serious outlook — Rioting — Ar- rival of cruiser — A real epidemic — Extraordinary proceedings — A medical hero — A noble lady — The epidemic stayed — A comfortable theory . . .82 CHAPTER VI POLITICS AND SOCIAL CHANGES Murder of Dom Carlos — The policy of hushing-up — Portu- guese politics — Franco, Reformer and Dictator — His failure — Madeira and the murders — The outlook — Portuguese society — Social changes — Abolition ot entail — Landlord and tenant — Genealogy — Historic families — A seventeenth-century visitor — His experi- ences and views — Napoleon Bonaparte ... 9^ CHAPTER VII LAND AND SEA A mountain S^uinta — Varieties of climate — Rarity of serious crime — Ignorance and terror — Superstitions — Pigs and the evil eye — Valuable recipes — Witches — Pagan survivals — Vows — Wrecks — Freebooters — Naval inci- dents— The Canary Isles — A romance of the sea — A clerical stowaway — A very steep road — Camacha . 121 xii Contents CHAPTER VIII TAXES MONOPOLIES POVERTY page State interference with trade — Exports discouraged — Taxing to death — Regulation of milling — Sugar cultivation and manufacture — An extreme instance of Protection — Its drawbacks and dangers — Restrictive import duties — Their evil effects — Profits from visitors and shipping — Population and poverty — A German bubble 146 CHAPTER IX THE GARDEN IN SPRING The flowers of March — Brilliant climbers — A rock garden ; a record of failure — Fruits — The banana — A plague of ants — Butterflies — Birds — Cutting sugar-cane — Vines — The wine-trade — Its brilliant past — Ferns — Their habitat . . . . . . .165 CHAPTER X ANTIQUITIES Absence of any indications of early habitation — The chroniclers — How history is made — The Canary Isles — Their aboriginal inhabitants — The Salvages — Ser- torius — Cathedral of Funchal — Town architecture — Sugar cultivation and the slave-trade — Opportunities of the collector — Furniture, plate, china — A legend of Chippendale — Books and duties — Curiosities of cata- loguing— A poetaster . . . . . .186 CHAPTER XI THE NORTH SIDE Difficulties of travel — A journey to Sta. Anna — The central passes — A precipitous coast — Crops and industry — Island of Porto Santo — Columbus — The journey west- ward— 'A charming village — The angelus — A valley and a mountain-pass — A curious chapel — A coast path — The mountain plateau ..... 206 xiii Contents CHAPTER XII HOLY-DAYS AND HOLIDAYS page The observance of Holy Week — Processions — Orderly crowds — Our parish procession — Sympathy of Church and people — The Church and population — Sentimental attraction of the Church — English pessimism — Portu- guese ministerial crisis — Courtship and marriage — Street music — Account of the processions of Funchal . 228 CHAPTER XIII MOUNTAINS AND ISLANDS The central mountains — The Grand Curral — A mountain road — Significance of The Road — Its antiquity and permanence — Pioneering in Africa — Pico Arriero — The cloud-belt — Absence of sport — The wild goats of the Desertas — Weird scenery — Seals — A captive — A dash for freedom . . . . . -251 CHAPTER XIV THE GARDEN IN ITS GLORY Brilliant flower-display — Absence of well-defined seasons — Its consequences — Roses — Bignonia — Wistaria — Datura — Moonlight nights — The starry heavens — Some gardens of Funchal — Fonnalists and naturalists — The pergola — Its uses — Garden paths — Cobble- stones— Garden masonry — Passion for symmetry , z6i CHAPTER XV DEPARTURE An uneventful winter — The German Company — German visitors — Increase of English visitors — Tariff Reform possibilities — Mr. Chamberlain's visit to Madeira — The time of departure — Lost opportunities — The pleasures of memory — Tunny-fishing — The love of places — Farewell . . . . • • .281 xiv .-^ ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE I. Datura Frontispiece 2. Papyrus 22 3. Cypress and Daisies . 36 4. The Central Range . 56 5. Snow on the Hills 80 6, A Peep of the Port 112 7. Wreck of the Packet Brig "Dart" . • 134 Frojn an Old Print 8. The Camacha Road . . . • 144 9. Cutting the Sugar-Cane .... • 152 10. The Pride of Madeira .... . 166 II. Bananas ........ . 178 12. A Fountain 196 13. The North Coast . 210 14. Road near Boa Ventura .... . 224 From a Sketch by Chevalier 15. The Desertas . 258 16. Wistaria . 266 XV I LEA VES FROM A MADEIRA GARDEN mti^^im^^ LEAVES FROM A MADEIRA GARDEN Chapter I— DECEMBER The Return "Short retirement urges sweet return.'" — Milton THE Return has ever been a moving incident. From Homer to Hardy it has continually afforded scope for '* invention." If to youth the joy of the first visit with its smack of discovery and exploration is more intense, to the mature perhaps the sober pleasure of coming back to the well-known and the well-tried makes a stronger appeal. And if the return is an annual affair, if it is a matter of " flying, flying south " like the swallows, to elude the rigors of winter in the soft luxury of an Atlantic island, what it loses in excitement it yet may gain in a renewal of interest. As our steamer drifts I B Leaves from a Madeira Garden slowly to her anchorage in the bay of Funchal amid the pearly radiance of the Madeira morn- ing, we enjoy an easy confidence that our short absence will have brought no startling change in a land of slow and little change. But in small matters there is much to stimulate our curiosity. He who cultivates the soil, whether for pleasure or profit, need never be dull ; and if he is the possessor of a garden in this favoured isle of the sea, he will surely find that much has happened therein during his absence to revive a never-failing wonder at the vigor and variety of vegetable life. It is not my purpose to lay stress on details which may be found in guide-books, but it may be convenient to mention that Madeira is an island of volcanic origin, situate, not in the Mediterranean as some of my English friends suppose, but in the Atlantic, 600 miles S.W. of Gibraltar, and 360 miles from the African coast ; that, putting aside the more or less vague tradi- tions of previous visits, it was discovered and colonized by the Portuguese (the *' Portugals " our Elizabethan ancestors called them) about 1420 ; that politically it is now a province, and not a colony, of Portugal ; that it is about 2)S Tlie Return miles long by 1 5 miles in width, of extremely mountainous and picturesque surface ; that its inhabitants are of Portuguese race, with some admixture of Moorish and negro blood ; and that from it came the rich wine so beloved by our ancestors, and still drunk in Russia, Sweden, France and other countries less dominated by gout than ours. " II y a — beaucoup de — vin de Madere — ici, — n'est ce pas ? " said, with great deliberation, an English admiral, in a laudable effort to make conversation during a recent official call from the Governor. And so there is, although much of the wine so labelled in Europe knows not its supposed birthplace ; but with the loss of the English market the wine trade is shorn of its former glory. Yet it still provides a living for numerous English families which form a permanent element in the cosmo- politan society of the place. Years ago Madeira's soft and genial air was regarded as a suitable "cure" for consumptive patients, but the island has more recently been abandoned by them for the High Alps and the deserts of South Africa and Colorado. It is now the winter resort of many foreigners who are unable to find so equable and gracious a climate in 3 Leaves from a Bladeira Garden Europe, and it is visited by an ever-increasing number of tourists, American, English, and German. From the United States especially come these invading hordes, conveyed in giant steamers of the White Star, the Hamburg- American and other lines. These vessels arrive with bands playing and flags flying in their temporary character of pleasure ships ; and if ships have feelings, one may suppose them to be a little ashamed of their job. Their passen- gers, hundreds and hundreds at a time, descend on the town, buy thousands of post-cards made in Germany, chafi^er and haggle with the vendors of embroidery and wicker-work, which are local productions, and of various curiosities specially imported for their benefit ; and lo ! to-morrow they are gone — to invade Gibraltar and Naples, Cairo and Jerusalem, in similar fashion ; and peace will reign until the next swarm appears. Of the real charm of the island these visitors see and learn nothing ; of its flowery and scent- laden gardens, the wild grandeur of its mountain gorges, its hillsides aglow with broom and gorse, few can carry away any impression whatever. Perhaps the young lady who could only recall 4 The Beturn Rome as the place where she bought those black silk stockings is a not uncommon type. But if this ignorance is their loss, it is our gain. These casual visitors touch but the fringe and leave the garment undefiled. Outside the limited range of their experience — the ascent by railway to the Mount Church ; the "running- cars " in which they tobogganed down ; the hotels where they raided the food of more regular guests ; the Casino where they lost their money — outside these they know not Madeira, and Madeira knows them not. Not yet is it time for Pierre Loti to add to " La Mort du Caire" and "La Mort de Philae" a threnody on " La Mort de Madere." Let us give thanks that there is " nothino: to see." Truly in ways and means of communication the world has changed even more rapidly than in other things. If we go back to the hand- books of sixty or seventy years ago, we find it stated that the most convenient method of reaching Madeira was by the comfortable mail service of packet brigs, of about 250 tons burden, which might take anything from six days to six weeks on the passage. Nowadays we are accustomed to leave Southampton in a S Leaves from a Madeira Garden boat of ten or twelve thousand tons on a Saturday evening, and to arrive here with more than the punctuality of most express trains at dawn on the following Wednesday ; and we are disposed to grumble because even to achieve this our steamer does not put forth her full strength. The precision of the mail service by sea is a thing to wonder at, and, like most other wonderful things, is commonly taken as a matter of course. But it occasionally receives an un- conscious tribute. Some vears ago I was leaving Capetown, and the boat was several hours late in starting in consequence of some delay on the Johannesburg railway. An irate Scotsman was pacing the deck and exclaiming, " Confound it ! I shall miss my train for Edinburgh." One's thoughts reverted to the convenient packet brig. The foil of even a three or four days' voyage serves to enhance the beauty of the approach to Funchal. To that majority of mankind which regards the very name of the Bay of Biscay with apprehension, finds little to admire in the mirk and monotony of the North Atlantic, and has too often suffered worse things than The Beturn monotony in its passage, the hill-encircled bay with the town spreading outwards and upwards its varied lines of picturesque houses, and its wealth of sub-tropical greenery, seems verily an enchanted haven of rest and refreshment. *' Who would not turn him from the barren sea, And rest his weary eyes on the green land, and thee ? " We who know it well are aware that the coup cfa-il from the sea, delightful as it is, reveals little of the more intimate beauties which await us. The houses risins: one above another are foreshortened as we see them, and give no hint of the garden luxuriance in which many of them are embowered. We can trace the roads which fan-like ascend the hills from the town, but wc cannot see the brilliant creepers and shrubs which here and there over- hang the walls that line them — the Poinsettia, the Bignonia, the Plumbago, the Datura, which at this season must be in full flower. Yet even from the sea we can discern that the great mass of Bougainvillea which clothes with a raiment of purple the cliff below an ancient fort that dominates (or once dominated) the town is vigorous as ever, though not yet come to its 7 Leaves from a Madeira Garden full glory of colour. The hills above look almost flat in the brilliant morning light. But we know that their surface is broken into countless ridges and vales, which invite an exploration that is never finished ; and that certain shoulders of rock are concealing from us grim ravines girdled with giant precipices. And we know, too, that the peaks which en- close them are but the prelude to loftier peaks behind, and that beyond them again lies a very fairyland of beauty, the wild, forest-clad glens, the verdant and fertile lowlands, the awful sea- cliffs of the northern shore. And so amid the turmoil of arrival at a Southern port — the clamour of the diving boys, and the importunity of touts and traders — we return once more to our winter home. It is but eight months since we left it, and our intervening experiences — the green lawns and immemorial elms of our Sussex homestead ; those glorious nights by the Norwegian salmon- river ; the routine of English life ; the haste of travel on English roads ; the bustle of Picca- dilly and the pageant of the Boulevards — all these seem to fade into a dreamland of the past, and to yield place naturally to the one 8 The Beturn thing which is real, this Lotos-land of the South, " plac'd far amid the melancholy main." The great mountain wall which for the last hour or two before our arrival we have been circumnavigating, the main range which runs from east to west of the island, is an effectual barrier against the northerly winds which pre- vail in winter. On the north side of the island the winter climate is wet and windy, but Fun- chal faces the south and the sun. With the thermometer never falling within fifteen degrees of freezing-point, we seem, and are, very remote from the misery of London in the grip of a freezing fog. And when we consider the des- perate struggle for life under such circumstances we may be pardoned for feeling something of the suave man magno of Lucretius, so aptly paraphrased by Mr. Mallock ; " When storms blow loud, 'tis sweet to watch at ease From shore, the sailor labouring with the seas : Because the sense, not that such pains are his, But that they are not ours, must always please." And although it is true that we are withdraw- ing ourselves for a season from the life of our own time and our own people, it is yet possible that while we " pace serene the porches of the 9 Leaves from a Madeira Garden light," we may reap some advantage in a more detached view of facts, policies, and tendencies, than if we were in the thick of the fray. It is not only from the blasts of the northern winter that the expanse of ocean and the mountain barrier seclude us. We have passed completely from the conditions of modern social life as we know it. With a labour- ing class utterly illiterate, and Incapable of organization or of expressing its wants and grievances otherwise than by open revolt against authority ; with a government conducted by, and perhaps I may say not indifferent to the interests of, that small portion of the population which can read and write ; the political and social problems which arise here are quite other than those with which we are concerned. Over-population there may be, but it is con- siderably mitigated by emigration ; " unemploy- ment," in the sense that those who want work and wages cannot find them, is among a people almost entirely agricultural not a burning question ; poverty is doubtless widespread, but with cold unknown and hunger easily appeased its consequences are far less severe than in less fortunate climes. Such difficulties and dangers lO The Beturn as occur, and, as I believe, much of the poverty which exists, arise from the excessive claim of the State to be the arbiter of commercial affairs ; to stimulate one industry to a feverish life, and to throttle another to death ; to decide what commodities shall be bought and sold, and by whom, and to regulate the price. These pretensions produce not only a highly artificial condition of trade, but a strangely resigned habit of mind among natives and foreign residents alike ; you cannot kick against the pricks. There is, indeed, one blessed mitigation of excessive State regulation ; the State seems to expend its energy in making laws, and to shrink from the trouble of enforcing them. To the mere sojourner in the island for pleasure and not for profit, these matters will be rather of passing interest than of import- ance. He will find the stringency of rules readily softened in his favour by the politeness of those officials with whom he comes in contact ; and if, accustomed to the rapidity of English methods, he chafes at having to stand in a queue at the post office, he will later come to wonder at the precision with which II Leaves from a Madeira Garden a large business is conducted by an inadequate staff. It is easy for a foreigner to be censorious, to be too ready to blame a country he visits for ignoring what his own sets store by. There is another side ; and an Englishman may assuredly learn something here. He will find that all classes, high and low alike, will treat him with a courtesy which he may look for in vain at home ; that life may be agreeable with much less fuss over its machinery than he is accustomed to make ; that if unpleasant things must be done, the art of doing them pleasantly is worth cultivating ; perhaps even — but this is heresy — that the habit of never doing to-day what you can put off till to-morrow has sometimes not only aesthetic but practical advantages. A speculative interest is added to the financial side of life here by the fluctuations in the exchange. The unit of Portuguese currency is the m, an imaginary coin of very small value — as I write about 5400 rets are the equivalent of the Eno:lish sovereign. There is a certain convenience in expressing all financial amounts in the terms of such a diminutive unit, for 12 The Eeturn example a gift of a florin towards a charitable object sounds very much better when it is described as " five hundred," and the man who has won a couple of sovereigns at the Casino may gain a fictitious eclat as the winner of " ten thousand." But it may cause misappre- hension among strangers. Readers of Mark Twain will recall that certain of the " Innocents Abroad" dined at an hotel at Fayal at the Azores, and that when the landlord brought his bill the giver of the feast exclaimed, " Twenty- one thousand seven hundred reis ! The suffer- ing Moses ! — there ain't money enough in the ship to pay that bill 1 Go — leave me to my misery, boys ; I am a ruined community." Then the shadow of a desperate resolve settled upon his countenance and he rose up and said, " Landlord, this is a low, mean swindle, and I'll never, never stand it. Here's a hundred and fifty dollars, sir, and it's all you'll get — I'll swim in blood, before I'll pay a cent more." On the discovery that the bill was for a fraction over twenty-one dollars, happiness reigned again — and more refreshments were ordered. At par the pound sterling is considered to be worth 4500 reis. Up to about twenty years Leaves from a Madeira Garden ago this rate was more or less maintained. Then the rei began to decline in value, until in 1898 as many as 8700 reis were obtainable for an English sovereign. Some mysterious operations for the improvement of Portuguese finances were then undertaken, and the exchange declined in the course of the next ten years to nearly par. It has since risen again. As we pay the wages of our servants, gardeners and labourers, and for everything produced locally, in Portuguese currency, the number of reis we get for each of our sovereigns becomes a matter of interest. To the exporter, of wine for instance, it must be a consideration of the greatest moment. He buys his raw material, his grape juice and his spirit, and pays for his labour in the local currency ; his finished product he sells in the markets of Europe for sovereigns or francs or marks, without reference to the state of the Portuguese exchange. It is a wonder if he sleeps o' nights. Madeira has had more than one narrow escape of becoming part of the British Empire. When negotiations were proceeding for the marriage of Catharine of Braganza with Charles II., it is said that the Queen-Mother, 14 The Beturn who was desperately anxious for the conclusion of the match, was prepared to cede Madeira, as well as Bombay, Tangier, and a large sum of money, as her daughter's dowry. The story runs that the clerk was actually instructed to include the island in the contract, but that he omitted it, either from carelessness or from patriotic intent. If the latter, he deserves to be honoured as a national hero, splendide mendax. In 1807, during the Napoleonic wars, a British force of 4000 men under General Beresford occupied the island. The principal inhabitants signed a declaration, and took an oath " to bear true allegiance and fealty to His Majesty King George III. and his heirs and successors as long as the island should be held by his said Majesty or his heirs, in conformity to the terms of the capitulation made and signed on the 26th of December, 1807, whereby the island and dependencies were delivered over to his said Majesty." The island was restored to Portugal the following year, but was gar- risoned by British troops until the general peace of 18 14. Our Portuguese friends do not always bear in mind that it is the friendship of Great Britain which has secured, and still 15 Leaves from a Madeira Garden secures, them in the possession of their oversea dependencies. We may amuse ourselves by speculating as to the present condition of Madeira if it had remained British. It would doubtless be an important naval coaling station, and regarded as one of the outposts of the empire which are necessary to its existence. Its outward aspect would certainly be different ; roads would have been made, sanitation would have received due attention, and an excellent water supply would have been installed. It would be very much like everywhere else, and some of the special charm of its particularity would be lost. If the outward appearance were changed, much more changed would be the inward working of things. Extravagant customs duties would have dis- appeared ; a more intelligent fiscal system would assuredly have produced great commer- cial and agricultural prosperity, and a consider- able export trade would have been developed. The presence of British officials and British troops would help to bring a larger number of visitors. On the other hand, a certain dulness generally follows the British flag, and British con- ventional morality would be unable to tolerate i6 The Beturn the amusements of the Casino, which now depends on British support, and is undoubtedly a great attraction. Perhaps our conclusion may- be that while for the native population, and especially for the working classes, British con- trol would be an inestimable advantage, from a visitor's point of view it would be regrettable. But such speculations are as idle as those which concern Cleopatra's nose. It may be that in these pages I am incurring the reproach of the Senor Acciauoli, a native of this island, who married his kinswoman, daughter and heiress of the Marquis Acciauoli of Florence, and was known in Italy as the man who talked nothing but Madeira. Horace Mann wrote concerning him to Horace Walpole, and Walpole replied : " You have no notion how I laughed at the man that * talks nothing but Madeira.' I told it to my Lady Pomfret, concluding it would divert her too, and forget- ting that she repines when she should laugh, and reasons when she should be diverted. She asked gravely what language that was ! ' That Madeira being subject to an European prince, to be sure they talked some European dialect 1 * The grave personage ! It was of a piece with 17 c Leaves from a Madeira Garden her saying ' that Swift would have written better if he had never written ludicrously.' " But to talk nothing but Madeira is my purpose on setting out ; I talk a European dialect, yet I fear that in my occasional lapses from the serious I may merit the censure of my Lady Pomfret's successors in criticism. 