each other, and sympathy alleviates the evils it can not remove. Thus it is that Providence distributes, after all, its favors more impartially than we sometimes think upon one portion of mankind it bestows in greater profusion wealth and luxuries; upon another, the greater gift of contentment without them,

CHAPTER VI.

TOUR OF THE ISLAND-THE VARIOUS PRODUCTIONS-THE DIFFERENT PEAKSARRIVAL AT ST. ANNA.

Ir has been said that one should never go with determined purpose in search of the picturesque; that they alone are fortunate who come upon the beauties of nature unexpectedly, like him who encountered the Goddess of the Silver Bow in all the luxuriance of her unobstructed charms.

I doubt. The happiness may come doubled that comes unanticipated; but is anticipation itself nothing? Is imagination nothing? and the quickened pulse of hope nothing? Indeed, what is all of life but a continuing hope? and hell itself, but a hopeless eternity?

But let us leave the question with metaphysicians who will never determine it, while I describe some scenes on this island which I sought out advisedly.

Sometime in December I undertook the grand tour of the island. It would be something, I thought, to think and speak of afterward. To have undertaken and accomplished, in "the dead waist and middle" of the winter, a journey, à cheval, over hills thousands of feet above the level of the sea, over streams hazardously bridged, precipices of fatal depth, and roads where a false, might be an eternal, step.

I had read and heard of moving accidents by field and flood; of dislocations, broken arms, and perilous

falls-and longed to show my courage in encountering, and address in avoiding such dangers.

From the rustic population I knew I had nothing to apprehend. The peasantry are peace-loving and honest. Unlike the individuals, we were told we should be sure to meet in Spain, these people neither fusilade nor terrify you; rob you neither of your money, nor your wits.

I took with me not only a regular burroquero, but a person I had raised from the ranks and constituted dragoman. He was a cicerone, and a ripe and good one; who not only pointed out with invariable fidelity all the scenes of interest, but developed their various excellences with admirable discrimination. I had lost

The matin-bell was tolling, as, after a toilsome ascent, I reached the plateau, about two thirds up the mountain, where stands the church Da Nossa Senhora do Monte. The doors hung persuasively open, and I dismounted to mingle my devotions with the crowd within. The prostration and the following blessing, with the sweet temperature of the morning, gave new encouragement to my road, and I achieved the summit of the mountain, well-pleased with mankind.

To turn back and look was an immediate and fortunate impulse. The Bay of Funchal from the Disertas to Cape Giram lay before me, under a transparent atmosphere, which gave more of sky and sea to the vision than I had ever before witnessed; and every intermediate object between the mountain and the shore shone in unwonted brilliancy. The few vessels in the harbor were taking advantage of the dryness. and warmth of the day to restore their rain-soaked sails, which, seen through the vast distance below,

seemed but the foam of broken waves turned by some under-current to the light. The turrets of the church underneath us, embosomed high mid tufted trees, peeped out from the surrounding foliage, and with their gaudy coloring of white relieved the scene, otherwise too invariably green. Nature had not awakened from her nap; all was quiet and motionless. Mountain, glen, and precipice, cliffs, ravines, and "bosky dell,” all, from the height I stood, illustrated what painters call repose.

Near where I halted my horse I distinguished a low murmuring, like men in agitated councils. It at first perplexed me-but on closer investigation I found it to proceed from subterranean waters. It may have been a council of war, among the Genii of these mountain-streams, to determine upon the exigences of the day; what detachments to send to the ocean direct; what, circuitously, through Funchal; the hope of supplies, the fear of exhaustion-and other cognate matters most urgent upon their consideration. Wanting, however, the power of intercommunication, I put them no question. Happy, indeed, I thought him who could find "books in the running brooks," and by some indefinable agency possess those mysteries of the universe withheld from our grosser sense.

The mountains which overlook Funchal are not the highest of the island, but, from their precipitous proximity, seem so to the Funchalese, as they shut out from the curtained sight the higher beyond. Still these are some four thousand feet above water-line; and I was right glad to find, on overcoming their tedious summits, a kind of table-land, upon which, with the combined aid of spur and burroquero-the latter keeping up 66 a fire in the rear"-I could trot

my horse.

I met, surmounting the crests of further mountains, and, descending in long and wearisome trains toward Funchal, the country population of both sexes, all encumbered with faggots on their heads, or borne down to earth with overladen arms. It was a picturesque sight; the women coming down the mountains in their very short petticoats, with a circular tippet or pelerine thrown carelessly but gracefully over their shoulders, and tied in front; and their heads crowned with these bundles of sticks, not unlike a Jersey wagon in form and size, walking erect, and stepping out as firm as though they were unencumbered. For some of the prettiest I thought I could have got up a tendresse. They were on their way from their rustic homes, my dragoman told me, with their valueless labor to Funchal to get a little money for the "fiesta," or Christmas Holidays. They were toiling, some of them, for eighteen miles, over hills almost impassable, to gain an insignificant trifle—a pistareen, or even "bit," to celebrate the natal day of their religion. Some were shoeless and breechless-almost all without covering for the head.

Yet they plodded on, not uncheerfully, with a ready salutation, or a blessing for an unasked and unexpected trifle. I saw excavated, from within the stony sides of the mountains, an occasional cavity, like a wild beast's den. "These," said my dragoman, "were the dormitories in which belated pedestrians, past all hope of home, went through the night;" uncouched, uncovered, and unfed-but not, I trust, unblessed-for "HE that doth the ravens feed,

Yea, providently caters for the sparrow,"

would visit these harsh stones with sleep, denied to beds of down!