It is but a lovely charnel-house, this island of Madeira. It is a boudoir and it is a hospital-a paradise and a tomb. Here comes Death, with mock laughter and in tinseled robes. A garland of roses hides the cypress on his brow. He leads his victim to the tomb to the music of the spheres, and then all changes suddenly, like a horrible dream, and some weeping family, whose dear one is gone from them, fly from the scene of a bitter woe. For them Madeira is no longer beautiful; for them the sun is darkness, the flowers are ashes, the warm, soft air is heavy with disease.

B

CHAPTER II.

A PERISHED PEOPLE.

Peak of Teneriffe.-On Horseback to Laguna.-The Silent City.-Cigars and Brunettes.—Expired Aborigines.

THE Peak of Teneriffe! I had expected to see a mountain rising in majestic solitude from the sea. But I saw a high, squarebuilt mass of hill, which jutted rather than tapered into an apex, and on which there was sufficient snow to suggest the sublime idea of a cotton night-cap.

In Santa Cruz I found it more difficult to obtain a horse than in Funchal. At last I was conducted down a back lane into a small and very dirty house. Four women were sewing in a parlor, and did not raise their heads when I went in. The walls were decorated with those old-fashioned colored prints which you still find in cottages in the country; deformed angels, bloated Cupids, and stalwart shepherdesses leading lambs which look like lions. I was taken thence through the chamber (almost filled with a four-poster, which might have rivaled the great bed of Ware) into a stable-yard. I was offered my choice of two very rough ponies, and the object of my preference, having been accoutred with a rusty bit, a bridle patched up with string, and a ragged, one-stirruped saddle, was led with a loud clattering through the bedroom into the parlor, and from the parlor into the street. I was presented with a guide who did not understand a word of English, and we started on the road to St. Christoval de la Laguna.

The scenery was wild and barren. The road, which bears the marks of an ancient pavement, was bordered with cactus-fields. It was the cochineal harvest, and women were at work collecting the insect in small pots, with an instrument like a putty-knife.

The cochineal was first imported from Mexico by an enterprising man. The educated people looked upon him as a fool, and laughed at him; the uneducated, as something worse, and burned his cacti. But as soon as the pest fell upon the vines* there was *The vines were imported into these islands from the Rhine, as well as from

a cochineal furore, which is yielding to tobacco since the discovery of dianthine. So now, instead of devouring this disease-born insect in our strawberry ices, we take them colored with an agreeable extract from coal-tar.

A ride of five miles brought me to Laguna, which deserves to be called the Silent City. "Their houses were like tombs, and you might write their epitaphs above their doors." There were no pretty girls in the balconies, no tinkling of guitars from within; the houses were moss-covered, the streets grass-grown; animal life rare, saving mildew, which was excessive. I went to an inn, as desolate as a mausoleum, and ate voraciously, feeling like a ghoul. The intense stillness alarmed me: I rushed to the kitchen. There, at all events, I hoped to find something natural and human. But no, it was empty; the fire which had been lighted for my omelette was almost out, and the cinders were dropping with a dismal sound into the grate below.

Laguna is the residence of many political exiles, who feel no desire to see the inhabitants of a world which is forever closed against them. I will not take upon me to assert that fleas fatten on persons of a melancholy temperament, but it is certain that the fleas of Laguna stand unrivaled in size and activity. They are the heroes of many songs of the peasantry, and Peter Pindar, who once dwelt in this cheerful neighborhood, wrote verses in their honor.

I returned to Santa Cruz, which presents a much gayer appearance. La Plaza de la Constitution is the fashionable evening promenade. I sat at the door of the French café, smoking the long, flat cigar of Teneriffe, and stared at brunettes to my heart's content. Then I examined the monument of the four Guanche kings which sit sculptured in the market-place, each holding his thigh-bone in his hand. These Guanches were the aborigines of the island. Large numbers perished from the arms of the Spaniards, and by a famine (the familiar of war) which afterward came upon the island. The rest gradually perished away, under that mysterious agency which the mere presence of white men appears to employ against a weaker race.

Some ethnologists have supposed that these Guanches were a

Crete. "This island produces three sorts of excellent wines," writes Nichols in his description. "Canary, Malmsey (or rather Malvasia), and Verdona, which may all go under the denomination of Sack." But now there are, I believe, neither Canary wine nor Canary birds in the Canaries.

detached race of people, unlike any now existing on the earth. We have, however, ample evidence, from the writings of the Spanish historians and the English merchant-adventurers of the day, to show that the Guanches were of Libyan origin, though it is not possible to identify them with any particular tribe.

The Guanches were a tawny-skinned, black-eyed, flat-nosed people, speaking a dialect analogous with that of the Berbers, and dwelling in caves. They believed in a Supreme Being, an Evil Genius, and a future state; they also worshiped two tutelar deities, one of whom protected men, the other women. They had an order of white-robed priests and priestesses, who preserved their purity by intermarriage, and the art of embalming; which last, when they became extinct, died with them. They had lords or chieftains, under whose command they fought with wooden javelins hardened in the fire. They tilled the ground with bullock's horns, and lived on a food called gosio, which resembles the couscous of the Senegambia. They fattened their girls for marriage, believing that fat women were the most fruitful, and on them their lords exercised the droit-de-cuisse. Finally, when they died, the priests dried them in the sun, embalmed them, and buried them in caves sacred to the art of sepulture.

CHAPTER III.

A LANDMARK OF HISTORY.

Sea-torpor.-First Sight of Africa.—The Infanta Henry.-Cape Boiador.-The Rabbits of Porto Santo.-Portuguese Monopoly and English Smuggling.

WE continued our voyage with a fair wind and a warm sea. Sometimes we received visits from flying-fish, which fell upon the deck, and even upon the awning above. This little creature skims along the surface of the water, with gauzy wings of the same material as those of the dragon-fly, so like a bird that one might have very good sport taking them on the wing with dust shot. These petty incidents are angel visits at sea, that monotonous and overrated element. Viewed from the shore as it comes dashing upon the black rocks, shivers into a thousand foaming fragments, and runs hissing toward one along the sand, it is certainly a grand sight. But “blue water" itself is, in repose, a flat-faced simpleton, without beauty or expression, except that which it borrows from the sky above it; and, in commotion, a spoiled child whose ships are toys, and who sometimes breaks them open to see what they are made of.

One has so much leisure at sea that one can seldom do any work. The most intellectual travelers must confess that dinner is the great event of the nautical day.

On board ship one lives only when eating or drinking; at other periods one exists. At half past eight we used to sit down to a breakfast of edible cinders. Our cook was a confirmed culprit, who overdid every thing, and who was daily wished back with him from whom cooks are proverbially supposed to come. We had tea and coffee; but as the tea was usually made in yesterday's coffee-boiler, and vice versa, choice became a mere matter of form. Our cinders were handed us on plates which represented an angel receiving fruits from a negress, with the motto underneath, Spero meliora. The angel representing the West African Company, the motto, a humane wish for higher profits.

At twelve we spoiled our dinners with cheese and biscuits, and at four o'clock the cook spoiled it again. At ten all the lights