18 Chapter U— DECEMBER FUNCHAL AND ITS GaRDENS "Infinite riches in a little room." — Marlowe. ^HE island of Madeira," says Mr. W. Robinson in his " English Flower Garden" — that sacred volume of the amateur — " is very instructive in the variety of its gardens ; every one I remember was distinct, and this was owing to the owners being free to do as the ground invited them, instead of following any fixed idea as to style, or leaving it to men who are ready with similar plans for all sorts of positions. In France, England, or Germany, this could never happen because, owing to the conformity about style and the use of book plans, we can usually tell beforehand what sort of garden we are to see." And he further speaks of " real gardens varied and full of beautiful colour, yet without any trace of the barren monotony characteristic of gardens at 19 Leaves from a Madeira Garden home. The generally picturesque nature of the ground, the presence of graceful fruit and other trees, and the absence of any pretentious attempt to conform the whole to a set idea, lead to the simple and picturesque garden." When every allowance is made for his well- known preferences, Mr. W. Robinson seems to strike the right note. Of the best and most characteristic Madeira gardens it may be said that they have grown rather than been made. Those v/hich have been consciously created are perhaps the least successful. The villas which surround the town, and in many cases have now been swallowed up by it — Quintas is their local name — were originally country houses sur- rounded rather by small farms than gardens. A square plot in front of the house, with a level surface secured by retaining walls, often on the hillsides of considerable height, and cut up into beds of rather fantastic shape — such is the beginning from which most of the existing gardens have been gradually evolved. The main condition governing this evolution is that level, or even undulating, ground is rare, and that the hillsides surrounding the town are, wherever possible, terraced. These terraces, 20 Fanchal and its Gardens upheld by rough or cemented stone walls, are devoted to the operations of the fazenda — the farm or vegetable garden — and chiefly occupied by sugar-cane, banana trees, or vines. The first step In the extension of the garden is to annex a piece of the fazenda, to uproot the canes or bananas, and to devote the ground to the cultivation of flowers. This generally necessitates the building of a flight of steps and the laying out of paths. And so a new feature is created, unlike anything which existed before, and probably unlike anything in any other garden. There are generally fresh fields waiting to be conquered, and so the process goes on, "as the ground invites us," until a considerable garden has been created, a garden rich in variety and surprise ; a garden of walls hung with heliotrope and mesembryanthemum and trailing geranium, of pergolas covered with roses and the brilliant climbing plants of the South American forests, perhaps of ponds crowded with water-lily and papyrus ; a garden of fruit trees, the peach, the mango, the loquat, and the custard-apple ; of palms and tree-ferns, and bamboos. Such gardens, of which there are many, have 21 Leaves from a Madeira Garden for the most part been made by Englishmen resident here. The Portuguese are great and successful growers of specimen plants in pots, but they seem to have little aptitude or inclina- tion for the cultivation of extensive gardens. A result of this is that there is no tradition of gardening among the working classes, and that the professional gardener in our English sense is almost unknown. One has to do one's best with labourers, strong, willing, and hard-working, but with only the labourer's limited knowledge. The soil is of volcanic origin, rich, dark, often reddish in colour, containing no lime. It becomes very sticky after rain ; in dry weather it cakes and does not easily become converted into dust. This absence of dust renders the atmosphere in Madeira quite different from that of North and South Africa, and is no doubt very beneficial to persons with weak chests and throats. The range of temperature, whether daily or annual, is remarkably small. It is quite common for the variation not to exceed ten degrees Fahrenheit in the twenty-four hours ; and my registering thermometer, placed in a well-shaded position, has during the whole of the year 1908 22 Funchal and its Gardens touched 50° as a minimum, and 79° as a maximum. The maximum is unusually low ; the minimum is normal. In a record of several years I have only found the thermometer to fall below 49° on one night. The effect of this on plant life will be at once evident. It means that, putting aside questions of soil, and in a minor degree of wind, you can grow out of doors everything cultivated in a cool greenhouse in England, and some of the things commonly designated as stove-plants. Where we break down is with plants whose health requires a cold snap. To find the spring flowers — the anemones, the daffodils, the violets — in per- fection, we must go to an altitude of 1500 to 2000 feet above the sea, where winter nights are cold, and snow sometimes falls, though not to lie. At least one garden at such an altitude has a character perhaps unique — a glorified English garden, where English flowers hold their own amid sub-tropical trees and shrubs ; where avenues of camelias rehabilitate the fame of that too long unfashionable flower, and Australasian tree-ferns fill the dells with a luxuriance unknown elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere. 23 Leaves from a Madeira Garden I have appended to this chapter a list of treeSj shrubs, and plants which we have observed to be in flower on Christmas Day this year in our own garden, which is situate about two hundred feet above the level of the sea, and about a quarter of a mile from it. It will perhaps surprise some that such a range of blossom may be met with in mid-winter at a distance of eighty hours' steaming from our shores. Owing to the copious rains which have happily fallen during the autumn, everything this year is looking its best, and the growth of tree and shrub since last spring is surprising. At this season no floral feature of the island approaches in glory the Bignonia venusta^ " the Golden Shower." Of the most luxuriant growth, it is ramping everywhere over wall and pergola and trellice, and its leaves are almost hidden in the wealth of its orange flowers. Crimson Poinsettias^ white 'Daturas^ blue-grey Plumbago make a notable trio, magni- ricent in combination. Hedychium gardnerianum is over, but its orange seed-pods are a hand- some feature. The great single Hibiscus bears aloft its fine red blossoms, individually a flower unsurpassed for symmetry and beauty. Irises 24 Funchal and its Gardens are coming out ; for the pretty lilac jimbriata we must wait a little, but the white stylosa, which I brought from England last year, is flowering already. Some of the roses are making a great show. Begonias of various kinds are in perfection. The fine orange Strep- tosoleUy introduced by an English lady a few years ago, and now pervading every garden, and intent on being naturalized as Madeiran, vies in colour with the Bignonia. A few stray sweet peas are in flower, but for the produce of the seeds we sent out in October we must wait a little longer. Comparable in colour efi^ect even with the brighter flowers is the foliage of the AcaUipha^ with its bizarre combination of green and red and bronze and pink. In our garden it seems to flourish unusually, growing into a big shrub eight or ten feet high. With these and many others the most exacting lover of garden colour has no cause to grumble ; and if we grow surfeited with these, the ordinary fare of gardens here, we may find in the culture of ferns, orchids, rock-plants, or other byeways of horticulture, innumerable points of interest. Or, if our turn of mind is practical, we may set ourselves to the improvement of the peas, 25 Leaves from a Madeira Garden beans, and new potatoes which are our cus- tomary table vegetables. There are, it may be held, two schools of gardeners. One is mainly concerned with the iiarden as a whole, with the creation and main- tenance of a pleasance in which trees and shrubs and flowering plants play their subordinate parts in a scheme of decoration. The other school busies itself with the nurture of special plants — with roses, carnations, begonias, or what not. 1 have somewhere read a comparison of flowers in this connection with pictures — ■ with pictures viewed as a decorative adjunct, or displayed as in a gallery for their own sakes. The two attributes may be united in one person ; usually, at any rate, one or the other predominates. To me the cult of the general, of the garden scheme as a whole, appeals more strongly ; yet in the joy I feel at the unhoped- for survival of a gentian, or the luxuriance of an adiantum^ I own some deference to the particular. The town of Funchal, as I have already suggested, lies in the curve of the bay, and straggles upwards from its centre to the sur- rounding hills. 26 Funchal and its Gardens " Houses with long white sweep Girdle the glistening bay ; Behind through the soft air The blue haze-cradled mountains spread away." Like the Garden of Eden (which, but for his selection of the Seychelles, General Gordon might very well have located in this island), it owns four rivers ; yet none of them at all resembles the Euphrates. In their lower course through the town they usually contain very little water, much having been carried off higher up by the kvadas^ or open canals, which supply water for domestic purposes, and to irrigate the fields ; they are much used for washing clothes, and (illegally) as receptacles for rubbish. But if heavy rains fall in the hills — and when it really rains there is no doubt about it — then their channels become roaring torrents, and the dirt they bring down will colour the sea for a long distance. It happened once that a barrel of permanganate of potash was accidentally dropped into the Sta. Luzia river at a sugar mill above the town. It converted it into a stream resembling Condy's fluid, and the washerwomen ran through the streets screaming that the water had turned to 27 Leaves from a Madeira Garden blood. If the municipality were to take the hint and periodically repeat the experiment, it might have very beneficial results. These rivers are separated by ridges with more or less precipitous sides, the buttresses of the great mountain mass to the north and east of the town, a range which culminates in peaks six thousand feet high. Up these ridges lie very steep roads, some of which lead across the mountains to the north side of the island. Houses line these roads continuously to the height of about a thousand feet. Save in the town itself there is scarcely a bridge, and unless one is prepared to venture into the ravines by tortuous paths, and to cross the river by step- ping-stones, it is necessary in passing from one ridge to another to descend into the town and to ascend on the other side. This makes the distances by road between houses which face each other across a ravine often considerable. It is almost incredible that under these circum- stances, in the third city of Portugal, with a population, including the suburbs, of over forty thousand, there is no telephone system. If you want to send a message you send your servant to run with it, and if he happens to 28 Funchal and its Gardens look in at his club, and to take part in a pro- longed rubber, you will not see him again for some time. To those accustomed to the enter- prise of northern countries, such a neglect of an opportunity of profitable business, and such disregard of public convenience are very sur- prising. Even in such a poor country as Norway you may find a telephone wire in the remotest mountain valleys. The Portuguese lament the poverty of their country and them- selves. In this and kindred matters is to be found its explanation. They are accustomed to throw the blame on the Government ; but do not peoples enjoy the governments, like the religions, they deserve ? It would not be very difficult, nor over- whelmingly costly, to make a fine drive round the mountain basin above the town, at an alti- tude of from 500 to 800 feet. To judge from the fragments of roads which exist, some such scheme may have been at some time contem- plated. The French would do it in a year or two ; but to judge from the general rate of progress here, it will remain undone for centuries. Yet in its aloofness from the modern stream 39 Leaves from a Madeira Garden of improvement perhaps much of the attraction of Madeira lies. As far as essentials are con- cerned, we might be living in the eighteenth century ; and we now learn how few of the inventions of the nineteenth are necessary to comfort or contentment. One need never be in a hurry ; for most things to-morrow will do as well as, or better than, to-day. And being accustomed to go about the town in a car on runners, not wheels, drawn by two oxen, one is inclined to resent the recent introduction of two or three motor-cars, especially as the streets are narrow and twisted. As their operations are limited by the nature of the country to certain parts of the town, and a road along the coast about six miles in length, and as the cobble stones and ridged hills must be very trying to their tyres and machinery, there are reasonable grounds for hoping that they will not endure very long. There is indeed a certain old-world charm about the cobbled and grass-grown streets of Funchal. The houses are irregular in con- struction ; many of them, especially in the centre of the town, are of considerable an- tiquity ; and though most are more or less 30 Funchal and its Gardens modernized, some still retain their fine old stone doorways and wrought-iron balconies. Here and there a mass of brilliant Bougainvillea or Bignonia streams streetvvards over the wall from an inner court, while later in the winter the Wistaria will hang its graceful blossoms over the heads of the wayfarers. Girls filling their pitchers at the fountain ; carpenters, tin- smiths, and shoemakers plying their little trades in open shops beneath the dwelling-houses ; picturesque country-folk staring open-eyed and open-mouthed at what to them is the bustle and hubbub of a great city, and on festal days crowding to the cathedral ; such are among the customary sights of the streets. The ancient Church is here still vigorous and dominant ; she is a real force deeply influencing the lives of the people, and with her happy use of dramatic and pictorial art in services and pro- cessions, doing much to infuse some interest and variety into them. We who can read are prone to forget the effect on the unlettered of such a representation as the Holy Child in His cradle ; nor do we want the Holy Rood borne aloft to remind us of the manner of His death. And at the evening hour, when the town is 31 Leaves from a Madeira Garden already in shadow, but the sunlight still lingers on the hill, and the "Angelus" rings from the tile-clad Campanile, you may indeed feel that here, if anywhere, the Church is still " whisper- ing from her towers the last enchantments of the Middle Ages." At various times certain well-meaning, but misguided, British subjects have striven to make converts among the people to some form of Protestant religion. Much ill-will was for- merly engendered by these attempts, leading to serious riots. Perhaps the small amount of success which has attended them has led to the indifference and toleration which now prevail. As far as I know, the ministers of the English Church have been blameless in this respect ; and it would indeed be idle to expect that the ecclesiastical compromise of the Tudors, which on historical and other grounds has so strong a hold on us, should have any meaning for these people. Still less do the tenets of other Protestant bodies, however well they accord with the comparative simplicity and directness of the Northern character, seem fitted to satisfy the emotions of warm-blooded Southerners, with their strong tendency to 32 FimcJial and its Gardens mysticism, and what their would-be instructors designate as superstition. One would suppose that the heathen of the neighbouring Dark Continent offer a more suitable, if less agree- able, field for such endeavours. The general aspect of Funchal, apart from the unfortunate condition of the river-beds, which is due to neglect of duty on the part of the local government, is pre-eminently clean. The inhabitants have a positive mania for whitewash, with its pink and yellow varieties. They carry its use to the excess of plastering and washing all their garden walls, a practice which creates a dead level of uniformity and an unnecessary glare. If, as applied to the exterior of houses, whitewash may not always be a sign of inward grace, yet it is something to look clean, and in this respect Funchal far surpasses the towns of Italy and other Mediterranean countries. And in the matter of street smells it only achieves a very modest distinction. On the western side of the town, in the neighbourhood of the " Ribeiro Secco," a river which, except in very wet weather, does not belie its name, the ground is less precipitous than elsewhere, and as it faces the higher 33 D Leaves from a Madeira Garden hills the views are generally far finer than those obtained from their slopes. This may now be described as the Strangers' quarter, for here, as elsewhere, those who are free to select their own place of residence seem to be drawn by some mysterious law to move westwards. Can this be a survival of the instinct of emigration westwards which has populated Europe and America from the Central Asian steppes ? In this direction are the hotels frequented by visitors, and here, on a slope above the Dry River, is the Quinta in which we live among our flowers. It faces south-east, and looks across the bay to the rocky uninhabited islands known as the " De- sertas " (I have an old Admiralty chart in which they appear as the " Deserters " ! — perhaps a poetical suggestion that they are fugitives from the main island) ; and across such portions of the city as are not hidden by the intervening ridges to the great hills beyond. Below us lies the little harbour behind the breakwater which terminates in the Loo Rock, crowned with its ancient fort ; and farther off the road- stead in which the great liners ride at anchor. It would be difficult to find a fairer setting for 34 Funchal and its Gardens a garden, a nobler combination of sea and mountain, with just the sufficient evidence of man's neighbourhood and handiwork to emphasize the natural grandeur of the scene. We purchased this Quinta about seven years ago from a Portuguese gentleman, who was more concerned with farming than with flowers. There was the usual square plot in front of the house ; in the centre of it a handsome marble fountain, and round about certain flower beds edged with jagged clinkers, unpleasant to look at, and very damaging to the boots of those who incautiously approached them. With the exception of this, and of a paved court enclosing a small pond in which a duck of some northern breed passed in solitude a melancholy existence, the whole ground was given up to bananas and vines. It was all very well " arranged," to use a favourite Portuguese expression ; looked at practically from the point of view of the Madeira agriculturist it was perfect ; the symmetrical, terraced plots all provided with cemented conduits for purposes of irrigation, and the roads and paths of cobble-stones laid in cement to prevent the intrusion of weeds ; most of the paths covered with pergolas of chestnut wood 35 Leaves from a Madeira Garden on solid iron posts, for the support of vines ; and the garden plot and the entrance-drive surrounded by a bare cast-iron railing. The whole had an air of having cost a great deal of money ; and to the eye of a garden lover, and perhaps especially of an Englishman, the general effect was appalling. Save for a few fine old trees, camphor trees, magnolias and others, surrounding the house, the domain was destitute of shade, for in the winter the vines covering the pergolas are almost leafless ; and this, combined with the arid pavements and the too obtrusive iron railings, gave a distressing air 'of bareness to the place. But we put our trust in the vigour of Madeira soil and air, and our confidence has not been misplaced. We planted eucalyptus trees where shade was most urgently needed, and we have already specimens of those beautiful trees at least thirty feet high. We dared to run counter to public opinion in planting an avenue of cypresses, here still the *' invisae cupressi" of Horace, and held to be an ornament for graveyards alone ; and already our avenue is visible far and wide and imparts something of a Mediterranean aspect to the 36 Funchal and its Gardens vicinity. Our shade-giving trees planted, we could afford to proceed more leisurely with our climbers and flowering plants ; and of these and of the extension of the garden ground to contain them I will speak later. At the back of our house a steep road leads to the district of S. Martinho — a village two or three miles to the west of Funchal, You mount very quickly, and at an elevation of about seven hundred feet come upon a pleasant road which is almost level for two or three miles, and bending northwards and eastwards presents a continually varied and charming series of views of the town lying in the great basin below. Hither on one of the days between Christmas and the New Year — a day of brilliant sunshine, but as the white-horses out at sea may tell us wit), a strong north-east wind blowing — we asc ;nd intent to meet some friends from an ither quarter of the town. The trysting- p ace is a pine wood, in the shade of which we jicnic. That at such a season such things are possible is evidence of the wonderful climate we enjoy here. At this slight elevation the air is lighter and fresher than by the sea-board. Some wandering gusts of the north-easter reach 37 Leaves from a Madeira Garden us ; but with a shade temperature of over 60° it cannot be called cold. The country round seems remotely to suggest Devonshire in spring. The oak-trees, indeed, retain their summer foliage, and will not lose it till the new leaves in February push the old ones off. But at their base are the wild flowers of spring, and the scent of spring is in the air. The clumps of pampas grass and huge yuccas at the entrance of a neighbouring Qidnta recall an English garden, and the only suggestion at hand of a more southern land is the luxuriance of the glaucous aloes which grow in masses on the rocks. Here with jest and laughter we beguile the midday hours — " Light flows our war of mocking words ; " — and, when the sun declines, watch, as we have often watched in wonder and delight before, the ravines of the opposite hills grow dark and mysterious in their evening haze, a foil for the heightened glow on peak and ridge. 38 ' Fimchal and its Gardens SOME SHRUBS, CLIMBERS, AND PLANTS IN FLOWER ON CHRISTMAS DAY. Astrapaca viscosa, "Tassel Tree." Cantua dependens. Datura suaveolens. Euphorbia, in variety. Habrothamnus, red. Hibiscus, single red ,, double red. „ yellow. Lasiandra. Myrtle. Olea fragrans. Plumbago capensis Poinsettia capensis. Strelitzia augusta. „ reginac. Streptosolen Jameson!. Bignonia venusta. „ Smithii. Bougainvillea, purple. „ mauve. „ rose. „ red. Cobaea scandens. Convolvulus, various species. Ipomaea, "Morning glory." Passiflora caerulea. Solanum jasminoides. ,, Seaforthianum. 39 Leaves from a Madeira Garden Tacsonia insignis. Thunbcrgia grandiflora. Aponogeton (iistachyon. Arum lilies. Asters. Azaleas. Begonias, in great variety. Callistemon speciosum, " Bottle brush." Cannas. Carnations. Celosia cristata. Coleus Thyrsoideus. Crinum. Franciscea, Fuchsias, in variety. Geranium, in great variety. Heliotrope, light and dark. Iris, English. ,, stylosa alba. Lantana, in variety. Lobelia. Linum, yellow. Melastoma. Mignonette. Pelargonium. Phlox. Salvia. Stocks. Roses : — Bardou Job. Beauty of Glazenwood Caroline Testout. 40 Fiinclial and its Gardens Roses — continued. Cloth of Gold. Duchesse d'Auerstadt. Frau Karl Druschki. Gloire de Dijon. La Marque. La France. Marechal Neil. Reine Marie Henriette. Souvenir de Malmaison. Souvenir d'un Ami. William Allen Richardson, and others. 41 Chapter lll—J^NUzART Town and Country Delights " The little pleasure of the game." — Prior. THE old year died in a blaze of glory. The passion of the Madeirans for fireworks, as pleasing not only to the eye, but to the ear, is extra- ordinary. During the past fortnight the Saturnalia have been celebrated with a con- tinuous fusillade by day and night. Learned men will discourse to you of survivals of sun- worship and fire-worship. But these do not seem to account for the noise-worship in which the younger part of the population especially takes so active a part. The great delight of the small boys, abetted, it must be owned, by their small sisters, is to place some fulminating powder on a stone and to strike it just as you are passing, on foot or horseback. Let us hope that this early training in the abuse of explosives will not induce bomb-throwing in maturity. 