Books as Blogs

And there, straight before us, lies the city, softly couched against the hill-side that faces the southern sea, and enjoying her ’kayf’ in the sinking sun. Her lower zone, though in the Temperates, is sub-tropical: Tuscany is found in the mid-heights, while it is Scotland in the bleak wolds about Pico Ruivo (6,100 feet) and the Paül (Moorland) da Serra. I now see some change since 1865. East of the yellow-washed, brown-bound fort of São Thiago Minor, the island patron, rises a huge white pile, or rather piles, the Lazaretto, with its three-arched bridge spanning the Wady Gonçalo Ayres. The fears of the people forbid its being used, although separated from them by a mile of open space. This over-caution at Madeira, as at Tenerife, often causes great inconvenience to foreign residents; moreover, it is directly opposed to treaty. There is a neat group, meat-market, abattoir, and fish-market–where there is ne’er a flat fish save those who buy–near those dreariest of academic groves, the Praça Academica, at the east end proper, or what an Anglo-Indian would term the ’native town.’ Here we see the joint mouth of the torrent-beds Santa Luzia and João Gomes which has more than once deluged Funchal. Timid Funchalites are expecting another flood: the first was in 1803, the second in 1842, and thus they suspect a cycle of forty years. [Footnote: The guide-books make every twenty-fifth year a season of unusual rain, the last being 1879-80.] The lately repaired Sé (cathedral) in the heart of the mass is conspicuous for its steeple of azulejos, or varnished tiles, and for the ruddy painting of the black basaltic façade, contrasting less violently with the huge splotches of whitewash, the magpie-suit in which the church-architecture of the Madeiras and the Canaries delights. The São Francisco convent, with its skull-lined walls, and the foundations of its proposed successor, the law courts, have disappeared from the space adjoining the main square; this chief promenade, the Praça da Constituição, is grown with large magnolias, vinhaticos, or native mahogany (Persea Indica), and til-trees (Oreodaphne foetens), and has been supplemented by the dwarf flower-garden (Jardim Novo) lately opened to the west. The latter, I regret to say, caused the death of many noble old trees, including a fine palm; but Portuguese, let me repeat, have scant sympathy with such growth. The waste ground now belonging to the city will be laid out as a large public garden with fountains and band-stands. Finally, that soundly abused ’Tower of Babel,’ alias ’Benger’s Folly,’ built in 1796, has in the evening of its days been utilised by conversion into a signal-tower. So far so good.