Discovery of Madeira and Legend of Machim.-The Duties of a Tourist.-Madeira. -Portuguese.-The Convicts of Disease.

Two gentlemen of the court of Lisbon, sailing in the Sea of Darkness, saw a black cloud. In spite of the prayers and curses of the common seamen, they resolutely steered toward it. It was not a demon, as they had supposed, but the loom of an island completely covered with trees.

When they went ashore they found that they were not its dis

coverers. They saw a large cedar cross, and near it a grave-stone, on which were engraved the names of Robert and Anna, and the following romantic and highly moral history:

Robert à Machim (this was in the fourteenth century) fell in love with Anna d'Arfet, a young lady of good family. Her father sent him to prison, and married his daughter to a peer. He took her to his castle, near Bristol, which he was suddenly obliged to leave in order to join the king's army. Machim, who had been released, persuaded Anna to elope with him to France. On their voyage a storm drove them out to sea, and finally they found an anchorage off Madeira. Anna, who, like Don Juan, had been torn by the alternate throes of love and sea-sickness, wished to go ashore. The gale returned; the ship broke from her moorings; and, with a few companions, they were left upon the island.

Anna died "of thought," Machim of despair. The sailors prepared the cross, the grave-stone, and the inscription, which Machim had written before his death, and to which he added the request that those who first came to their grave would raise a chapel above their remains.

This was done. The chapel was dedicated to Jesus; its choir paved with the bones of the unfortunate lovers. And to this day they will show you a piece of the original cedar cross in the Chapel of Machico or Machim; to this day in Madeira mothers seat their children on their knees, and tell them of the English lady who came there across the seas.

This story has been told often enough, and, indeed, Madeira has been scribbled threadbare; reams of raptures have been written on its scenery, volumes on its very atmosphere. And yet printed words had not prepared me for the delicious sight which greeted me that morning. Giddy from a week's sickness and confinement in a berth, I almost believed that I was looking at a picture. Madeira has all the appearance of a work of art. It is a landscape which has symmetry, but no grandeur; which is beautiful, but which is not sublime.

As we see it from the harbor, it is a mountain. Its brow is ridged in fantastic forms, and is tinted by the rays of the rising sun. Its green bosom is relieved by white houses, by rosy gardens, and by dark ravines; below lies Funchal, bathing its feet in the waters, and reflecting toward us the first smiles of morning. Yes, it is a pretty picture; and its colors are so fresh and vivid

that it seems as if it had just been placed in its dark blue frame of sea and sky.

A boat shot forth from the beach, the Portuguese flag waving in her stern. She came alongside; a bundle of blue papers were handed down and examined; and she left us with her flag still unfurled, a signal that we had obtained our pratique. Some gaudily-painted boats, which had been hovering at a little distance, now swooped down on us like birds of prey; some had cushioned seats for passengers, others were laden with fruit, flowers, and ingenious baskets.

I went ashore, hired a gray nag, and rode up the pebbled mountain road, a ragged guide hanging to my horse's tail with one hand and lashing the flies off him with the other. I stopped at a cabaret half way up, and drank a tumbler of villainous negrinho. Then I visited the Mount Church, the English cemetery, and the nunnery. At the first I bought a picture of the Virgin, at the second an embroidered collar, at the third some artificial flowers made of feathers-an art imported from the New World. Having discharged these solemn duties of the tourist, I played at billiards till the hour of vespers.

The Portuguese gentlemen dress always in black, a fashion which one would think had been invented by the Inquisition. But the ladies wear those handsome black silks which suit all figures and complexions. The peasant women both in costume and appearance resemble our female gipsies, in whom, for my part, I could never see any thing very prepossessing. But the men have one peculiarity in their dress. It is a cloth cap shaped like a small wine-funnel, and is perched on the top of their heads in a most extraordinary manner. As for the men themselves, they lead a life of sloth and starvation: some of them, basking like lizards on the steps of the Mount Church, whine to Mi-lor Inglese for alms, and swear at him roundly when refused. Others prowl about the markets, and pick up a fragmentary existence on fruit and fish.

The inland population must be more industrious, for there is considerable cultivation on this little island. When first discovered it was one dense mass of trees, which the early settlers set on fire so completely that they themselves were nearly sacrificed with the vegetation. The ashes with which the ground was clothed nurtured the sugar-cane which was planted in large quantities, and Madeira became as famous for its sugar as after

ward for its wine. But it happened that the sugar-canes were ravaged by a peculiar kind of worm; their culture was abandoned, and John the Second introduced vines from Crete. That these produced one of the finest wines in the world every body knows; but some years ago they were killed by a disease, and, though experiments have been made with every kind of vine, none have flourished since; and the sugar-cane has returned to the soil where once it was grown as a rare and almost unknown plant.

This scourge of the vine resembles the potato disease in its character, giving the leaves a smoke-dried appearance. It seems to have come from the East, and to be conquering turn by turn the vineyards of the West. First it destroyed those of the Cape de Verd Islands, next the Canaries, and afterward Madeira. The orchards of the Azores have suffered from its ravages, and we, a nation of port drinkers, know to our cost that it has touched Oporto. Its sure and gradual progress makes one fear that even port will become a traditionary wine, and, indeed, that some day we shall have no wine at all.

The roads of Funchal and its environs are very neatly pebbled. This admits of the bullock-sledge, a carriage without wheels, in which the native aristocracy travel. This was my first day abroad, and I must give you a foreign scene. I am standing at the porch of an ancient church. The bell is tolling for vespers, and mingles with the song of the fruit-girls in the street. The organ begins to play. I hear a strange rattling on the stones. Two bullocks, models of symmetry, with sleek fawn-colored skins, gallop to my side. A little red curtain is drawn, and a graceful lady descends adjusting her mantilla. She gives me one flash of her black eyes, and a little smile, half meditative, half triumphant, in return to the homage which I am paying her with mine.

I must own to you that it was this little incident alone which assured me that I was really out of England. Like Boulogne, Funchal has an Anglo-stamp upon it: it is ethnologically mongrel-a stepping-stone between home and abroad.

This English aspect is owing to the presence of those poor convicts of disease whom the doctors transport here for death. You may see them there in the garb of health, with roses on their cheeks, and the appetites of healthy men. But those roses are the rouge of disease; that appetite is the gnawing of the cankerworm within.