42 Toiun and Country Delights In the last hours of the thirty-first of December the firework habit produces its fullest manifestations. The town, the suburbs, the country houses, and the surrounding hills are all ablaze with coloured lights, and, as the hour of midnight approaches, showers of rockets, of shells, of Roman candles, and what- not rise in all directions. The climax is reached at midnight, when the rain of fire redoubles, the steamers in the port blow their hooters, bells are rung, and a most unholy din prevails. Then in a few minutes all is peace, save when some roysterers wake the echoes, or a belated bomb disturbs our slumbers. This watch-night display of fireworks Is Indeed a splendid spectacle, its success being largely due to the hilly nature of its area, and its widespread extent. Though the individual fireworks may be of comparatively inferior quality, yet the whole far surpasses in glory set displays at exhibitions and such places, and the effect is much heightened by the fact that it is the result of private and spontaneous effort. With the advent of the New Year, Madeira's " season," from the hotel-keepers* point of view, may be said to be well started. The Casino is 43 Leaves from a Madeira Garden in full swing. It is called euphemistically the " Strangers' Club," a name less rich in poetic fancy than the " Sea-bathino- Establishment " of Monte Carlo, but appropriately suggesting to the reflective mind that the taking-in of strangers is its business. Its very modest subscription is naturally inadequate to keep up the house and gardens, or to pay for its excel- lent music, and its frequent balls and entertain- ments. The deficiency is very comfortably provided by the game of Roulette. Such games are, I understand, as illegal in Portugal as in England ; but in this delightfully easy-going country it seems the business of no one to enforce an inconsiderate law, and if such a functionary exists he is easily convinced that it is best to leave things alone. It is not for us English to throw stones. We have a beautiful system of laws intended to repress betting, and we know the result. And does not " the City" exist that, under the skilfully designed semblance of a real transaction, we may be enabled to satisfy our gambling propensities in buying stocks and shares and wheat and cotton without paying for them, or in selling such things without possessing them, and indeed 44 Town and Country Delights without troubling ourselves very much whether they exist or not ? Nor are we backward in availing ourselves of opportunities wherever they occur. An old traveller once said to me, " I have been all over the world, and wherever I found gambling going on, there were English- men in the thick of it." And perhaps it may be remarked that the chief patrons of this excellent club are English. It is a great boon to many visitors. In the modern sense there is here " nothing to do " — no golf, no motoring (to speak of), no sports of the field ; and the Casino, before and after dinner, is a resource for the resourceless. If people lose their money it is their own affair. Losing has been stated on expert authority to be the next greatest pleasure to winning. Possibly it keeps them out of worse mischief. And the unco' guid who find in the vices, venial or otherwise, of their neighbours an occasion for self-com- placency, are enabled to gird at the iniquities of this sinful establishment ; and so everybody is pleased. The game of Roulette is a very fair one to the player. Considering that "the bank" provides the place and means of playing ; that 45 Leaves from a Madeira Garden It pays for the croupiers and the lights, and for sweet music to soothe your sorrows ; that if you commit suicide on the premises it will charge itself with your burial ; surely for all these services it is a small thing that when you back a winning number, one of the 37 on the board, it pays you 35, instead of 2)^^ times your stake. This is a very modest deduction from such noble winnings ; and if (as is more probable) you lose, you have nothing further to pay whatever. And think of the possi- bilities ; in a few minutes a sovereign may gather to itself hundreds. But you cannot expect that to happen every day ; and if you are here for some time, and wish to make the most of your opportunities, you will play a " system." This is a very certain method of losing in the end ; but it is quite possible that you may take a long time dying. And you will be able to find occupation for your morn- ings in looking over your system in the light of yesterday's results, in darning holes in it, as it were, in readiness for the evening's en- counter ; or if it be worn too threadbare, in inventing a new one. I hope that other readers of Wordsworth 46 Toivn and Countrij DeUglds will forgive me for irreverently quoting from " The Excursion ; Despondency Corrected " — "If tired of systems, each in its degree Substantial, and all cruml)ling in their turn, Let him build systems of his own, and smile At the fond work, demolished with a touch/' If you are a heaven-born gambler (I confess to some incongruity in the phrase) — one of those blighted Bonapartes whose star occa- sionally illumines the monotony of the Casino sky — you will know how to take fortune at the flood, or, what is even more important, to remember an engagement elsewhere when luck is against you. But such a genius is rare ; nascitur 7ion fit. George Selwyn, in repentant old age, de- scribed play as one of the greatest consumers of time, fortune, constitution, and thinkino-. If history tells the truth, he had enjoyed every opportunity of knowing. Yet putting aside fortune and constitution, there are some who reckon the killing of time as one of its merits and many who do not want to think. No one seems to have discovered a sound basis for condemning gambling on moral grounds. Its excess is no doubt pernicious ; but that may be 47 Leaves from a Madeira Garden said of many pleasures and pursuits quite innocent in themselves. It does not seem to be in itself demoralizing, for it has been the recreation of many of the greatest and most honoured among men. If it is accused of withdrawing men from more useful pursuits, the same may be said of golf and beggar-my- neighbour. It does not appear to do any injury to the Commonwealth, for it is merely the means of transferring money from one man's pocket to another (as does the Old Age Pensions' Scheme) ; and is, so far, less blame- worthy than some forms of extravagance. And it causes no suffering to any living thing, which cannot be said of field-sports. So perhaps we may conclude that the ladies and gentlemen, and others, who are sitting round that revolving wheel, are enjoying themselves in a very harm- less, if rather stupid, way ; and that if we only want to listen to the band, or to sit in a pleasant garden overlooking the bay, we ought to be obliged to them for paying for our amusement. Yet it is a refreshment to turn from the somewhat banal atmosphere of such estabhsh- ments to the free air of the mountains. At 48 Toivn and Country Delights this season of the year the weather in the hills is often less to be distrusted than it is a month later. At an altitude of five thousand feet, where snow may be lying to-morrow, you may find to-day a blazing sun, and be glad to ride in your shirt-sleeves. The mountain scenery of Madeira, consider- ing its small area, is of surprising magnificence. The island is a little smaller than the Isle of Man, and about one-fourth larger than the Isle of Wight. The distance from Funchal on the south to Santa Anna on the north coast is only fourteen miles as the crow flies ; yet so devious is the road, so steep and numerous the ridges to be crossed, that the journey involves a ride of six or seven hours. Perhaps the most characteristic scenery is to be found in the valleys of the north side ; deep troughs which run right into the heart of the central chain, and at their head are surrounded by precipices several thousand feet high. Shaded by their aspect from the fiercer rays of the sun, and enjoying a moist atmosphere, for the valleys are often filled with cloud, these precipitous cliff's are clothed, wherever it can find a foot- ing, with a superb vegetation. The trees are 49 E Leaves from a Madeira Garden mostly of the laurel tribe, and under favour- able conditions are of great size and doubtless of great age. Beneath their shade, and on their trunks, ferns and mosses flourish in unbridled luxuriance. The traveller receives a just and agreeable impression of being surrounded by those primeval conditions, un- affected by man's handiwork, which are ever becoming rarer in the more easily accessible portions of the world's surface. The majority of these valleys are rarely trodden by civilized man. A visit to them necessitates sleeping at one of the villages on the north coast, where accommodation is still very limited and primi- tive ; and owing to the absence of demand it seems rather to have deteriorated than advanced during recent years. Much of the finest scenery of Madeira is rendered accessible to the adventurous through the levadas^ or channels, by which water is collected in the higher hills and brought down to irrigate the lower regions. They are com- monly cut out of the rock, or built of masonry, on the steep hillsides, and the watercourse is usually protected by a parapet about eighteen inches wide. Their construction must often 50 Toiun and Country Delights have presented great difficulties, it having been necessary in many cases to let down the work- men by ropes from above. As their existence is essential to the cultivation of the lower lands they are generally kept in good repair, and those who have steady heads, and dare to walk by so narrow a path along the face of giant precipices, may reach magnificent scenery other- wise unapproachable. As the levadas must of course follow every deviation of the hillside their length is often very great, and it may sometimes involve a walk of fifteen or twenty miles to reach a point not more than two or three miles distant in a straight line. Here and there it may be necessary to creep through tunnels, and perhaps to walk in the water- channel itself ; sometimes an overhanging rock will make the passage of the narrow parapet, with a thousand feet of precipice below, a rather blood-curdling business ; but the reward is great. We are conducted into the very heart and penetralia of the mountain solitude, and may feast our eyes on ever-changing vistas of forest-clad cliffs and soaring crags. It happens that a point of view in one of the grandest and most typical valleys of the north 51 Leaves from a Madeira Garden may be visited with great ease from Funchal in a day's excursion. Two thousand feet above the town lies on the steep hillside the hamlet and church of Monte. The main road to the north runs through, and ascends rapidly above, to a pass which crosses the principal chain of mountains at a height of 4500 feet. A cog- wheel railway takes one very easily up from Funchal to "the Mount." The village is a favourite resort of the townsfolk on holidays, and is visited annually by thousands of pas- sengers from steamers calling at the port for a few hours. They ascend by the railway and return in " running cars " down the Mount Road. These cars are, I believe, peculiar to Madeira. They are made of wickerwork and mounted on sledges, and descend the steep roads around Funchal very rapidly, chiefly by the force of their own momentum. They are guided by two men by means of ropes fixed to the front of the car, and where propulsion is necessary, the men stand with one foot on the back of the car and push with the other behind. From the Mount you may proceed to the hills above on foot or on horseback ; or in the ancient Madeira mode you may be carried by 52 Toivn and Country Delights men in a hammock slung on a pole. The hammock, and the palanquin were formerly the chief means of locomotion for ladies in town or country ; the hammock is still used for mountain excursions, and by aged priests when visiting their parishioners. A combi- nation of riding and walking is the pleasantest method for those who are equal to it. So on one of the earliest days of the year we start from the Mount for the Ribeiro Frio, "the Cold River," a stream running northward from the main chain, near to which is a celebrated point of view, the spot chosen for our picnic. A dog and several horses, with their attendants, form our cavalcade ; the first has made many a mountain excursion before, but he is still under the impression that he is brought out to hunt the half-wild goats that browse upon the hillsides. We ascend rapidly through pine-woods, pausing where there is an opening to look back at the city lying below us, and away to the westward to the great mass of Capo Girao, a headland with a sheer front to the sea. It has been said to be the highest sea-clifFin the world, but is surpassed by many on the Norwegian coast, and doubtless elsewhere. 53 Leaves from a Madeira Garden To the east, a mist almost lilac in hue, envel- opes without concealing the Desertas. When we emerge from the pine-woods, at an altitude of nearly four thousand feet, we enter a bleak moorland region with great heaths and bilberry- bushes. There is an agreeable haze in the sky to prevent the sun from being too hot ; at this altitude the air is very fresh but not cold. Our enjoyment and exhilaration there is naught to mar. I expect, from past experience, that we may find the northern valleys filled with cloud ; but we are in luck, and they prove to be as clear as the southern slope. Liability to disappointment from this cause is a risk of Madeira travel. Our uphill journey ends at a shelter-hut on the top of the pass, where the northern ocean comes into view. Thirty miles off, on the horizon, lies the mountainous island of Porto Santo, and to our left the highest peaks of Madeira, Ruivo and Arriero. Hence we begin the descent across another moorland tract, the mountain views becoming at every step grander and better defined. From the moor we reach the valley by a road of steep zigzags, in woods of laurel, with an undergrowth of fern. Through this 54 Toioii and Country Delights forest glade, which has been compared rather fancifully to the scenery of Killarney, meanders the Cold River. But this is not what we have come out to see. We leave our horses on its banks, ascend a slope of some two hundred feet to a levada, pass along it by a cutting through one of the narrow ridges characteristic of Madeira scenery, and in a few minutes are in the presence of one of the world's great views. Climbing on to an isolated rock we look down into the vast valley of the Metade, with its precipitous sides rising apparently sheer from its floor upwards some five thousand feet to the pinnacles of the highest mountains. That they are not so precipitous as they look we may judge from the fact that the lower cliifs are clothed everywhere with a wealth of vegetation. The valley is widest, and circular in form, at its head. Mysterious and only half-seen minor valleys branch from the main body, separated from each other by the buttresses of the mountain range. Far below us foams the torrent, a small stream itself, but dowered by the reverberations of a thousand echoes with the roar of a great river. High over all tower the masses of Ruivo and Arriero, and the 55 Leaves from a Madeira Garden inaccessible crags of the Torres which lie between them. They are clear to-day, and are perhaps less overwhelmingly grand than when a belt of mist lies below their summits. But too often they are completely hidden in cloud, and to-day we may rejoice that we have not made our journey in vain. As filled with a delight not unmixed with awe, we linger in the presence of this majestic scene, scarcely touched and in no way spoilt by the hand of man, we may reflect with wonder on the sentiments with regard to mountains which prevailed not only in the ancient world, but in the modern down to a very recent period. To-day, certainly to Northerners, perhaps especially to those who have in them something of Celtic breeding, the attraction of the mountain, of the stern and terrible in Nature, is immense. It exercises over many minds that " cleansing of the pas- sions " which Aristotle ascribes to tragedy. It may be that it marks a reaction from our flagrant sacrifice of the softer beauties of Nature to our coarser needs, from the grimy hideous- ness and meanness of our towns, and the pro- gressive despoilment of our rural amenities. In 56 Toimi and Countrij Delights this form of barbarism, perhaps, no nation rivals the British ; and it may be that the British, as a nation, are the chief mountain-lovers. To the Greeks and Romans, says Humboldt, only the homely was pleasant in a landscape, not what we call the wild and romantic. To the Middle Ages, and for long after the Renaissance, the idea of the romantic was foreign ; and the love of Nature in her savage, and what we call her grander, moods found until the latter half of the eighteenth century only rare and isolated expression. The last two centuries have witnessed many revolutions in human thought and sentiment. Perhaps none is more striking than this new-born worship of the mountain. In the great days of Rome, innumerable travellers were constantly traversing the passes of Switzerland. They saw in them only Livy's fceditas Alpiunty the hideousness of the Alps. They had no eye but for " the difficulties of the narrow mule-paths, the wilderness of ice and snow, the horror of the avalanches." This is the reason why "of the eternal snow of the Alps, ruddy in sunset or sunrise, of the mar- vellous blue of the glaciers, of the magnificence 57 Leaves from a Madeira Garden of the Swiss landscape, no ancient said one word ; it is why Silius Italicus describes the Alps as a horrifying barren desert, whilst lovingly dwelling on Italy's ravines and wooded shores." It has been pointed out in mitigation of their blindness that modern travellers to the Arctic desolations of ice have been equally impervious to the terrible majesty of those regions, destined perhaps some day to be the playground of a jaded townsfolk. "We have to wait many centuries for the awakening. I find that even Horace Walpole, writing from Turin in 1739, after crossing the Alps for the first time, has nothing to say of them but " such uncouth rocks, and such uncomely inhabitants." But he is full of sentiment concerning the loss of his pet King Charles " Tory," which was carried off by a wolf. To the crowds which now find an almost exaggerated delight in the moors and lochs of Scotland, the words of Dr. Johnson on his tour in 1773 would seem to refer to another planet. He describes the dreary monotony of the treeless moors and naked hills : "An eye accustomed to flowery pastures and waving harvests is astonished and repelled by the wide 5S Tolou and Country Delights extent of hopeless sterility." This is the classical note ; Nature untamed or untamable by man is repellant. The idea took form in the gardens of the ancients, reproduced in those of the Renaissance. The modern English garden, with its groups of shrubs and its flowers in masses, recalling Nature's own arrangements, its " wild garden " and its " naturalizations " — the "English plan of freakish Nature," as Goethe called it — is based on quite a different set of feelings from those which found expres- sion (to quote a historic sentence) in the " voluptuous parterre, the trim garden, and the expensive pleasure-grounds, where effeminacy was wont to saunter, or indolence to loll." Is not the charm we find in the gardens of the Renaissance, such as those of Tivoli or Frascati, chiefly due to the fact that Nature has reasserted her sway ? Should we find it all if the balustrades were cleansed of their lichens, the broken steps and pillars put into a thorough state of repair, and the gnarled trunks of ancient trees, the dense thickets of ancient shrubs, replaced by the neat greenery of the earlier days ? The jaded Roman Emperor offered a great 59 Leaves from a Madeira Garden reward to the man who would discover for him a new pleasure ; surely we moderns have found one in our new-born love for Nature's greater works — the blue glaciers and soaring peaks of the Alps ; the vast snow-caps and sombre fjords of Norway ; the jagged pinnacles and forest-clad cliffs of this volcanic island. Yet as we gaze to-day, the 4th of January, 1909 — our minds full of the Sicilian catas- trophe— across the vast cauldron of the Metade valley to the fire-scarred crags of Arriero and the Torres, perhaps there mingles with our admiration some remnant of the ancient feeling of horror at such evidence of the terrific and ruthless forces of Nature. This island stands six thousand feet high, amid sea-depths more than twice as great. It has been piled up on the ocean's bed by a series of eruptions repeated again and again, sometimes in rapid succession, sometimes at long intervals, over a period of time to be reckoned by tens of thousands of years. Earthquakes have riven the layers of solid rock and filled the fissures with lava, now to be seen in the form of dykes inter- secting the highest hills. To earthquakes are due the vast rendings of the rock which 60 Town and Country Delights through the subsequent action of the elements have become those " trenches of the long- drawn vales " that delight us to-day. Every- where, in highland and lowland alike, we behold traces of a prolonged and appalling volcanic activity. For many centuries it has been stilled, and we who dwell upon its slumbering ashes may dare to hope that the forces which gave it birth will rest for ever contented with their labour. 6i Chapter IV—JiANUz/fRr The Garden in Mid-Winter " Profusion bright ! and every flower assuming A more than natural vividness of" hue, From unaffected contrast with the gloom Of sober cypress." Wordsworth. T HE effect of the copious rainfall of last autumn is still felt in our garden. Never before in mid- January have we been so rich in flowers ; never have the roses especially bloomed with such a reckless abandon. I have already related that six years ago our house stood in the middle of several acres of banana trees, with a small garden plot in front. The whole property is on a moderate slope, facing to the south-east, and is divided into about half a dozen main terraces. We resisted the blandishments of those who would have us lay out a garden on a preconceived scheme. In succeeding years we have taken different pieces 62 The Garden in Mid-Winter of ground from the fazenda^ and turned them into flower garden ; — here a little lawn with a belt of white datura on either side ; there a walk bordered by cypresses, which serve as frames for exquisite views of sea and mountain ; here a long pergola covered with roses, William Allen Richardson and Marechal Niel ; there a little winding path, bordered with rosemary, among tall shrubs, the many- hued Jcalapha, and the giant Strelitzia with its strangely beaked blossom. This method of proceeding has had the advantage of giving us continued employment, and if we do not use up all our ground too quickly, may be con- tinued almost indefinitely. An old quarry, the floor of which we found a potato field, has become a rich jungle of tree-ferns, various flowering shrubs, arum lilies, cannas, scarlet salvias, and many another ; its walls hung with Bignonia, Bougainville a ^ and white roses. On either side of the entrance drive, which ascends in a curve from the gate to the level of the house, we cleared a broad belt in which palms rise from a carpet of geranium and pelargonium^ and are already asserting their supremacy over lesser trees and shrubs. The iron railing which 63 Leaves from a Madeira Garden bounds this drive is no longer visible, being covered from end to end with the Chinese white single rose, not as yet in flower, but in March to be resplendent in snow-white purity. The little pond was deprived of its melancholy duck, and is now a watery wilderness of papyrus and lilies. The general effect is not unpleasing. It may be that it lacks dignity and repose, but it is typically Madeiran, a glorified and extended cottage-garden. And it is rich not only in colour but in variety and surprise. One thing these Southern gardens lack, the " Wet, bird-haunted English lawn." Grass can be grown, with care and trouble, but it is not quite the same thing. And it is a question whether it is worth while to strive at all for that in which we cannot hope to attain a reasonable degree of success. In gardening, as in other things, which is our best course : to cultivate what suits our earth and climate to perfection — to develop our potentialities on their natural lines, or to set ourselves to fight with obstacles ; to grow rhododendrons in chalky Sussex, or to foster the reluctant primrose here ? Different natures will give different 64 The Garden in Mid-Winter answers ; mine would be whole-heartedly for making the best of circumstances. There may- be great men, and great gardeners, who claim to mould the world, and its soils, to their will ; history is witness that they generally come to grief in the end. So let us waste little time upon our turf here, and if we wish to see it in perfection, after its " rolling and cutting once a week for a thousand years," let us revisit the Oxford of our youth in May. There is no great change this month in the ordinary run of our garden flowers. The sweet peas are growing apace, but it will be February before they bloom. A magnificent IVigandia is rearing its great purple heads above a wealth of giant green leaves. For stately dignity it is unsurpassed, and its rapid growth is prodigious. Three years ago a small plant in a pot was given to us by a friend, and to-day masses of it, twelve feet high and flowering profusely, are perhaps the most striking feature of our garden. Like the roses, the flowering climbers are this winter beautiful without precedent. The orange Bignonia indeed is beginning to show signs of decadence, but the Bougainvilleas are 65 F Leaves from a Jladeira Garden now superb. Their splendour is due not to the flower proper, which is insignificant, but to the coloured bracts which surround it. Four or five species flourish here — purple, rose, red, and mauve. The purple is the strongest grower, and produces the most startling mass of colour — perhaps unrivalled in Nature ; it may be that the rose, which is more uncommon and less sturdy, is the loveliest. But each has its votaries, and the wise will be content to admire all without setting one above the others. The beautiful blue-grey Thuyihergia is in flower, but not in its full pride ; and among less prominent climbers the scarlet passion-flower and a delicate mauve Solanum attract atten- tion. The '' Morning Glory," unique among flowering plants for the sheen of its steely blue, is passing. Coba'a scandens clothes our verandah with a never-failing wealth of graceful bloom, and with it mixes a dainty climbing asparagus covered now with small white flowers. Among orchids, the great pots of various Cypripedia^ which for the last month have decorated our drawing-room, are beginning to show signs of wear. Of these perhaps the 66 Tiie Garden in Mid-Winter most striking in colour is C. Lathamianum. Their place will be taken by some fine Czlogyne, now beginning to hang their snow-white blooms in profusion. Various species of Dendrobiuin will take their turn later. All these are here of very easy culture, the chief difficulty being to induce our gardeners not to drown them in our absence. And in this ineradicable passion for over- watering lies one of our chief troubles. Water is here a valuable and expensive commodity. Each property possesses so many hours' run of water from the le^jada per fortnight ; and it is possible to purchase these rights, or to buy water by the hour from a neighbour who is short of cash. Stealing it by turning the stream intended for his tank into your own is a cheaper and more popular method of obtaining it. So important is the estimate of rights to water, that if you are contemplating the purchase of a piece of ground, the vendor will probably dilate to you, not of its acreage, its soil, its aspect, or its prospective building value, but of the hours of water it possesses. Doubtless in the uneducated mind the ownership of many hours confers a kind of distinction (such as the 67 Leaves from a Madeira Garden possession of many wives brings to a Kaffir chief), and your garden boy feels that he is doing honour to himself in serving a " patron " who can afford to let him stand and pour forth the precious liquid from a hose, especially where it isn't wanted. It is almost as good fun as letting off fireworks, and, besides, it is easier work than digging or weeding or sweep- ing. And so we find that those portions of the garden where the water-tap is handy and the hose can be easily adjusted are con- tinually in a swampy condition, and if the roses are mildewed and other things "damp off" it is not surprising. We are waging war this year against this continual inunda- tion, but it is hard to fight with prejudiced ignorance. The absence of any garden knowledge among the working people here is indeed a great trial, especially when one is only present one's self for a third of the year, and the most important operations, the pruning of roses and so on, have to be conducted in our absence. It is an immense tribute to the vitality of the vegetation that our gardens do as well as they do. It would of course be easy to bring over 68 The Garden in Mid-Winter an English gardener, but there is the difficulty of the language to be considered ; and English- men of that class too frequently develop an abnormal thirst in this climate when left to themselves. But though they have little knowledge of their craft, being ignorant even of the names of all but the commonest flowers, they are as a rule pleasant fellows to work with, willing and eager to oblige. Our first head gardener, Manoel, might with education have gone far ; in middle life he had taught himself to read and write not only Portuguese but English. Miss Dowie has told us that all the gardeners she has met are "blighted carpenters." Manoel was a blighted politician, foreign politics being his speciality. He was intensely interested in the Russo-Japanese war, and could give you a full estimate of the land and sea forces of either nation. Like almost all the Portuguese, gentle and simple, he took the Russian side, being influenced by a consideration which rather strangely carried no weight in England — that the Russians were Christians, and the Japanese not. To them this war was but another phase of the eternal struggle between Christendom 69 Leaves from a Madeira Garden and Paganism. But though something of an idealist, Manoel was not wanting in a certain practical wisdom. I inquired why he was having his little bright-eyed son taught French rather than English, He replied, " Not many people here know French ; my cousin Jos^, he can speak French very well. One winter, many years ago, a rich Russian gentleman come to Madeira, and take the Quinta Vigia. None of his servants speak any Portuguese or any English, only French. The rich Russian gentleman take my cousin Jose into his house to arrange everything for him, and to buy everything he want. When the Russian gentle- man go away, my cousin Jos6, he very rich man, he go to Calheta and buy a property, and never do any more work. Perhaps some day another Russian gentleman come here ; so I will have my little boy learn French." This custom of regarding the foreign visitor as a milch cow is deeply ingrained in the servant class here. It is a consideration ever present to us in our dealings with our otherwise excellent cook, whose pleasant and profitable business it is to market for us. We hear dark rumours that he is buying house property in the town, and 70 The Garden in Mid-Winter we have an uneasy feeling that if every one had his due, those houses would be ours. Manoel, with all his merits, had one serious weakness ; he did not carry his " aguardente " well, and became very quarrelsome in his cups. One Christmas afternoon we were seated quietly in our verandah, when a dishevelled, tear-stained and voluble Manoel appeared to inform us that either he or Silva must die. Now, Silva is our " odd man," and does nine-tenths of the house- work, and we could ill afford to lose him. Our fears were groundless, as next morning I dis- covered the two playing cards amicably together among the bananas. We were willing to over- look a little excess at Christmas time, but Manoel's lapses became too frequent, and he fell. He bears no ill will, and when I meet him in the street, he hopes the master is well, and inquires with respect of the mistress. Our next head gardener was of a different type. He really knew a little — a very little — about his work ; unfortunately he thought he knew everything, and generally regarded my proceedings with a sickly toleration. One compliment he did indeed pay me, and I have 71 Leaves from a Madeira Garden treasured the memory of it as a testimony that some of my labours were appreciated. We were leaving for England, and he came to me and said, " Now the patron is going away, I shall want another garden-boy." He was always worried about the "muito tra- balho " of his place, and the inadequacy of his ample salary ; and so we decided that he had better find another situation. We have now promoted an excellent youth who has been with us as an under-gardener for several years. Carlos is a typical Madeira country boy, with thick-set, sturdy frame, crisp black hair and laughing eyes. He is overjoyed at his rise in the world, and for some days murmured " muito contente " whenever I went within a few yards of him. He is to get married on the strength of it, and his fiancee can fortunately read and write, and will be able to keep his accounts. He is to bring his bride to our garden cottage, and perhaps before long we may have the luck to see some nice little black-eyed Carloses and Carlottas playing among our chickens and turkeys, and pulling the much-bitten ears of our cross old mongrel " Yap." 7« The Garden in Mid-Winter Carlos has enjoyed the benefit of some military training, but having passed the age of twenty-five he is relieved from the fear of service in the army. These sturdy Portu- guese countrymen make very well set-up soldiers. They are of great strength and endurance, 'and, if somewhat excitable, gifted with a certain doggedness. Wellington wrote of his Portuguese troops in the Peninsula, when well paid and well fed, as the " fighting- cocks " of his army. The good manners which are so marked a characteristic of the Portuguese upper classes are shared by the lower. To their social superiors they are respectful without servility, and they are uniformly courteous to each other. Servants have a pleasant way of ex- hibiting; an interest in their masters' health and well-being ; if I meet our cook in the morning he never fails to express a hope that the patron has passed a good night. A master is expected to address his servants as " Vosse Merce " — " Your worship " — a form of speech we too often omit. The Portuguese master does not need Lord Chesterfield's advice to his godson : " There 73 Leaves from a Madeira Garden is a degree of good breeding towards those who are greatly your inferiors which is in truth common humanity and good nature ; and yet I have known some persons, who in other respects were well bred, brutal to their servants and dependants. This is mean, and implies a hardness of heart, of which I am sure you never will be guilty." Most Portuguese titles and modes of address are somewhat exaggerated. In writing to an equal, you put on the envelope, " Illustrissimo Excellentissimo Senhor," which may be taken as the equivalent of our " Esq." Servants, even labourers, invariably use " Senhor " and " Senhora " in speaking to each other. A small and perky boy, whom we have made porter at our gate, always hazards a remark to me on the weather as I pass in or out ; and if I do not immediately understand it, shouts at me as if I were deaf. He is growing very fat on his congenial occupation, but it is to be feared that he will find the summer, when our kitchen is closed, a saison maigre. If our servants are to us a strange and in- teresting study, what must we be to them ? We come heaven knows whence, not at the 74 The Garden in Mid-Winter joyous season of the vintage, but when days are shortest and rains are cold ; we profess an impious religion which will conduct us surely to damnation ; our manners are odious — we don't even know how to take ofF our hats ; we make a ridiculous fuss about boiled water and such trifles ; our pockets are apparently overflowing with boundless wealth, and yet we make ourselves hot digging in the garden ; we scour inhospitable mountains with no com- prehensible object ; we are always hunting for old and rickety chairs and tables, and paying for them at least the price of new ones ; we exhibit and expect a most uncomfortable amount of energy, when there is really no necessity to hurry or to fuss ; and just when the warmth of spring is flooding our gardens, which we profess to love, with the richest treasures, we are off again. Truly must we be sunk in " The depth of that consuming restlessness Which makes man's greatest woe." The servants' view does not often leak out ; when it does it is not always flattering to the masters. " There has happened," wrote Horace Walpole to Horace Mann, " a comical 75 Leaves from a Madeira Garden circumstance at Leicester House ; one of the Prince's coachmen, who used to drive the Maids of Honour, was so sick of them, that he has left his son three hundred pounds, upon condition that he never marries a Maid of Honour." One of the pleasures of a garden is to show it to the appreciative visitor ; and this is a pleasure which we very frequently enjoy here. New-comers usually express genuine astonish- ment at the floral luxuriance, and friends who land from passing steamers are of course pre- pared to enjoy anything. One nice young soldier-cousin who passed by last week won our hearts by saying, "Well, I've never seen a garden before ; they buck about their gardens in India, but they don't know what a garden is." Some visitors are a little trying with their excessive botanical knowledge. The study of nurserymen's catalogues has had a distressing effect. Following the lead of these publications there are people who, regardless alike of poetry and of grammar, will habitually speak of columbines as aquikgias^ of snap- dragons as antirrhinums^ of forget-me-not as myosotis, even of lilies as liliums. They are the 76 The Garden in 3Iid^Winter sort of people, as Lady Grove might say, who would call a napkin a " serviette." A serious stand ought to be made against this sort of thing. Those who know their Parkinson may sigh for more of the good old words ; but " gilliflower, the pride of our English gardens," and too many of its contemporaries, are dead beyond hope of resurrection. The greater our duty to our country and to posterity to hold fast by such of the ancient names as still have life in them. To preserve the pansy or heart's-ease, fairest of flower-names, from yielding place to violay is surely worth an effort. Some old-fashioned garden flowers seem to have been spared as yet. The hollyhock is still with us ; I do not hear mignonette spoken of as reseda^ though even that may come ; and the worst offenders have not dis- covered the botanical names of sweet-peas and stocks. In our Madeira gardens, rich with " Flowers of all heavens and lovelier than their names," we have so many plants not yet endowed with English titles, that we are driven perforce to the Botanical Dictionary. Perhaps if Mr. 77 Leaves from a Madeira Garden Kipling, or some one else with the gift of speech, were to pay us a visit, he might in a week or two supply us with some reason- able answers to the constant query, " Oh ! Can you tell me what that is ? " We ought to be able to reply, " It is the Silver Restbringer, a kind of water-cress from Central China, where a decoction of its leaves is prepared for the use of such members of the imperial family as contemplate the happy dispatch." But accord- ing to the present rules of the game, this would not be playing it, and we are compelled to answer, " It is Schwarzenbachia Griesenfeldit minima^ var. zigzagia Veitchiiy^ and our guest murmurs, " Oh, really ! " and the incident is closed. I nurse — I positively dandle — an ever- lively grievance that the splendid flowering shrubs of the banana tribe are called by the awful name Strelitzia. What in the world is the Duchy doing in this galley ? Latin generic names are not of necessity hideous or unfitting. Those which are based on some peculiarity of the plant or its habitat are the pleasantest ; such zs geranium^ "crane's bill ;" arenaria,^' sand- wort ; " saxifragay " stone-breaker." Names derived from celebrated botanists, if often ugly, 78 I The Garden in 3Iid-Winter are perhaps not Inappropriate ; such are Wigandia from Wigand, and Solandra from Solander. Those who have had the good fortune to see Linnaa horealis trailing In its native marsh will honour the great master for linking his name with this loveliest and lowliest of plants. But to burden a fine shrub for all time with the title of a mere Grand Duke is an outrage. And If there Is some excuse for the botanists who must furnish urbi et orbi a name of bastard Greek and Latin for universal acceptance and use, there is less for the florists. It is sad that one of our finest roses here — luxuriant In growth and rich In tint beyond experience — should bear the prosaic name of William Allen Richardson, a gentleman otherwise unknown to fame. Herr Druschki's wife may, as far as I know, personify all the virtues, but is it not cruel to condemn a supremely pure and delicate rose to bear the harsh-sounding title Frau Karl Druschki ? Nor has Oberhofgartner Terks a pleasant sound to English ears. A Society for the Protection of Flowers from being called Bad Names Is one of the crying needs of the day. When the Board of Agriculture can 79 Leaves from a Madeira Garden spare time from the pursuit of gooseberry mildew it ought to take the matter up ; but I fear that until a florist or two has been lynched nothing will be done. Fine as has been the weather for the past four or five weeks, January is not to pass without a touch of winter. Winter for us means a strong north wind, from which Funchal is well sheltered, bringing more or less snow to the mountains, where it generally lies for a few days, and copious showers to the lowlands. The rain is not continuous but broken by short spells of sunshine, with some- thing of the " uncertain glory of an April day." The thermometer falls at night to 50 degrees, or half a degree lower, and the mid-day shade temperature is 56 degrees to 58 degrees. We amuse ourselves by grumbling at the bitter cold, and are pleased to light a fire of fir-cones in the evening. Our roses are battered to pieces, but all things will flourish with renewed vigour when the steady sunshine comes again. And to the agriculturist these plentiful showers are very grateful. They do not wash the soil away like the torrential rains which sometimes come from the west ; but sink gradually into 80 '/ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H 1 H ^^^^^^^H^^^^&v'^^^^^^^^^^l l^^l ^^^^^^^^^K B^H HI ■ng ■h^ ^^ Hh ^K "^v "^nK^^^^^^^^H ^^^^P^^B^^Kr*^ hI ^m HI ]l^pKjK|M|ffisH^^^H H 19 ^BBW^^aB^^ro^^BB ^n MH ^^^^ffi^P @ JMrn' ^^^3Sb'''J9| I^HP l^^^m >_x^ ^r ,S^ WS&SM The Garden in Mid-Winter it. And the snow on the hills will fill the springs. So the heart of the farmer is glad within him. But he always asks for m.ore. 8i Chapter V—J^NUi^RT Plague and Riot " Diseases, desperate grown, By desperate appliance are relieved Or not at all." — Hamlet. THREE years ago a remarkable episode, savouring rather of the Middle Ages than of our time, occurred here. It illustrates the distrust of the learned, especially of doctors, which still lingers among the uneducated, and it is full of lessons as to how things should not be done. It threw a new light on the nature of the people, previously supposed to be more than docile, and unwilling under any circum- stances to lift a hand against constituted authority. And it had an undoubted effect on their general character and demeanour. The Government, being well aware that the ordinary sanitary requirements of a civilized country are not fulfilled here, is extremely 82 Plague and Riot nervous about the importation of serious in- fectious diseases, especially bubonic plague and cholera. There are good grounds for this state of apprehension. A large number of steamers call here from Southern ports, especially those of South America, and strangers are constantly coming and going. Waterborne diseases are invited by the primitive character of the water-supply. Water, pure in its source, is brought from the hills in open conduits, and in its passage is liable to pollution of every kind. The absence of an effective drainage system is perhaps less serious, as owing to the numerous fissures in the volcanic rock, impurities find their own way of escape. Arrangements for the isolation and proper treatment of disease are, or were, inadequate ; and above all the funds at the disposal of the local authorities are quite insufficient to deal with an outbreak. And if an epidemic occurs the indirect results are likely to be far more serious to the island than the mere sickness itself. There is a dense population living under conditions of extrava- gant protection, amounting almost to State Socialism, and engaged in an industry created and fostered by the State, for whose welfare the 83 Leaves from a Madeira Garden State is peculiarly responsible. And if steamers ceased to call, and foreigners absented them- selves, the large number of people which lives on traffic with them, directly or indirectly, would be face to face with starvation. Yet years roll on and nothing very dreadful happens, and little in the way of sanitary improvement is carried out, in spite of much talk about it. But the underlying nervousness is always there. On our arrival here in December, 1905, we were told that a few cases of plague were said to have occurred ; *' but," added our informant, "it isn't plague, it's all politics." The word " politics " here is of wider application than with us ; it may truly be said to cover a multitude of sins. After some perplexity we discovered the suggestion to be that the authorities thought an epidemic would be a help to a water scheme they were urging on the Lisbon Government, on the principle of getting up a war-scare to carry naval votes. But this seems to have been a libel. In fact, the existence of plague was never officially admitted ; the disease if it existed, and what- ever it was, was described as "infectious fever." 84 Plague and Riot It appeared that two or three weeks earlier a woman of the middle class had been taken to the Lazaretto suffering from a disease pro- nounced by the doctor in charge to be bubonic plague. It was stated that he exhibited to some of his colleagues the characteristic plague bacilli. Other cases of suspicious disease followed and were removed to the Lazaretto. Thither also were taken for isolation and dis- infection the families of the patients. It was reported that the disease was taking a pneu- monic form of a particularly insidious and dangerous character. Up to this point the authorities seem to have acted in the only way possible. Granted the existence of a serious infectious disease, as they were informed by their medical adviser was the case, it was their duty to endeavour by isolating the patients and those who had been in contact with them to stamp it out. Where they broke down, and occasioned the subse- quent trouble with its far-reaching conse- quences, was in the neglect of proper methods, especially as regards publicity. People in con- siderable numbers were taken to the Lazaretto ; no official news as to what was passing within 85 Leaves from a Madeira Garden its walls was published. Patients died and no notice of their death reached their friends. So, at any rate, it was commonly said. The wildest rumours began to gain currency. The ignorant believed that the doctors inoculated people and murdered them ; some of the better educated asserted that the whole thing was being run as a financial speculation by the Lazaretto doctor, who was paid so much a head for those under his charge. Sinister stories of the treatment of women and girls were widely spread abroad. Meantime people of influence, whose interest was against any interference with the shipping trade of the island, were strenuously denying the jexistence of any sickness at all, and the Government was watering it down to " infectious fever." A veritable reign of terror resulted. To be taken to the Lazaretto was feared as a sentence of death. People who had been in contact with patients ran away and hid themselves to escape the dreaded isolation. I happened one day to look over my garden wall and to see the chief of police and several constables with an ambu- lance-car standing outside a neighbouring cot- tage. I inquired their object, and was told 86 Plague and Biot that for some days they had been looking for a woman whose brother had been taken as a patient to the Lazaretto, and that they had found her hiding with relations there. They took her away, and we heard subsequently that she died that night from heart-failure due to shock. Three days later, on Sunday, January 7, the crisis came. A few soldiers who were isolated at the Lazaretto succeeded in getting a message carried to their comrades at the barracks, asking them to deliver them. On the Sunday morning a band of a hundred soldiers, accompanied by several hundreds of the townsfolk, and countrymen from the surrounding hills, attacked and broke into the Lazaretto, liberated their comrades and others who were in quarantine, and carried from the hospital the sick patients to their own homes. This carrying was a veritable procession of triumph, and was succeeded by great rejoicings. It was with mixed feelings that we heard next day that our cook had visited a friend of his who had been brought to his home on his bed, and that a housemaid had attended an impromptu dance at another 87 Leaves from a Madeira Garden patient's house. After this, we felt we could only await developments. The Lazaretto doctor succeeded in escaping the fury of the mob, which would have made short work of him. His house in the town was attacked, and there was some shooting by the police who defended it, happily without fatal result. An attack on the prison in which a few of the rioters who were arrested were lodged was not pressed home, and failed. But the authorities were now practically powerless ; the town was quite out of hand, and a portion of the garrison being implicated, it could not be depended on. As soon as the news reached Lisbon the Government acted with commend- able promptitude. The smart cruiser Dom Carlos was at once dispatched ; and when thirty hours later, having made the fastest passage on record, she steamed into the port, the cause of law and order was saved. The Lazaretto doctor found his way on board, it was said, disguised as an old woman. His name is still execrated here, and probably even now his life would not be safe. But the sanitary situation now looked very serious. Sick persons had been withdrawn 88 Plague and Biot from the Lazaretto and spread over the town, and hundreds or thousands of people had been in contact with them. If one was to believe in the existence of plague, one could only expect a great outbreak within a week or two. But nothing happened. The sick recovered, and no further case of suspicious sickness occurred. This of course confirmed the unbelievers in their disbelief, and the ignorant in their distrust of doctors. To a dispassionate observer it appears incredible that a doctor should invent and exploit an epidemic for his personal gain ; yet that such was the case we were solemnly assured by serious people. The truth may never be fully known ; what happened is probably that a few cases of plague did occur, but that the disease was stamped out in the early days, and that the sick persons removed later were suffering from non-infectious pneu- monia or less serious complaints. Eighteen months afterwards, in the summer of 1907, there was a serious outbreak of a mysterious disease, said to be septic pneu- monia of a plague type, at S. Antonio, a suburb of Funchal. Fourteen persons, includ- ing a doctor, were attacked, and the fourteen 89 Leaves from a Madeira Garden died. A fifteenth, a doubtful case, recovered. The energetic governor of the day — it was during Franco's rule in Portugal, of which more hereafter — personally superintended the isolation of the sick, and the threatened epidemic was stayed. During the riots the Lazaretto had been somewhat damaged, and subsequently the hated building was completely looted and gutted, and rendered quite unfit for use. The Government took no steps to put it in order, probably being unwilling to incur the unpopu- larity and the expense of doing so. The punishment that followed was swift and bitter. Early in the following winter a mariner was landed from a steamer suffering from what proved to be small-pox. Whether as a result of his case or not, within a few weeks the disease became prevalent in the poor quarters of the town, chiefly among the families of the boatmen. For twenty years or more there had been no serious outbreak here, and the greater part of the population, especially the youthful part, was unvaccinated. The Lazaretto having been wrecked, and being moreover in very bad 90 Plague and Biot odour with the people from the events of the previous year, there was no hospital to which patients could be taken, and no provision for their isolation. The authorities adopted the remarkable expedient of placing a policeman outside an infected house to prevent ingress or egress. How the poor people were to live was a question apparently ignored. And the absurdity of the arrangement was grimly ex- hibited when a policeman caught the disease and died. A private subscription was got up to supply food and medicines as far as possible, but it is not surprising that the disease spread with great rapidity, that it began to appear all over the town and in the suburbs, and that it assumed a virulent type. The statistics showed that amonff six hundred cases there were two hundred deaths. Probably this proportion is misleading, as there may have been numerous mild cases of which little or no notice was taken. At first there was considerable disinclination among the populace to be vaccinated. A dis- trust of doctors, an evil heritage of the plague trouble, was prevalent. For our part we in- sisted on the vaccination of our employes^ and 91 Leaves from a Madeira Garden when we announced that it should be done by an English doctor with English lymph, the reluctance disappeared. We invited them to bring their relations, which many of them did. The redeeming feature of such a crisis is that it always produces acts of heroism and un- selfishness. Such were not wanting here. The doyen of the medical profession, Dr. Mourao Pitta — for many years Vice-Consul of France, a fine example of the old-fashioned doctor, a man of culture and of the world, of wide sympathies and many social gifts, a welcome guest at every man's table and a genial host at his own — wore himself out in visiting the poorest of the sick in their squalid homes. He was not strong or young enough to bear the continuous strain, and died a victim of blood- poisoning contracted in the course of his labours. His self-sacrifice added one more name to the roll of martyrs which honours his profession ; and his death left a void in many lives. When things were at their worst, when it appeared likely that the disease would extend all over the island, and that with the dis- organization of trade widespread distress would 93 Plague and Biot result, a very noble English lady went to the Government and offered, if the Lazaretto were at once put in order, to take charge of it, and to nurse as many patients as it would contain. Miss Wilson has spent much of her life in nursing the sick poor of this island ; she is of their own religion, and is the head of a devoted band of sisters. The Government was prepared to find the funds for the repairs and furnishing, but no more. Miss Wilson took the chance of what might happen afterwards, and the work was hurriad on. In a fortnight the hospital was ready for occupation. The confidence of the people having been won by Miss Wilson's previous labours among them, no objections were raised by them to the removal thither of the sick. But there were no funds available for their feeding and attend- ance when there. Miss Wilson was not daunted. She had perfect trust, as I have had the privilege of hearing from her own lips, that Heaven would provide. And her prayer was not un- answered. On the day before one hundred and eighty people were to be moved to the hospital, a yacht unexpectedly entered the port. The owner, hearing what was going on, sent her a 93 Leaves from a Madeira Garden cheque for ^^50. This was the beginning of a continuous stream of charity, which left her for not one moment in trouble about funds. She was enabled to purchase every requisite and comfort for the patients, even toys for the children. And from that moment the plague was stayed. It began to decline in the town, and it did not spread to the remoter parts of the island. Its final disappearance was coincident with an exceptionally strong and intensely hot "Leste," the dry east wind which sometimes blows from the Sahara, and brings its dust across the intervening three hundred miles of sea. It is satisfactory to know that Miss Wilson's great services were fully appreciated and publicly recognized. The Queen of Portugal took the lead in doing honour to her, and press and pulpit and private citizens joined in a chorus of gratitude. And surely we English have great reason to be proud of our countrywoman. It must not be inferred from the somewhat lugubrious contents of this chapter that we live here in a constant state of epidemic sickness. The reverse is the fact. In spite of all the invitations to zymotic diseases held out by the 94 Plague and Riot habits of the people and the sanitary short- comings of the Government, they seldom get a hold here. Possibly the outdoor life of the people and the qualities of the air have some- thing to do with this. Scarlet fever, so severe a scourge of youth in England, appears to be almost unknown, and one hears little of diph- theria, which might be expected to prevail. I have had propounded to me an agreeable theory that such diseases cannot propagate themselves for more than three generations here ; that is, if A is landed from a steamer suffering from an infectious disorder, he may communicate it to B, and B may pass it on to C, but that C has no such power. The remarkably abrupt termi- nation of the small-pox epidemic and the complete disappearance of the disease seem to lend some colour to this comfortable belief. 95 Chapter Yl—FEBRUiART Politics and Social Changes " Confound their knavish tricks, Frustrate their politics." ^ A YEAR has passed since the murders of King Carlos and his son. " Dastardly," the customary news- paper epithet, is perhaps not very appropriate, and doubtless " coward " is not the right term for a man who goes forth into a street to shoot a king ; but that they were the hideous product of a disordered common- wealth no one will deny. And inured as we are to the accounts of assassination of kings and queens, of presidents and premiers, we may well find something more than usually pathetic in this story — the pleasant and pleasure-loving king slain just when he was rousing himself to a sense of his responsibilities ; the fair young prince surviving his father but a moment ; the wife and mother and queen striving to beat off 96 Politics and Social Changes the assassins with her bouquet of flowers ; the younger son lifted to a throne in such a baptism of fire. Never have the " fiercer Goth and more hideous Hun " perpetrated a fouler deed. " Duncan is in his grave ; After life's fitful fever he sleeps well ; Treason has done its worst : nor steel, nor poison, Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing, Can touch him further ! " A year has passed, and the origin of the whole affair is still shrouded in mystery. No serious inquiry into it has been held, a fact in itself somewhat damaging to the reputation of a civilized country. One naturally presumes that those in authority fear to stir the mud. And we have the usual result of hushing: things up — an innumerable crop of wild rumours and secret insinuations against various prominent persons, most of whom are, of course, innocent of all complicity in the crime. I have found that the political conditions ruling in Portugal at the time are little under- stood in England, in spite of the able articles on them in the Times. That Joao Franco's rule was generally described as a dictatorship, 97 H Leaves from a Madeira Garden which in effect it was, obscured the fact that it was a phase in an attempted revolution with objects somewhat similar to those of the Young Turks. But while the Turkish revolution has been acclaimed in free countries, the Portuguese party of reform and pure administration has met with little sympathy, partly because its methods sounded tyrannical, and partly because for the time being it has failed. One important difference there was. In Portugal the Sovereign was heart and soul with the reformers, and theirs was the cause for which he met his death. For many years Portugal has been governed by an oligarchy divided into two parties, Reeeneradores and Progressistas. There is no great difference in principle between them, but the former may be described as Conservatives, the latter as Liberals. In one important point they are in complete accord. "The Regener- adores and the Progressistas," says the Times in a recent leader, " neither regenerate nor make progress. They make arrangements between themselves in virtue of which they share the spoils of office in rotation, a practice so notorious that they are known collectively 98 Politics and Social Changes as Rotativistas." The spoils of office do not merely include official appointments and salaries; they comprise numerous sinecures and less reputable emoluments. Among the Rotati- vistas there are doubtless men of high character and complete incorruptibility ; there are also men of another type. If the results were not so serious there would be something irresistibly comic about a Portuguese general election, in which the party in power, having control of the ballot boxes, is never beaten. In any case the system is condemned by its effects. The country is naturally rich, and its inhabitants, if uneducated, are intelligent and hard-working ; but owing to the rottenness of the Government, assisted by a childishly absurd fiscal policy, in itself a powerful instrument of corruption, it is kept in a state of poverty, bordering on bankruptcy, through which, indeed, it has already passed. This was the system which Franco with the King's support was striving to overthrow ; his aim was to substitute for it an honest administration with the honest col- lection and the honest spending of public money. Naturally he raised up bitter enemies among those who saw their occupation gone, 99 Leaves froin a Madeira Garden and he was driven by the necessities of the situation to take arbitrary measures against some supporters of the old regime. The incidents of the time will supply material for many historical romances — the secret meetings, the sensational arrests, the hurried flights in motor-cars to the Spanish frontier. If it was Charles and Strafford over again, the Portuguese Carlos displayed the moral courage and the loyalty to his servant in which the English king was wanting. To the bitter disappoint- ment of those who had based their hopes of a regenerated Portugal on this combination, his very courage and loyalty were the cause of the king's assassination ; and in that first critical hour the minister, his nerve broken, faltered and fell. It is interesting to conjecture what course events might have taken if there had been In him something of the stuff of Crom- well. One can imagine a strong man forcing the boy-king to his will, and using the murders as a means to crush his opponents completely. And we may wonder what was in King Carlos* mind to do In the event of Franco's assassina- tion, the possibility of which must have been ever present to him. But Franco failed at the lOO Politics and Social Changes supreme moment, and things have slipped back into the old groove, and it is idle to dwell upon the might-have-beens. Franco and his enthusiastic young lieutenants were doubtless too far in advance of the circumstances of their time and country. No permanent reform will be effected until there is an overwhelming public opinion, and public opinion can hardly exist until the people are educated. It is said that, both on the mainland and here, eighty to ninety per cent, of the adult population cannot read or write. An illiterate man, necessarily quite uninformed, cannot exercise any influence for good in politics, though he may be an instrument on the other side. We have to p;o back some distance in English history to find such a state of affairs prevailing, and then we see not wholly dissimilar conditions as regards corruption. We have heard of Paymasters- General making vast fortunes in a few years, and we know that the connections of the governing families swarmed in sinecure offices. Some atrophied survivals of such a system may still exist, but toleration of them is not one of the faults of an educated electorate, whatever they may be. lOI Leaves from a Madeira Garden The murders of the King and his son seemed to be taken very calmly here. The King himself was apparently unpopular ; for what reason I was unable to discover ; probably the people did not know themselves, beyond a vague notion that the taxes wrung from them went into his pocket. I noticed that our servants, while ready to admit that the boy's death was sad, would express no regret at that of the father. The upper classes generally exhibited sorrow and horror at the deed, and the masses held in the cathedral were attended by large congregations decorously clad in mourning. But I observed that persons who appeared to be of quite respectable position took occasion to wear flaunting red ties, which, whatever their political opinions, seemed to betray a lack of decent feeling, and some apathy on the part of their fellow-citizens, in that they permitted it. How far the Republican idea has spread it is impossible to judge, but the Republican party is active and militant. The success of the French Republic during nearly forty years, and the credit which now it especially enjoys, must give a great impetus to Republican propaganda in the Peninsula. I02 Politics and Social Changes In this strange country the comic and the tragic ever tread on each other's heels. To this tragedy the comic element was supplied by the cruiser Dojn Carlos, which immediately after the murders came at full speed from Lisbon to Madeira — for the second time within two years. But on this occasion there was no question of quelling disorder here ; and the wags suggested, perhaps not wholly without foundation, that the new Government, hastily formed to meet the emergency, felt happier with Funchal and not Lisbon lying at the mercy of her guns. The mere suspicion of a disaffected navy must be a perfect nightmare to shaky governments in seaside capitals. As regards the future much will depend on the personal character and conduct of the young King ; whether as he feels his feet he will have the judgment to take the right course, and the courage to face all risks in pursuing it. The body of opinion which Franco represented is not dead, and will, as time goes on, probably gather fresh strength. Some of the most considerable forces in the country hold themselves aloof from present politics, and when the "Young Portugal" 103 Leaves from a Madeira Garden movement begins, in concert it is to be hoped with the young King, it may sweep all before it. But for Portugal, as for every country, there is no permanent hope unless she can breed great men — men not only fitted to deal with a crisis which demands unusual qualities, but strong and steadfast in the ordinary conduct of affairs. She has bred them in the past, and her sturdy, virile people may produce them again. We who pinned our faith to Joao Franco have had to stomach our disillusion. Yet even the work that he did, the aspirations which perhaps by wrong methods he tried to realize, have left their effect. But Portugal needs a Lincoln to set her political house in order, a Gladstone to cleanse the stables of her finance, a Bright to raise the moral level of her public life. It is probable that the intense interest taken in "politics" — a word of wider meaning, as I have already suggested, than with us — is due to the general dulness of life. Compared with life, as we understand it in England, the existence of these people is very empty. They have little literature of their own, no art, no 104 Politics and Social Changes drama, no racing, no field-sports, no outdoor games — scarcely one of the multifarious pur- suits which go to make up life in England for the busy and the leisured alike. Small wonder that the game of politics, the game of pulling wires of every kind, in every direction, the game of poking political fingers into every financial and every commercial pie, should have an attraction for speculative and alert natures denied almost every other exercise but that which is afforded by religion. And if we add the fact that the governing classes are for the most part poor, that the hunger for office under the State as the only possible career exists to an extent which we can with difficulty understand, we may be able to picture faintly to ourselves the passion for "political" intrigue which has helped to bring the country to such a pass. With all their alertness, their tact, their power of rapid decision (well illustrated by their skill at card games), the Portuguese do not seem to be good men of business. Until quite recently almost all the important business of this town — wine, sugar, shipping, coal — was in the hands of foreigners, chiefly English. 105 Leaves from a Madeira Garden Lately there seems to have been some awaken- ing from Portuguese lethargy in this respect, a fact which is of good augury for the future of the country. For in this lack of business capacity, or business training, is probably to be discovered one reason for Portugal's o political failure. I shall have occasion to speak later of the singular ineptitude of the system of taxation, and it is impossible to doubt that under a more intelligent Government the country would attain a level of prosperity quite undreamt of now. Socially, those who have the privilege of knowing them, will find the Portuguese a very charming people. It may be that they do not feel in general much sympathy with the English, whose somewhat brusque manners and comparative want of tact must often jar on their finer susceptibilities, but it is possible for individuals of the two nations to be close friends. And an Englishman who has adopted their nationality may become Lusitanis Lusi- tanior. Many Englishmen who have visited this island will recall with affection and regret the gracious dignity and unfailing bonhomie of the late Count T . Of British parentage io6 Politics and Social Changes and British up-bringing, he married a great Portuguese lady, and was created a Portuguese noble. He played his part well ; he would speak to us as " you English," and he was not averse from commenting to us on the faults of our national diplomacy and conduct. I remember the delight with which I heard his reply to an American lady who said to him : " It seems to me, Count, that for a Portuguese you speak remarkably good English." His answer was, " So they tell me." A lesser man would have adduced his honourable Scottish house, and his Eton education. Here, as elsewhere, the nineteenth century witnessed great social changes. The decline of the old landed aristocracy was hastened by the abolition of the law of succession to estates. Much of the land in Madeira was formerly held under strict entail, and could not be sold. These entails arose originally in connection with the building of chapels and the celebration of masses. The owners were styled " Mor- gados " — a species of territorial title corre- sponding perhaps to that of " Lord of the Manor." The law of entail has been abolished, and the estates can be sold in the ordinary 107 Leaves from a Madeira Garden way. And nothing breaks up the old regime more effectually than the division by law of the parents' property equally among the children, now (with limitations) the rule here. It is rather strange that there has never been any serious movement in England for the adoption of this system, which prevails in most Euro- pean countries. No doubt the parents' right of freedom of bequest is comparatively seldom abused ; and among the upper classes the custom of the eldest son succeeding to the bulk of the family property, and the younger children being left to shift, more or less, for themselves is so engrained that no sense of hardship is present. And it has doubtless been a factor in creating British pre-eminence in trade, and in the extension of the British Empire. Before the establishment of a stand- ing army provided them with a regular military career ; before India and the colonies offered a field for military, civil, and commercial enter- prise, the country gentleman's younger sons naturally went into trade at home — " Boastful ami rough, your first son is a squire, Your next a tradesman meek, and much a liar." This custom after some eclipse during the io8 Politics and Social Changes eighteenth century revived in earnest during the nineteenth, and extended to more exalted circles. Yet the eighteenth century idea that trade, other than selling stacks of hay or fat beasts, was in some sense derogatory still sur- vives, if only as a pose and a pretence ; did not a distinguished essayist remark not long since that '* English etiquette allows no trading for gentlefolk below the rank of a marquis." Here the child becomes from the day of his birth a partner, as it were, in the family pro- perty or business ; and as he is sure of his share he has perhaps less incentive to strike out a line for himself. The old feudal life is dead. The estates of the Morgados have for the most part passed into the hands of new men, who have made fortunes in South America, or of foreigners. But here too, as elsewhere, the pride of descent is, I believe, stronger in decadence and poverty than in the prosperous days of unquestioned lordship. The change has its drawbacks ; the ancient patriarchial relations have disappeared ; the country houses stand empty, or are visited for a month or two in the year by their new owners ; and the tenants are left to their own 109 Leaves from a Madeira Garden devices. They have things very much their own way. The landlord is as a rule the owner of the bare soil and of the water-rights apper- taining to it. He cannot turn his tenant out without compensating him in full for his build- ings, walls, pavements, trees, and crops. And the tenant can sell his property in these. Theoretically, the landlord is entitled, as rent, to half the produce of the farm ; but in the case of small holdings, which are the rule, it is practically impossible to check this, and no doubt he habitually gets much less. To the genealogist this island must be a happy hunting-ground ; but the difficulties of such investigations in the way of a foreigner are almost insuperable. When it was first settled, in 1420, by Joao Goncalvez, surnamed Zargo, representatives of some of the chief families of Portugal accompanied him, and obtained grants of land ; and four noblemen were sent by John I. to marry his daughters. Their names are common here to-day, and possibly their descendants are numerous. It is quite usual for illegitimate children to be called by their father's surname, and this practice helps to disseminate widely the greater no Politics and Social Changes family names. In our own country we have a pretty accurate notion, when a man is called Stanley, or Percy, or Herbert, whether he is of the race or a pretender. Here it is very diffi- cult for a foreigner to distinguish. Many of the great names survive to-day — Aguiar, Almeida, Camara, Correia, Freitas, Goncalvez, Leal, Or- nellas, Perestrello, Vasconcellos, and others. Some of these are to be found borne by members not only of the upper but of the lower classes. Among the historic Madeira families are some derived from foreign adventurers who arrived after the occupation. There are Drum- monds (pronounced Drumont) to-day who are descended from John Drummond, son of Sir John Drummond, Lord of Stobhall, brother of Annabella, queen of Robert IH. of Scotland. He came to Madeira in 1425, probably as a refugee, and only revealed his real name on his death-bed. The Esmeraldos, perhaps the greatest of Madeira families, descended from Jean d'Esmenaut, a Fleming, who arrived in 1480. A Knight of the Order of Christ, named Robert Willoughby, came from Portugal in 1590. His name was corrupted to Vizovi. Ill Leaves from a Madeira Garden A pleasant account of a visit to Madeira more than two centuries ago is contained in the letters of Christopher JeafFreson, of DuUingham House, Cambridgeshire, published in 1878 by Mr. J. C. Jeaffreson, under the title "A Young Squire of the Seventeenth Century." This youno- gentleman inherited, besides important properties in Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, large plantations in St. Christopher's Island, in the West Indies. On his way out to take posses- sion of these he called at Madeira in the year 1676. He sailed from Gravesend in the Jacob and Mary, " a vessell of about a hundred and fifty tunns, 14 or 16 gunns, a square stearne, with good accomodations." If this vessel left something to be desired in the way of size and speed, her pleasant name atoned for much. The day of such fearsome titles as Cappadocian or Aconcagua was not yet. It would indeed be agreeable if one of the great steamship lines were to have the courage to revert to the old style. And surely such names as Darby and Joan, The Happy Lovers, or The Jolly Tripper, would amount to a gra- tuitious advertisement in themselves. But the modern shipowner names his ship out of the 112 A I'EEl' OF THE I'OKT Politics and Social Changes Gazetteer, and reserves his play of fancy for the decoration of the saloon, with strange and distressing results. Contrary winds detained the Jacob and Mary; she lay ten days at Plymouth, and took six weeks to reach Madeira. But voyages, if longer, were perhaps less monotonous than nowadays. "The 28th we came in sight of the islands called ' the deserts,' and the same evening we espied a sayle, which we doubted was a Turke ; which made us putt ourselves in a posture of defence, and the next morning, finding that he had chased us all night, we were confirmed in our opinions, and seeing that he made still all the sayle he could after us, we prepared all things for a fight, and continued in that posture all the day and night ; and the next day, drawing neare the Island of the Madera, our pursuer quitted his chase, and we got into Funchiall road in the afternoone ; where wee were verry neare loosing our shippe, the master being unacquainted, and comeing too boldely in near the shoar, in a dangerous place. But the men towed her off againe." After such near chances of wreck or capture, "of being taken by the insolent foe and sold to slavery," 113 I Leaves from a Madeira Garden it is not surprising that our traveller hastened to land, which he did with difficulty and not without being well wetted. He went to " Mr. Pickford and Mr. Allen* s, the Consull's house, to whom the shippe was consigned ; where we met with civil entertainment from those persons, whose repute as well as gravety gave weight to their wordes." In these days gravity, even among consuls, is not a very common character- istic. It may be that the disappearance of the Barbary pirate has made us all more light- hearted. From the Consul, Mr. JeafFreson learnt that the island produced " some years twenty-five thousand pipes of wine, besides sugar and corne, with which it doth not suffi- ciently fournish its people, who are supplied from England and elsewhere, as allso for herrings, pilchards, beefe, mutton, baizes, perpetuanas, hatts and the like, which are there bartered for wine and sweetmeats." It was, as appears elsewhere in the letters, a profitable business for ships outward bound to the West Indies to call at Madeira and exchange such goods for wine to be subsequently bartered in the Leeward Isles for sugar, tobacco or indigo. Writing later from St. Kitt's to his 114 Politics and Social Changes cousin, Mr. Poyntz, upholsterer, at the sign of the " Goat " in Cornhill, near the Royal Exchange, London, Mr. JeafFreson points out the advantages of this trade, and adds, " There is noe living here without those wines. If you consign the goods to Mr. Pickfourd and Mr. Allen, I doubt not that they will be just in shipping the valew for my use. It is worth sometimes five or seven pounds a pipe. If you can doe this with conveniency, it would save me the charge of buying it here, and if there bee more than enough for my own drinking I feare not to dispose of it well." The West Indians had not as yet discovered the virtues of the cock-tail. During his stay at Funchal, Mr. Jeaffreson kept his eyes open, and some of his observa- tions would not be out of place to-day. " The walkes from the cittie are so rugged and uneven, that one may be said to climbe rather than walke abroad. But these difficulties are recom- pensed with the fruitefull, well cultivated, and pleasant viniards, the frequent delightfuU land- skipps, with the frequent and odoriferous scents of the weedes or common herbes and field- flowers, which Nature produces of herself in "5 Leaves from a 3fadeira Garden the barren and unmanured parts of this most pleasant and fruitfull spot ; where neither the extreme colde of winter, nor the violent heat of summer pinches or scorches the inhabitants." He visited among others the convent of Santa Clara, and was surprised at the "freedome these women use," a fact noted by other travellers. He " understood but little of their language, but made a shift to barter some ribbands for sweetmeats." This convent, with all other convents and monasteries, was sup- pressed in 1834. The property of these conventual establishments passed to the Government ; much of it was sold. But the convent of Santa Clara still stands in all its charm and beauty, and a number of sisters, who have taken voluntary vows not recognized by the State, are permitted to inhabit it. I refer elsewhere so the superstitious pro- ceedings designed to bring rain in time of drought. Such are noticed by Mr. Jeaffreson. " Rains are sometimes much wanted by the islanders, for which theire idols or images of their saints suffer most severely, by several! sorts of chastisements, and are brought into the cittie, and carried otherwhiles in prosession. 116 Politics and Social Changes Trying fowle means as well as faire, if they wont heare theire prayers, the islanders try if beateing will learne them better manners ; like Baals priests, who leaped and stamped on the altar, when theire deaf God would not heare." From his hosts, the traveller heard much of an Enchanted Island, which had several times been seen by very credible persons to the northward or north-west of Madeira. The Governor had employed a French ship to seek it, but in vain. This story was long as persistent as that of the sea-serpent. A floating island figures in the legendary history of St. Brendan, that Odysseus of the sixth century; and in succeeding centuries stories of islands which appeared from time to time are quite common. In a treaty between Portugal and Spain in 1519, the former actually ceded to the latter the " Island not found." It is probable that this bafiling phantom was due to the effects of mirage, not uncommon in these latitudes. Mr. Samler Brown states that he has often seen portions of the coast reproduced on the horizon with a startling fidelity. A more remarkable traveller arrived off the 117 Leaves from a Madeira Garden port of Funchal after dark on August 23rd, 18 1 5. H.M.S. Northiiynberland^ conveying Napoleon Bonaparte to his last home at St. Helena, called here for provisions. It is related in the Diary of Mr. John R. Glover, secretary to Rear-Admiral Cockburn, that on the follow- ing day Mr. Veitch, His Majesty's Consul, visited the ship, *' of whom Bonaparte asked numerous questions with respect to the island : its produce, the height above the level of the sea, its population, etc." On the 25th Mr. Glover notes : " We had a continuation of the violent and most disagreeable siroc wind, which commenced on our first making the island ; and such was the superstition of the inhabitants that they attributed this destructive siroc to Bonaparte being off the island, and were extremely apprehensive that their crops, which were nearly ripe, would be more than half destroyed." On the same day, after dark, the Northumbei'land set sail. Next day Bonaparte ate little and was out of spirits. Mr. Glover attributes this to the heat and the considerable motion of the vessel. We may suspect a deeper cause for his malaise. In Madeira he had passed the last outlying speck of the world 118 Politics and Social Changes which he had striven to master, and as the vessel headed for the desolate Southern ocean, it may be that a sense of his final and utter failure at length came fully to his mind. And who may measure the bitterness of this sense to him ? " He knew no motive but interest — he acknowleged no criterion but success — he worshipped no God but ambition ; and with an Eastern devotion he knelt at the altar of his idolatry. Subsidiary to this, there was no creed that he did not profess — there was no opinion that he did not promulgate. In the hope of a dynasty, he upheld the Crescent ; for the sake of a divorce, he bowed before the Cross ; the orphan of St. Louis, he became the adopted child of the Republic ; and with a parricidal ingratitude, on the ruins both of the crown and the tribune, he reared the throne of his despotism. A professed Catholic, he im- prisoned the Pope ; a pretended patriot, he impoverished the country ; and under the name of Brutus, he grasped without remorse, and wore without shame, the diadem of the Caesars ! ** So did a contemporary sum up his worship of success, and his subordination of means to iig Leaves from a Madeira Garden his end. And however much we may detest his objects and his methods, however great our satisfaction at his overthrow and the part our country played in it, we may spare some pity for the greatness of his fall. 120 Chapter Yll—FEBRU^ART Land and Sea "The earth hath bubbles, as the water has." — Macbeth. BY way of introducing a little variety into our horticultural pursuits, we have this year rented a cottage and garden near " the Mount," which I have already described as lying some two thou- sand feet above Funchal. It is rendered very easy of access by the mountain railway, and a visit to it has the advantage of affording a complete change of air. In mid-winter this region is often bathed in mist, with " the rainbow smiling on the faded storm," when the town and the lower lying country are in full sun ; but as the spring advances, these uplands enjoy one of the most delightful climates in the world. The spring flowers — violets, anemones, daffodils, and the rest — which die or languish in the unvarying geniality of the litoral, flourish at this elevation in unexampled glory. It is possible in Madeira 121 Leaves from a Madeira Garden to experience within the space of an hour or two quite a variety of climates, each furnished with its characteristic vegetation. From the sea-level, with its sub-tropical wealth of gorgeous climbers, its sugar-cane, mangoes and bananas, you ascend a thousand feet to find groves of oranges and lemons. A little higher you enter a region of pine-trees, with gardens where the hardy fuchsias and the hydrangeas grow to an immense size, where the ground is carpeted with agapanthus lilies, and the hedges are bright with mimosa blossom in spring. Higher still, passing from the pine-woods, you come to a moorland region faintly recalling some of the wilder parts of North Wales or Cumberland, while above are the bare and fantastic crags which have been compared to those of the Dolomites. So you may pass in a short space from the sub-tropical region to the Riviera, from the Riviera to Bournemouth, from Bournemouth to Carnarvonshire, and from Carnarvonshire to the Alps. Our mountain garden lies in the middle of these regions. As the domain is full of deci- duous trees, it presents at this season quite a wintry aspect. But the camelias are in flower, 122 Land and Sea irises are throwing up buds, freesias and daffodils will not be long behind them. The garden has been much neglected, and the box hedges have grown into straggling bushes five feet high. Innumerable seedlings of the incense tree are blocking all the banks, and have rendered some of the garden paths quite im- passible. Our first care is to hack a way through these, and to open up vistas of the hills and sea. It is too late to do much in the way of planting for this season, but we can make preparations for next year. There is no such thing as a nursery-garden in Madeira — an opening awaits an enterprising man. If it is known that you are in want of plants, casual persons will probably arrive with some for sale ; but, unless you wish to be a receiver of stolen goods, you will be chary of buying them, as it is quite likely that they have been removed from your neighbour's garden. There is very little serious crime in the island ; aggravated offences against the person appear to be almost unknown, and robbery on a large scale, " flat burglary," is rare. You never hear of any one being molested in the town or suburbs, and you may tramp the wildest mountains and most 123 Leaves from a Madeira Garden unfrequented valleys and meet with nothing but civility from the sparse inhabitants. Times and manners have changed for the better since the beginning of the eighteenth century, when Dr. Hans Sloan tells us that every tradesman wore his short doublet, and for the most part a black cloak with a long big-hilted dagger under it, a sharp knife being in his pocket. No man dared go into the street after dark, lest any one who had a grudge against him should shoot him, or lest he should be taken in the dark for another man. Dr. Sloan was told that a small piece of money to a negro would purchase any man's life. He mentions having been called in to treat a priest who had been shot at in the night by some one who took him for another. But there Is a very lax state of public opinion as regards petty theft. Unless you keep watch- dogs, you will have your poultry and your fruit stolen by night. The authorities seem to be reluctant to enforce the penalties against such offences. Not long since, a neighbour's gar- dener caught a man handing some bundles of bananas over my garden wall late at night and apprehended him as he descended himself. He called to my gardener, and together they haled 124 Land and Sea the man to the police-station. The case was quite clear : sections of the stalks left on the trees were produced in Court and shown to fit the bunches which the man was removing ; but the judge dismissed it. 1 was told afterwards, I know not with what truth, that the prisoner was a very poor man, that he could not pay a fine, or for his keep in prison ; and that if I had offered to pay for his board the Court would have been willing to lodge him there for a week or two. This seems to add fresh burdens to the lot of the prosecutor, which even with us is often a troublesome one ; and probably accounts for the small number of prosecutions. If there is one advantage of education more obvious than another (some of us are too apt nowadays in England to note only its dis- advantages), it is that it delivers from terror. ** Your nature's needs are twain, And only twain : and these are to be free — Your minds from terror, and your bones from pain." * We hardly realize perhaps how deeply we are indebted on both counts to the achievements * W. H. Mallock, " Lucretius on Life and Death." 125 Leaves from a Madeira Garden of science, even in the very diluted form in which they reach most of us. The state of fear in which the lower classes here, though they are by nature of a cheerful temperament, pass their lives is inconceivable to the educated Northerner, unless, indeed, he is unfortunate enough to be afflicted with that gruesome form of religion which Mr. Gosse has so graphically described in " Father and Son." The common people here are doubtless not so worried about the horrors of eternal punishment as are the more unhappy kinds of Protestants. Their Church, with its practice of Confession and Absolution, does much to deliver them from that gloomy obsession. But it fails to dissemi- nate the imaginary dangers which beset their daily lives. For them <' Hell and its torments are not there but here." The unseen and the seen are equally fraught with terror ; they dread alike the ruthless forces of Nature and the malignity of man ; they live in fear of the powers of darkness, of the authorities, and of each other. Their attitude towards witchcraft and its kindred superstitions is still quite mediaeval. 126 Land and Sea Witches of course abound, and it will be very bad luck for you if you come across them on the hills, whither they repair to meet their master, the devil. They will naturally turn themselves into beasts of the field, or fowls of the air, and you won't know anything about them ; but they will be very angry with you for disturbing them, and you will suffer for it. It is a good plan if you have reason to believe that you are in the presence of a witch to open a pair of scissors wide to the form of a cross. As long as you keep them like that you will be all right, but it must be confessed that it is sometimes inconvenient. And you must be on your guard against vampires in human form. They are always on the look-out to suck your blood from your little finger. And of course the evil eye has to be continually thought of. Charms are very useful against it, and a sprig of rosemary— the herb of Our Lady — has great virtues. If you keep a pig — and if you are a Madeira peasant of course you do — very elabo- rate precautions have to be taken to preserve him from malign influences. It is always advisable to have a bunch of rosemary laid on the stye, and a bottle containing water — holy 127 Leaves from a Madeira Garden water is of course the best, but expensive — should be hung above it. This will attract any threatened danger of an occult kind, and the animal will escape. Once upon a time a mischievous young Englishman thought to make sport of this time-honoured belief by breaking many such bottles with an air-gun. But the fact that the bottles were broken while the pigs remained unharmed was, in their owner's eyes, a powerful vindication of the practice. And perhaps there was something in it — in the absence of the bottle the naughty boy might have been tempted to aim at the pig- Pigs are, of course, peculiarly subject to/ malign influences.* For do not the evil spirits of bad men reside within them ? and that is why you will never give them any bread ; indeed, you must carefully remove all crusts from the pig tub. I have always felt that the lot of the Gadarene swine was a hard one ; it seems harder still that the curse should be extended to their distant cousins many times removed. But facts are stubborn things. * " Where hast thou been, sister ? " says the first witch in "Macbeth." "Killing swine," replies the second. 128 Land and Sea If you become suddenly rich, or in any other way attain unexpectedly your heart's desire, your neighbours will say that you have found a hair ball. They refer to those curious round and smooth agglomerations of undigested hair which are sometimes found in the stomachs of oxen and other animals, and which are not uncommonly fatal to the domestic Persian. cat. But it is not enough to find such a ball. You must make a loaf of bread yourself, and secretly ; you must place the hair ball within it ; and then you must hide the loaf under an altar or in some sacred place where nobody will see it. Then whatever you wish will arrive to you. It is all rather troublesome, but the reward is great if the conditions are properly fulfilled. If your own hair is coming out, the remedy is quite simple. You must cut off a lock on St. John's night (no other night will do) and bury it under a quick-growing plant, such as a pumpkin. Then if you are careful never to pass the place again, your hair will be sure to grow. I hope the publication of this simple and certain remedy will not bring down on me the wrath of Mr. Truefitt. 129 K Leaves from a Madeira Garden Many other ailments may be cured without the intervention of a doctor, whom indeed you are naturally very much inclined to distrust. If you have erysipelas, you should bleed a black puppy dog, or draw blood from the comb of a black hen ; then steep part of a pumpkin in the blood and apply it to the affected part ; and hang up the rest of the pumpkin in the chimney, and be sure to take no further notice of it. If you suffer from varicose veins, you should apply a piece of pumpkin and then throw it to a pig, the flesh of which must on no account be eaten. If you lose any of your property it will be very unwise to go to the police. They will cause no end of trouble and will want all sorts of stupid forms filled up, about the age and occupation of your parents, and such irrelevant things ; and they may ask many inconvenient questions, so that you come to feel more like the guilty than the injured party. You had far better resort to a wise woman, or a wizard, whichever sex you prefer ; and it is conceivable that the seer, possessing a wide and varied acquaintance of things and people, may be in a position to negotiate for the return of the 130 Land and Sea goods — for a suitable consideration. And of course you will not marry, or set out on a journey, or take any important step in life without due consultation in the same quarter. One hundred reis, or fivepence, will procure you much disinterested advice. Truly must the wizard, like the professional letter-writer, become the repository of strange secrets. With the productions of the latter we are familiar. There is one of the fraternity who writes English, and revels in a picturesque style. It was something of a surprise to my wife after a good many years of married life to find me described in one of his effusions as her " affec- tionate bridegroom." Such a notable gift of expression, and so fine a contempt for mere facts are wasted here ; they would command a large salary in Fleet Street. There is, I think, as elsewhere in Latin countries, a strong pagan survival in the creed of the common people. The ancient gods are not wholly dead, but they are called by other names. Even the Blessed Virgin herself is per- haps not clearly understood to be one Person. If you suffer from rheumatism, you pray to Our Lady of the Mount ; if you are anxious 131 Leaves from a Madeira Garden for a son and heir, you propitiate Our Lady of somewhere else ; it is no great step from this for the uneducated mind to think of two goddesses, possessing different attributes and powers. The patron saint of our own parish here, St. Martin, seems to have obtained his repu- tation as the friend of revellers, publicans, and tavern-keepers from the accident that his festival coincides with an old pagan feast. St. Martin does not himself appear to have been an especially jovial person. The oft-painted incident of his dividing his cloak with a beggar made him originally the guardian of mendicants ; but that function has been transferred to St. Giles. In early life he worked many miracles, including the restoring of the dead to life, and while Bishop of Tours he did much to spread the monastic system. There is nothing in this to connect him with the toper, or even the moderate drinker. Yet throughout Christen- dom Martinmas is a day proper for revelry, the day on which cattle are killed to be salted for winter use, and the new wine is drawn from the lees and tasted. It is a curious chance which has linked the Christian ascetic with the 132 Land and Sea attributes of Dionysus. Very appropriately the large parish dedicated to him here is one of the chief vine-growing districts of the island, and the curious may note " Fine old S. Mar- tinho" in wine-merchants' lists. Neighbouring parishes are dedicated to St. Anthony, who may perhaps assist you to regain lost or stolen property ; and St. Rock, the friend of the sick, and especially the plague-stricken. No doubt his shrine was much sought during the un- happy events of 1906. The expression, "as sound as a roach," is perhaps due to a cor- ruption of the French form of his name. Vows to execute unpleasant tasks are not uncommon. In their performance men will carry heavy chains or bars of iron ; women will shuffle on bare knees over sharp stones, and up the steep steps leading to the Mount Church. Votive offerings, such as wax models of injured and ailing limbs, are constantly made. I asked one custodian of a church what became of them. With a twinkle in his eye he explained that the patient either died or recovered ; whichever happened there was no further use for the offering, and the wax made very good candles. If a long drought occurs, 133 Leaves from a Madeira Garden various expedients are resorted to with the object of propitiating the powers that make rain. A procession in which men bared their backs and lashed themselves and each other with great vigour was formerly in vogue, and is recorded to have been most successful. It is now, I believe, forbidden. Our housekeeper, who has the faculty of throwing a refreshingly new light on things we are inquiring about, has had something to say on this subject. She recalls a year when there was no rain, and the earth was parched and the corn did not grow, and the poor people were in great distress. So they walked in procession, and they said many prayers, and at last the good God took pity on them and sent three wrecks. The insu- larity here exhibited is characteristic ; there is no thought of the shipwrecked, and possibly drowned, mariner ; of the loss or ruin to ship- master, owner and underwriter ; it is only the abundance of loot that counts. So no doubt we are regarded by some of those we employ as specially created, like the wrecks, by a bene- ficent Providence, in answer to their prayers for a master and mistress fairly well off and not too knowing. 134 Il w I o o Land and Sea Before the days of steamers, wrecks must have been quite a considerable source of profit to the islanders. A southerly gale has been known to drive half a dozen ships lying in the port on shore. Steamers are able to go out to sea, where they are safe ; and such a gale, especially as it sometimes does much damage to shore boats and lighters, is perhaps regarded with less favour than formerly. But the sea has sometimes brought less welcome visitors. The islands of Madeira and Porto Santo suffered much in their early days from privateers and corsairs. Next to dis- covering an "unsuspected isle in far off seas," the harrying of one which somebody else had discovered and settled must have been the greatest fun imaginable. Such raids are not entirely without their modern successors, but nowadays they are not considered good form. In 1566 the town of Funchal was sacked by a large force of French freebooters, who landed on a convenient beach about three miles to the west of the town. They occupied it for fifteen days, plundering churches, convents and houses, holding citizens to ransom, and putting many, including the Governor D'Ornellas, to the 135 Leaves from a Madeira Garden sword. Their leader Montluc was wounded by a shot from the garden of one Caspar Correa, who was killed in consequence. Mont- luc died of his wound just as relief was arriving from Lisbon. His followers escaped. It is interesting to note that the families of Correa and D'Ornellas are still among the most pro- minent in the island. In later days, when England was at war with France and Spain, and naval combats frequently took place in these seas, many incidents must have occurred to enliven the monotony of life at Funchal. From the Gentleman s Magazine for 1742 I cull the following: "The Hastings Lord Bamff, took off the Madeiras, Jan. 7, after an engagement of two hours, a Spanish register-ship of 20 guns and 105 men, besides 10 men and 4 women passengers, and a child, bound from Cadiz for the Havanna. As he was carrying his prize into Madeira, he like- wise took on the i6th a privateer of 14 carriage and 6 swivel guns, and 73 men." We can picture the excitement which such arrivals as are described in this bald narrative must have caused. In October, 1799, a fleet of ninety-six British 136 Land and Sea merchant vessels, under the escort of three men-of-war and bound for the West Indies, anchored in Funchal Bay. It is recorded that they took away 3041 pipes of wine shipped by British merchants, either for the supply of the colonies, or for the sake of the voyage. These were the palmy days of the Madeira wine-trade. Madeira cannot claim the stirring place in our naval annals which belongs to the not dis- tant Canary Islands. Thrice have our greatest sailors attacked the Spaniards there ; and it must be owned that Spain has won the rubber. In 1595 Drake, on his last voyage, was repulsed off Las Palmas in Grand Canary. This failure of the scourge of Spain, the destroyer of count- less treasure ships, the relentless pursuer of the beaten Armada, must have been very welcome to the victorious defenders. In 1657, during Cromwell's Protectorate, Blake attacked the harbour of Santa Cruz in Teneriffe, in which was lying a great treasure-laden fleet, home- ward bound from the West. He thrust his ships into the port under the guns of the shore batteries, and succeeded in sinking sixteen Spanish galleons without the loss of one of his 137 Leaves from a Madeira Garden own ships. It was a daring piece of work and our first great naval victory since the defeat of the Armada. In 1797 Nelson attacked Santa Cruz with the object of taking possession of a large treasure landed there from a Spanish galleon. He was beaten off with heavy loss. It was his one defeat, and it was here that his arm was shattered by a cannon-ball. He returned to England expecting to be punished for his failure, and found himself a hero. The romance of the sea is not yet wholly spent. Three or four years ago two boat-loads of shipwrecked mariners rowed into the port of Funchal. They landed on the pier, and commenced to relate to an excited crowd the story of their adventures, with much picturesque embellishment. They told how their vessel, a large sailing ship carrying the French flag, had sprung a leak a hundred miles to the westward of Madeira, and somewhat out of the track of steamers. They described their heroic efforts to keep her afloat, and their unceasing labour at the pumps, and how finally, with the ship sinking beneath their feet, they had taken to the boats just in time to escape being engulfed as she disappeared. So engrossed were they 138 Land and Sea and their audience with this thrilling tale that until it was concluded they did not lift up their eyes to see a large sailing ship being towed into the port by a steamer. When at length observed she must have given them a nasty turn, for was she not the very vessel from which, as they had just so circumstantially narrated, they had narrowly escaped two or three days before ? And indeed " It was that fatal and perfidious bark ; " and we may feel no doubt that they greeted her with " curses dark." The inconvenient steamer had found her derelict with some awk- ward augur holes in her bottom, and deemed her a prize worth towing into Funchal. There are some ships that nothing will sink. What became of the poor distressed mariners I do not know ; the sailing ship lay here for some time, while the lawyers wrangled over the salvage, and then sailed away, doubtless in charge of a fresh crew. The sea is the home of strange coincidences. One day, a quarter of a century ago, two vessels hom.eward bound left the port together. Their names began with the same three letters. 139 Leaves from a Madeira Garden One was the European^ a steamer of the Union line ; the other was the Eurydice^ a man-of-war. Neither reached its destination. The former was wrecked on Ushant ; the latter capsized in a squall off the Isle of Wight, and was lost with all hands. During the South African War our feelings were harrowed with stories of privateers which were being fitted out in the Canary Isles with the especial object of attacking the Cape mail- boats. And there were circumstantial accounts of such and such a liner having received a warning, and travelling night after night with no lights, to the great inconvenience, not to mention the alarm, of her passengers. But such tales were no doubt apocryphal. Towards the close of the war some members of the former Transvaal Government resided here, and acted as a kind of post-office between their comrades who were still in the field and their friends in Europe. Certain very curious proceedings took place in this connection. It is still a little too near the events to record what happened ; but there is reason to believe that our own Govern- ment was fully alive to what was going on, and took its own measures to deal with the matter. 140 Land and Sea The sea, like life, has its little ironies. And it condescends sometimes to play practical jokes. Last winter a young English clergyman, stay- ing for a short holiday at one of the hotels, mentioned to the hotel-keeper one morning that he thought of going for a walk in the hills. His failure to return in the evening suggested pictures of his mangled corpse lying at the foot of a precipice. Fortunately, one of his fellow- guests was able to say that he had seen him on board a Royal Mail steamer which was outward bound for South America. This allayed anxiety, but originated various theories for his disappearance. Ten days later a telegram arrived from Brazil to say that he had been carried on involuntarily, not having noticed that the steamer had started. He was taken the round trip, and on his return to Southampton found himself famous, being met by seven reporters anxious to gather the impressions of a clerical stowaway. The converse sometimes happens. Not long ago a young man and a maiden, who had made acquaintance on board, landed together from a mail-boat bound for South Africa, for a walk. Doubtless time took wings, for when they 141 Leaves from a Madeira Garden returned to the pier the steamer was gone. The girl's parents were on board, and must have been consumed with anxiety at her dis- appearance, as they could get no news of her until they reached Capetown. This, and not the absence of tooth-brushes, is the really tragic side of such occurrences. The young couple were hospitably entreated here, and proceeded the following week. Let us hope that the tale had an appropriate conclusion. I have wandered afar from our mountain Quinta — perhaps not inappropriately, for it is a convenient starting-point for many excursions. It lies on the very brink of a delightful ravine, the source of Funchal's easternmost river, known to the English as the Little Curral. If this valley lacks the sensational features of Madeira's wildest gorges, it is rich in all the elements of the picturesque. Up hill and down dale you walk or ride, with miniature precipices yawning below you, while rocky eminences, aping in their form the greater mountains, stand clear against the sky above. Villages with peaked thatched roofs, almost Japanese in character, hang on to the slopes in the most inconvenient situations. Arum lilies growing wild fleck 142 Land and Sea the hill-sides with their cream-white grace ; on damp rocks masses of liverwort abound to charm the fern-lover. In an hour or two you emerge from this little wilderness on to the Caminho do Meio, the very steep road which ascends to the east of Funchal. This alarming road has an inclination of 23°, or one in two and a third, and from its exceeding abruptness has been nicknamed " Rocket Road." Facilis descensus^ it is easy to toboggan down it in a running car ; but how any one ever gets up it is a mystery. Crossing it, you may pass through a delightful little forest of eucalyptus trees, their smooth straight stems springing to a surprising height, and ascend to a winding levada, affording very charming views of the town, the sea, and the rocky Desertas, which leads you in time to the pleasant mountain village of Camacha. A very pleasant village indeed it is, lying over two thousand feet above the sea-level, on a spur of the higher hills, a few miles to the east of Funchal. It was formerly much resorted to in summer by those English whose business re- tained them in Madeira, as is attested by the presence of some agreeable villas, now little 143 Leaves from a Aladeira Garden used. The railway which ascends to " the Mount " directly above Funchal now makes that locality more convenient as a residence in hot weather. Camacha possesses among other attractions a level tract of good turf on which many a cricket match has been played. It mi^ht be mistaken for the grreen of an O CD English village but that it lies on the very brink of a deep and picturesque ravine. In this hamlet and its neighbourhood is made much of the wicker-work — chairs, tables, sofas, and other articles — which fills the shops of Funchal. Enormous quantities are purchased by the passengers of passing steamers ; and it is not unknown at charity bazaars in England. It is carried down the steep moun- tain road to the town chiefly by women, who will bear, balanced on their heads, a surprisingly heavy and unwieldy mass of tables and chairs. This practice gives them a peculiar gait ; the body is held perfectly rigid, and the hips swing with a regular motion as they walk. The muscular development of these women must be prodigious. And Camacha is justly celebrated for its flowers — its arum lilies and irises, its ixias and 144 Land and Sea sparaxlas, its primroses and violets, with many others which prefer the stimulating freshness of its elevated site to the softness, of lower regions. The hills around are golden in spring with broom and gorse ; the hedges are full of hardy fuchsias and their like ; the stream-beds and woodland walks are rich in fern. Truly it is a pleasant district for the flower-lover and botanist. 145 Chapter VUl—FEBRU^Rr Taxes — Monopolies — Poverty " I do not give you to posterity as a pattern to imitate, but aa example to deter." — Junius. THE commercial conditions existing in this island afford a melancholy example of the evils of State in- terference in business matters. Of unrivalled climate, with a soil of great fertility, and lying within a few days' steam of the greatest markets in the world, it is yet pre- vented by a vicious fiscal system from enjoying the wealth which is its natural due. There is no question here of the encouragement of young and struggling industries by a moderate scheme of Protection, and it is not necessary in this connection to consider under what circum- stances, if ever, Protection is beneficial. Two facts strike the observer : firstly, the apparent desire of the Government to tax everything that can be taxed, regardless of consequences ; and 146 Taxes — Monopolies — Pove rty secondly, the extraordinary state of things which may be brought about by monopolies created in the supposed interest of one set of cultivators, but probably originating in the desire of the politicians to have their fingers in every possible pie. These two facts are closely interwoven, but as instances of the first may be mentioned the injudicious taxation of the " raw material " of export trade, such as the duty on wood from Norway intended for immediate re-exportation as crates for fruit, a tax which has killed the cultivation and export of bananas ; the duty on bottles to be used for the export of bottled wines ; the duty on artificial manures necessary for the successful growing of vegetables, in which an enormous trade might be done ; and what is more serious, the effect of the sugar monopoly on the price of the alcohol which is largely used in the preparation of wine. The authorities do not appear to understand that an export trade is one of the chief sources of wealth ; that people cannot live " on taking in each other's washing " ; or that exporters have to compete in foreign markets with the pro- ducers of other countries ; that the price they obtain for their wares is chiefly regulated by 147 Leaves from a Madeira Garden that competition ; and that it is to the interest of the whole community that they should not be driven out of those markets by the artificial raising of the cost of production. " Here is an industry, come let us tax it to death," seems to be their motto. One can almost hear Lord Place, the Parliamentary candidate in Fielding's " Pasquin," *' I hope we shall have no such people as tradesmen shortly ; I can't see any use they are of ; if I am chose, I'll bring in a bill to extirpate all trade out of the nation." Of the second fact, remarkable instances may be adduced, some of them savouring rather of the " Arabian Nights " or a comic opera, than of a serious business community. But to quote Dr. Johnson, " Sir, to leave things out of a book because people tell you they will not be believed is meanness." First, as regards flour. In order to prevent, it is said, the growth of a monopoly in the people's food, licence is granted to various millers to grind corn ; each miller being allowed to grind such proportion of the whole amount required as corresponds to the proportion his machinery bears to the total milling machinery in the town. The result is that mills have been multiplied and increased 148 Taxes — Monopolies — Poverty to an extent many times in excess of economic requirements, a serious waste of capital and of administrative expenses, which ultimately falls on the consumer, or at any rate tends to the impoverishment of the community. The growth of sugar-cane, and the manufac- ture from it of sugar and alcohol, offer a still more noteworthy example of the effects of State control of commerce. The industry is one in which many thousands of people are directly or indirectly interested, and having been for some years in a state of intermittent crisis, arising from differences between the manufacturers and the Government, offers a staple subject for conversation in the island. Stand on any eminence in the neighbourhood of Funchal at this season of the year, when the crop is ripe for cutting, and you will see miles and miles of sugar-cane extending from the seashore up the mountain slopes. This cane is mostly bought by an English firm long estab- lished here, and sugar is manufactured from it in a thoroughly efficient mill, equipped with the most modern machinery ; yet when you go to buy sugar in the shops you are charged sevenpence a pound for it. This astonishing 149 Leaves from a Madeira Garden result, to which natives and foreign residents are inured, but which to strangers appears incredible, is brought about in the first instance by a duty of three hundred per cent, on imported sugar, which of course raises the price here to nearly four times what it would be in a free market. But it is also influenced by other factors. The sugar manufacturers have what is practically a contract with the Government, under which they are bound to purchase the whole of the Madeira crop at a price which, I understand, is about four times that current for cane in Barbadoes, in consideration of which they obtain, if not explicitly at least practically, a monopoly of the business, and also may im- port free of duty, or nearly so, molasses from the West Indies in an unmanufactured state. This provision appears to be of some value to them in the ordinary course of their business, and would naturally be of the highest impor- tance in the event of a failure of the Madeira crop. It might be supposed that this sacrifice of the consumer would bring great profits (taken from his pocket) to the cultivators. But such does not appear to be the case. It may be that 150 Taxes — Monopolies — Poverty neither the soil nor the climate of Madeira is really fitted for the permanent growing of sugar on a large scale. It is an exhausting crop, and can perhaps be only grown economically in countries which enjoy cheap black labour. Here it certainly pays to grow — at the expense of the consumer, and under cover of the three hundred per cent, duty, but that is all. And as it is of easy cultivation, and under the con- tract I have mentioned the grower is sure of a sale at a fixed price, it is effectually discouraging the raising of other crops. However beneficial this curious system may be to the cultivator and his landlord, from the point of view of the community certain obvious disadvantages attach to it. Of course at this price no sugar can be exported to foreign countries ; all export of preserves, jams, candied fruits, and such articles depending on the use of sugar is equally out of the question, though it is conceivable that a great industry might be established in these, and bring much profit to the island ; and one cannot but think that in the languishing state of the wine trade, the provision of untaxed alcohol, at the lowest possible price, from what- ever source obtained, would commend itself to 151 Leaves from a Madeira Garden the Government as a means of saving what is still the island's staple export. Under the system of land tenure which pre- vails here, the landowner takes by way of rent half the produce of the soil, the remaining half being the tenant's share. The cultivation of sugar-cane under the artificial conditions de- scribed is no doubt advantageous to the land- lord. Not only does the crop produce a good return to him at a fixed price, but it is easy to check the amount received for it, and petty frauds by the tenant are rendered impossible. And at first sight it is also beneficial to the tenant ; at any rate he receives in money an amount which he could not otherwise hope for. But against this must be set the fact that little else can be grown with sugar-cane : that the beans, and sweet potatoes and yams, the sup- port of the tenant's family, must be bought and paid for instead of, as was formerly the case, being grown on the farm. Some of the opponents of the sugar cultivation assert (I cannot say with how much reason) that the tenants are gradually being impoverished, and that the outcome will probably be a widespread revolt against the landlords, whose present 152 CUTTINt; THE SLCAK'-CAMi Taxes — Monopolies — Po verty prosperity may be expected to be short-lived. Since the introduction of the fixed-price system a few years ago the cane crop has increased fourfold, and is still increasing. Species of cane have been introduced which will flourish at a greater altitude than would that formerly cultivated, and already much of the best land in the island is given up to this absorbing crop. In the view of its opponents not only is the whole system economically bad, but it is fraught with dangers to the community, both financial and political. It is not the least of the drawbacks of such artificial arrangements that they cannot be abolished or altered without causing great loss and even ruin to numerous innocent indi- viduals. It is in effect an experiment in Socialism. The cultivators are mere creatures of the State, and are entirely at the mercy of such provisions as the State may make. With the cultivation on this artificial basis, free com- petition on the manufacturing side is practically impossible ; you must either have State mills, or mills owned by individuals working, as here, under contract or in close touch with the State. 153 Leaves from a Madeira Garden I have endeavoured to describe in a few words the main features, as they strike a mere spectator, of this extraordinary system, which is full of lessons for those who may discern them. Its contentious details, which I have avoided, are discussed with much acrimony in the local press ; but so ingrained is the idea of State- protection and State-regulation that the British practice of letting business matters take their natural course seems to be the last thing to occur to any one. And perhaps as things are it would puzzle even an administrator like Lord Cromer to find a way out. A country whose chief industry is based on a protective duty of 300 per cent, naturally gets into a very queer tangle economically. Exports being discouraged in this fashion, and also to a less serious extent by the imposi- tion of export duties, it is not to be expected that the import trade should flourish. And it is further checked by very high customs duties, averaging, I believe, not far short of 100 per cent. Sydney Smith's " dying Englishman " would not get off so cheaply here : " The dying Englishman, pouring his medicine which has paid seven per cent, into a spoon that has paid 154 Taxes — Monopolies — Poverty fifteen per cent., flings himself back upon his chintz bed, which has paid twenty-two per cent., and expires in the arms of an apothecary, who has paid a licence of a hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him to death." These duties can hardly be described as pro- tective, because with the exception of certain minor articles, such for example as furniture and boots, few things in general use are manu- factured in the island. It must be acknow- ledged that they act as protective of certain industries on the mainland of Portugal ; but to judge from the predominance of foreign (chiefly German) goods in the shops, this protection is of no great eflfect. The duties are in practice rather restrictive than protective. Every one gets in the way of doing without many things which in other countries are in quite ordinary use. And to some extent they account for the backward state of the island in such matters as sanitation. The enormous duty on iron pipes, for example, discourages very effectually private enterprise in the laying on to houses of water from springs, and so on. The result in revenue of these duties is therefore quite incommensu- rate with the damage they do to trade, and to 155 Leaves from a Madeira Garden the well-being of the inhabitants. If there must be a tariff, it is probable that a very much lower one would soon produce a much greater revenue. At present we go without a new carpet, because the duty on it would be £,20 or ;^30. If the duty were reduced to one quarter of this sum, we should import our new carpet, and the State would receive £,^ or so instead of nothing. And the vista of general prosperity which after the first wrench would succeed such a change, coupled with the abolition of socialistic experiments as touching cultivation and manufacture, is boundless. But there is no sign as yet of the existence of any intelligent appreciation of economic laws. In spite of everything the State can do to cripple foreign trade, and the fact that the most important export, wine, is a declining factor, a good deal of foreign money comes into the island. The coaling, watering, and provisioning of calling ships employ much labour ; there is an ever-increasing influx of visitors during the winter and spring ; and the salubrity of the climate tempts many Portuguese who have made money in tropical countries to make it their home on retiring from business. Much 156 Taxes — Monopolies — Poverty of the land has during the last fifty years passed into the possession of this class. The amount of money left by passing steamers must be very considerable. In the palmy days of Johannesburg, the homeward- bound Cape mail, with much money burning holes in many pockets, must have been a veritable gold mine. And nowadays huge steamers taking American tourists to the Mediterranean call here and remain thirty-six hours. It is said that these tourists are very close-fisted, but even the post-cards they pur- chase must run into a goodly sum. It is to be feared that the money does not always go in the first instance into very worthy hands. Our excellent house-keeper, whose uncon- vential views are a perpetual joy, especially as regards the dignity of certain professions which we regard as disreputable and some of which must be nameless, has thrown light on this subject. We asked what had become of a certain John, formerly one of our hammock- bearers, whom we had not seen acting in that capacity lately. " Oh no," she replied, " John does not carry hammocks any more ; he is a very respectable man now ; he is a guider." 157 Leaves from a Madeira Garden We inquired what a guider might be. "A guider," she answered, "is like this. John he stand on the pier when English gentleman land from Cape steamer, and he say to English gentleman" (we can see that English gentleman), " * You want a drink ? ' English gentleman say, * Yes ! ' So John take him to a wine-shop, and say to him, * Madeira wine very good here.' So English gentleman order a bottle. When he drink it, he say, ' How much ? ' John say, * Eight shillings — very fine Madeira wine.' English gentleman very cross, he say too much money ; but in the end he pay, and then he go on board again " — no doubt assisted by the obliging John. " Next day," she continued, " John go to the wine-seller, who give him four shillings. Yes," she added reflectively, "John very respectable man now " ; and we felt that any remarks on the honesty of his former toil, as contrasted with his present rascally business, would be misunderstood. If it were not for these adventitious benefices the island would be in a bad way. A stranger may ask in surprise why Portugal, and especi- ally Madeira, are poor. It is obvious that this 15S Taxes — Monopolies — Poverty island is one of the most favoured spots of the earth's surface. Its genial climate, its fertile soil, its ample rainfall, its situation on the lines of route from South and West Africa and South America to Europe, and from North America to the Mediterranean ; its possession of plentiful labour — all these factors combine to promise an exceptional prosperity of State and individual alike. This promise is not ful- filled. There is no money to provide even the most ordinary requirements of a civilized coun- try. Roads, bridges, water-supply, drainage, hospitals, asylums, schools — in all these depart- ments Madeira is a century behind the age. If you ask why, there is no answer but " We are too poor." Good heavens ! how do the Portu- guese imagine that peoples inhabiting countries which lack almost all the advantages of theirs furnish themselves with these necessaries of life and a hundred others ? Even the provision of "up-to-date" hotel accommodation for visitors appears to be rendered impossible. The com- panies which have been during recent years crowding the health resorts of Europe with first- class hotels and restaurants have left Madeira alone, and the wealthier class of travellers, which 159 Leaves from a Madeira Garden is prepared to pay for its comforts and might bring much profit to the island, is discouraged from visiting it. If we seek for the cause of this poverty and backwardness, our investigations always lead by one route or another to the vicious fiscal system of which I have given some examples. The concessions, the monopolies, the extravagant duties, the sacrifice of the community to the supposed interest of a class — such are the means by which the State forces poverty on itself and its citizens. It is frequently said, and by some for whose judgment I have much respect, that the poverty of the inhabitants is due to over-population. So it may be under the present fiscal system ; but granted one which did not discourage export trade, a large population would be a blessing and not a curse. In Madeira the people are very prolific ; there is no question of the declining birth-rate, which is pro- ducing pessimistic forecasts of the extinction of Western civilization ; and owing to the healthy outdoor life infant mortality is less than might be expected ; — the greater the reason why the working class should not be i6o Taxes — Monopolies — Poverty hedged off from opportunities of profitable labour. Even as things are the labourer's lot is not an unhappy one. Farm hands get from 400 to 500 reis a day, that is, from one and eight- pence to two shillings. I find they do not,'as a rule, work every day in the week ; one or two days are generally devoted to the cultivation of their own little patches, where they grow the sweet potatoes on which they chiefly live, or the sugar-cane which is supplanting them. They do not know what cold is, and fuel is only required for cooking. An English farm- labourer might reasonably regard their con- dition with envy. In the foreign concession-hunter the Portu- guese sometimes catch a Tartar. A few years ago a German company-promoter, backed by a millionaire prince of imperial connections, obtained a concession to exploit this island as a resort for tourists and invalids. The company formed to work it undertook, as a consideration, to build a sanatorium with forty beds for sick poor — an ingenious arrangement, as it secured Royal support, her Majesty the Queen of Portugal being charitably disposed in such 161 M Leaves from a Madeira Garden matters. But it was a very inadequate con- sideration for the outrageous terms of the concession. These included not only the ad- mission of furniture and appliances for the German hotels free of customs duties — an injustice to the owners of existing hotels, who have paid duties on their imports — but also the right of expropriating land within a defined zone. This zone covered much property be- longing to British subjects, including important business premises of British firms. These firms naturally objected to their property being expropriated and their business being damaged, not for public purposes, but in the interests of a private company formed to run hotels and gambling casinos. A great outcry arose. Sug- gestions, perhaps not wholly without foundation, of German political aggression being at the bottom of it all were freely made in the English press. After a long fight, the English Foreign Office was moved to protest energetically against the threatened expropriation of certain English property, and the Portuguese Government had to inform the German company that it could not carry out the terms of the concession. The company, which had bought a good deal 162 Taxes — Monopolies — Poverty of land and done some building, threw up the business and claimed ^^500,000 damages. It was asserted that over ;^2 00,000 had already- been spent. The matter is still unsettled. It may be that the Portuguese Government will have to pay /!i2 00,000 or more, and take over the lands and buildings ; for which it would be unlikely to find a profitable use at one-quarter of the cost. But the lesson is worth something. It is rather gratifying to the Englishman, before whom the bugbear of German competi- tion, of German commercial wisdom and success, has been brandished for years, to discover that even the German " sometimes nods." The possession of a few unused, and presumably useless, buildings, and a shadowy claim against a Government which is itself in financial diffi- culties, do not seem a very brilliant result for years of work, of diplomatic pressure and political intrigue, coupled with the expenditure, one way and another, of nearly a quarter of a million sterling. I will conclude this chapter with a quotation from the " First Voyage " of Captain Cook : " Nature has been very bountiful in her gifts to Madeira. The soil is so rich, and there 163 Leaves from a Madeira Garden is such a variety of climate, that there is scarcely any article of the necessaries or luxuries of life which could not be cultivated here." These words have been almost repeated in my hearing by expert botanists in recent times. But Nature's bounty has been unavailing against the perversity of man. 164 Chapter lX^m' ^li-^, ROAD NEAR liOA VENTURA Frotii a sA^eff/t hy Chevutier The North Side path, only passable on foot, has been hewn in the face of the precipitous cliffs. It leads in about two hours to the village of Seixal. It is never more than six feet wide and often much less, it has no parapet, and the overhanging rock sometimes makes it impossible for a tall man to walk upright. Here and there, where waterfalls descend from the hills above, the rock is tunnelled to afford protection. Some- times the path descends to the sea-level, only to ascend again several hundred feet. And always the cliffs are sheer, with the wild sea breaking at their base. It is not a path suited to the nervous. Wild gullies, deep gashes severing the line of cliff and extending far into the heart of the mountains, are passed on the way. The deepest and most precipitous is called, not inappropriately, Ribeiro do Inferno. The botanist will remark that the moist crannies in the rock are everywhere filled with splendid specimens of the sea spleenwort, Asplenium marinum ; and the cliffs are studded, as else- where on the north coast, with a species of houseleek, Sempervivum glandidosum^ varying in size from that of a small pincushion to that of the crown of a tall hat, or larger. 225 Q Leaves from a Madeira Garden In the pleasing jargon of the botanists the leaves of this plant are thus described — " Rhomboidal-spathulate or obovate-ligulate inconspicuously or irregularly fringed with short subremote often clavate or capitate sub- cartilaginous ciliay bright green closely imbricate in a flat or discoidal sessile radical rosette lasting till the appearance of the single central succulent branched flower-stem." This will enable the reader to picture to himself its appearance. At Seixal this unique path comes to an end. Sheer clifl^s of great height bar all further passage along the coast, and the traveller bent on proceeding westward must either take boat, or ascend to the mountain plateau above. It is possible so to climb by a very rough path up the west side of the vale of Seixal, a valley seldom visited, but almost unrivalled in wealth of vegetation and wild rocky scenery. Above this gorge lies a lovely sylvan and ; park-like tract with scattered timber, across which a path may be followed to the far-famed water- falls of Raba^al, whence one of the little ports on the south coast may be reached. For the prolonged exploration of the high 226 The North Side land in the centre of the island, and the heads of the great ravines, the weather in winter is often unsuitable. But in summer tent life at this altitude must be very delightful. A de- scription of its charms may be found in the late Mr. Wollaston's volume on the insects of Madeira. Under such agreeable conditions he pursued his investigations. 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Daily C/irouicle.—" Mr. Goring-Thomas says many shrewd and clever things, and, blending comedy with pathos has written an enjoyable book." BY HANDASYDE. FOR THE WEEK-END. Crown Svo. 6/- StitndatJ-" Only a woman, surely, would write such deep and intimate truth about the heart of another woman and the things that give her joy when a man loves her." A GIRL'S LIFE IN A HUNTING COUNTRY. Crown Svo. 3/6 Daily News—" A sweet and true representation of a girl's romance." 6 JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION BY HENRY HARLAND. THE CARDINAL'S SNUFF BOX. Crown 8vo. 6/- Ulustrated by G. C. Wilmhurst. 165th. Thousand. .,4a7rft'wi>'— "The drawings are all excellent in style and really illustrative oJ the tale." Pall Mall Gazette—" Dainty and delicious." Tinus—" A book among a tnousand." MY FRIEND PROSPERO. Crown 8vo. Third Edition. 6/- J UHLS—" There is no denying the charm of the work, the delicacy and fragrancy of the style, the sunny play of the dialogue, the vivacity of the wit, and the graceful flight ot the fancy.' ,^ IVorld— "The reading of it is a pleasure rare and unalloyed. THE LADY PARAMOUNT. Crown 8vo. 55lh Thousand. 6/- Times — "A fantastic, delightful love-idyll." Spectator—" A roseate romance without a crumpled rose leaf." Daily Mail—" Charming, dainty, delightful." COMEDIES AND ERRORS. Crown Svo. Third Edition. 6/- Mr. Henry James, in Fortiiiiihtly Review— "Ur. Harland has clearly thought out a form. . . . He has maslerecl a method and learned how to paint. . .. His art is all alive with felicities and delicacies." GREY ROSES. Crown Svo. Fourth Edition. 3/6 net Daily Telegraph—" ' Grey Roses ' " are entitled to rank among the choicest flowers of the realms of romance. " Spectator-" Really delightful. ' Castles near Spain ' is as near perfection as it could well be." Daily Chronicle—" Charming stories, simple, full of freshness." MADEMOISELLE MISS. Crown Svo. Third Edition. 3/6 Speaker—" All through the book we are pleased and entertained." Bookman-" An interesting collection of early work. In it may be noted the undoubted delicacy and strength of Mr. Harland's manner." BY E. CROSBY HEATH. HENRIETTA. Crown Svo. 6/- BY ALICE HERBERT. THE MEASURE OF OUR YOUTH. Crown Svo. 6/- Evening Standard — "A very human, intelligible book. . . . exceedingly clever and earnestly real." Morning Post — " Reveals an unusual clearness of vision and distinction ol style and thought." BY MURIEL HINE. HALF IN EARNEST. Crown Svo. 6/- Daily Telegrafih— "This is written with great spirit and a considerable power ot story-telling. It has sufficient attractive qualities to make it a readable piece of work." Pall Mall Gazette. — " The character-drawing throughout, indeed, is of unusual merit." Mornins Post. — " Miss Muriel Hine is to be congratulated." JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION BY ARNOLD HOLCOMBE. THE ODD MAN. Crown Svo. 61- Monnng Post — " One of the most refreshing and amusing books that we have read for some months. ... ' The Odd Man ' is a book to put on one's shelves and Mr. Holcombe's is a name to remember.' BY ADELAIDE HOLT. THE VALLEY OF REGRET. Crown Svo. 6/- Timcs. — " Strong individualities, freshlj' conceived and firmly drawn. . . . The book is one which augurs well for the writer; for she certainly has the gift of reaching the reader's heart." BY WILFRID SCARBOROUGH JACKSON. NINE POINTS OF THE LAW. Crown Svo. 6/- Manchesler Guardian — "The kindly humorous philosophy of this most divert- ing story is as remarkable as its attractive style. "There is hardly a page without something quotable, some neat bit of phrasing or apt wording of a truth." HELEN OF TROY. N.Y. Crown Svo. 6/- Daily Chronicle— '■^ The story is at once original, impossible, artificial, and very amusing. Go, get the work and read." TRIAL BY MARRIAGE. Crown Svo. 6/- J-f^orld—" One can confidently promise the reader of this skilfully treated and unconventional novel that he will not find a page of it dull. It is one that will be not only read but remembered." BY MRS. JOHN LANE. | KITW^^K. Crown Svo. 6/- A Story with numerous illustrations by Howard Pyle, Albert Sterner and George Wharton Edwards. Times — " Mrs. Lane has succeeded to admiration, and chiefly by reason of being so much interested in her theme that she makes no conscious effort to please. . . . Everyone who seeks to be diverted will read ' Kitwyk ' for its obvious qualities of entertainment." THE CHAMPAGNE STANDARD. Crown Svo. 6/- Morning Post — " The author's champagne overflows with witty sayings too numerous to cite." Pall Mall Gazette — " Mrs. Lane's papers on our social manners and foibles are the most entertaining, the kindest and the truest that have been oflered us for a longtime. . . . The book shows an airy philosophy that will render it of service to the social student." BALTHASAR AND OTHER STORIES. Crown Svo. 6/- Translated by Mrs. John Lane from the French of Anatole France Daily Graphic — "The original charm and distinction of the author's style has survivedf the difficult ordeal of appearing in another language. . . . 'The Cure's Mignonette" is as perfect in itself as some little delicate flower." JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION BY MRS. JOHN LAIHE— continued. ACCORDING TO MARIA. Crown 8vo. 6/- Daily Telegraph— " A more entertaining, companionable, good-natured, and yet critical piece of portraiture we have not had the good luck to encounter these many seasons. . . . 'According to Maria' is as fresh, amusing, and human a book as any man, woman, or girt could desire to bewitch a jaded moment, or drive away a fit of the dumps." Daiiy Chronicle— ''This delightful novel, sparkling with humour. . . . Maria's world is real. . . . Thackeray might have made such sheaves if he had been a woman. TALK O' THE TOWN. Crown 8vo. 6/- BY RICHARD LE GALLIENNE. THE BOOK BILLS OF NARCISSUS. Crown 8vo. 3/6 net Second Edition. C. di B. (Mr. Bernard Shaw) in the S/ar—" If an unusually fine literary instinct could make it a solid book, Mr. le Gallienne would be at no loss lor an enduring reputation . . . Nothing could be prettier than his pleas and persuasions on behalf of Narcissus and George Muncaster." THE WORSHIPPER OF THE IMAGE. Crown Svo. 3/6 Daily Chronicle— " Coniains passages of a poignancy which Mr. Le Gallienne hus never before compassed.'" THE QUEST OF THE GOLDEN GIRL. Cr. Svo. 6/- Fifteenth Edition. Daily News— ''A piece of literary art which compels our admiration." Mr. May. Beerhohm in Daily Mail— " Mr. Le Gallienne's gentle, high spirits, and his sympathy with existence is exhibited here. . . . His poetry, like his humour, sufi'uses the whole book and gives a charm to the most prosaic objects and incidents of life. . . . The whole 'book is delightful, for this reason, that no one else could have written a book of the same kind." THE ROMANCE OF ZION CHAPEL. Crown Svo. 6/- ^-^———^■^——^-^^—^~~^~^~'~^~' Second Edition. St. James's Gazette—" Mr. Le Gallienne's masterpiece." Times—" Extremely clever and pathetic. As for sentiment Dickens might have been justly proud of poor Jenny's lingering death, and readers whose heai ts I have the mastery over their heads will certainly weep over it." PAINTED SHADOWS. Crown Svo. 6/- Scotsman—" Material and workmanship are of the finest." , Queen—" Really delightful stories, Mr. Le Gallienne writes prose like a poet." JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION BY RICHARD LE GALLlE^UE-conUnncd. LITTLE DIXXERS WITH THE SPHINX. Cr. 8vo. 6/- Daily Telegraph — " Here is the same delicate phrasing, the same tender revela- tion of emotions, always presented with a daintiness of colouring that reveals the true literarj' artist." Star — " Mr. Le Gallienne touches with exquisite tenderness on the tragedy of things that change and pass and fade." BY A. E. J. LEGGE. MUTINEERS. Crown 8vo. 6/- Speaker — "An interesting story related with admirable lucidity and remark- able grasp of character. Mr. Legge writes with polish and grace." BOTH GREAT AND SMALL. Crown 8vo. 6/- Saturday Review — " We read on and on with increasing pleasure." Tunes — " The style of this book is terse and witty." THE FORD. Crown 8vo. Second Edition. 6/- SUindard — "An impressive work . . . clever and thoughtful. 'The Ford," deserves to be largely read." BY W. J. LOCKE. DERELICTS. Crown 8vo. 6/- Daily Chronicle — "Mr. Locke tells his story in a very true, very moving, and very noble book. If anyone can read the last chapter with dry eyes we shall be surprised. ' Derelicts ' is an impressive and important book." Morning Post — Mr. Locke's clever novel. One of the most effective stories that have appeared for some time past." IDOLS. Crown 8vo. 6/- Punch — " The Baron strongly recommends Mr. W. J. Locke's ' Idols ' to all novel readers. It is well written. No time is wasted in superfluous descriptions; there is no fine writing for fine writing's sake, but the story will absorb the reader. ... It is a novel that, once taken up, cannot willingly be put down until finished." A STUDY IN SHADOWS. Crown 8vo. 6/- Daily Chronicle — "Mr. Locke has achieved a distinct success in this noveL He has struck many emotional chords and struck them all with a firm sure hand." Athcnauni—^^The character-drawing is distinctly good. All the personages stand out well defined with strongly marked individualities." THE WHITE DOVE. Crown 8vo. 6/- Times — "An interesting story,, full of dramatic scenes." Morning Post — "An interesting story. The characters are strongly con- ceived and vividly presented, and the dramatic moments are powerfully realized." THE USURPER. Crown 8vo. 6/- IVorld — "This quite uncommon novel." Spectator — " Character and plot are most ingeniously wrought, and the con- clusion, when it comes, is fully satisfying." Times — "An impressive romance." 10 JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION BY W. J. LOCKE— continued. THE DEMAGOGUE AND LADY PHAYRE. Cr. 8vo. 3/6 AT THE GATE OF SAMARIA. Crown 8vo. 6/- Daily C/;)-o«!V/e— "The heroine of this clever story attracts our interest. . . She is a clever and subtle study. . . . We congratulate Mr. Locke." Morning Post— " A cleverly written tale . . . the author's pictures of Bohemian life are bright and graphic." WHERE LOVE IS. Crown 8vo. 6/- Mr. James Douglas, in Star—" I do not often praise a book with this e.Kultant gusto, but it gave me so much spiritual stimulus and moral pleasure that I feel bound to snatch the additional delight of commending it to those readers who long tor a novel that is a piece of literature as well as a piece of lite." Si'.riidaid—" A brilliant piece ol work." 7"n;;ts— " The author has the true gift ; his people are alive." THE MORALS OF MARCUS ORDEYNE. Cr. 8vo. 6/- Mr. C. K. Shorter, in 5/-a*A.-', The book is charming . . . the author . . . has a delicate fanciful touch, a charming imagination . . . skilfully suggests character and moods . . . is bright and witty, and writes about children with exquisite know- ledge and sympathy." HELEN ALLISTON. Crown 8vo. 6/- i Pall Mall Gazette.— "The book has vivacity, fluency, colour, more than a touch of poetry and passion. ... We shall look forward witn interest to future work by the author of ' Helen Alliston.' " THE YOUNG O'BRIENS. Crown 8vo. 6/- Saturday Review.— " •De\\gh\.i\A . . . the author treats them (the Young O'Briens) very skilfully." PHYLLIS IN MIDDLEWYCH. Crown 8vo. 6/- ■ Daily Telegraph.-" The author of ' Elizabeth's Children 'has really excelled herself in this" volume of stories in which Phyllis Cartwnght figures. Fhyllis who is called a little angel by her mother and a little devil by her lather, has cer tainly a double share of the power of moving people to wrath or mirth. BY EDITH WHARTON. THE GREATER INCLINATION. Crown 8vo. 6/- Daily Telegraph.—" Teems with literary ability and dramatic force." OM//oo/t.— ^' ^Iiss Wharton writes with a sympathy, insight and understanding that we have seldom seen equalled." JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION BY IDA WILD. " ZOE THE DANCER. Crown 8vo. 6/- Tinics. — "The literary style is a feature. There is a pleasing originality about the arcTunt of the career of Zoe." We should certainly like to hear again from the author-" Morning Lender. — " Miss Wild can write, not only English, but good English. Her style is often clever and brilliant. It shews a real sense and mastery of words and idiom." BY M. P. WILLCOCKS. WIDDICOMBE. Crown Svo. 6/- Evening Standard.—'^ Wonderfully alive and pulsating with a curious fervour which brings round the reader the very atmosphere which the author describes. . . . A fine, rather unusual novel. . . . There are some striking studies of women." Queen. — " An unusually clever book." THE WIXGLESS VICTORY. Crown Svo. 6/- Ttntes.—" ."juch books are worth keeping on the shelves even by the classics, lor they are painted in colours that do not fade." Daily Telegraph. — "A novel of such power as should win for its author a position in the front rank of contemporary writers of fiction." A MAN OF GENIUS. Crown Svo. 6/- Daily Tclcgiaph.—" 'V>J\dLd\comhe' was good, and 'The Wingless Victory" was perhaps better, but in ' A Man of Genius ' the author has given us something that should ssure her nlace in the front rank of our living novelists. Punch.—"' There is no excuse for not reading ' A Man of Genius ' and making a short stay in the 'seventh Devon of delight." THE WAY UP. Crown Svo. 6/- Morning Pos/.— " Admii-able . . . 'The Way Up' grips one's attention more completely than any of Miss Willcocks' three previous novels." World. —'•'t\\c author has given us her best. This is a real literary achieve- ment, a novel in a thousand and a work of art." Literary IVorld.— "This is a novel that on every page bears the hall-mark of a genius." BY F. E. MILLS YOUNG. A MISTAKEN MARRIAGE. Crown Svo. 6/- Pall Mull Gazette. — " It is a very sincere and moving story. The heroine claims our sympathies from the first, and we follow her fortunes with absorbed interest." CHIP. Crown Svo. 6/- Morning Post. — " Original, vivid and realistic." Athenaiim. — "A tale . . . of unusual romantic interest." ATONEMENT. Crown Svo. 6/- Morhing Leader.—" The book is certainly very powerful, and the end is extraordinarily moving. The characters are human beings, and the wholte thing has the stamp of strong rugged life. ... an exceptional and strong book,'^ Daily Chronicle, — " A vigorous and striking story . . . unusally wfell told. The author's power to describe places is as clear and incisive as it is in defining his characters." SAMS KID. Crown Svo. ,r '^ * " 6/- 16 V, ^ 1 I \