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THE BURGUNDY MADEIRA.

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Unlike the other island wines, it gains no value from age. Two or three years are its grand climacteric. Thence it gradually loses its tender flavor and delicate aroma, becomes morose, insipid, soured, like ladies of "a certain age," and, like them, should be sedulously avoided.

But in its prime, Claude's coloring is not warmer, nor Moore's verse more exciting. "Burning Sappho❞ might have taken her fill of it before the Leucadian leap, or, from her history, might have been often addicted to it; for no wine, unless perhaps its immediate parent, Burgundy, would sooner beget the frenzy of love.

The TINTO is a dark red wine, from a grape larger, softer and juicier than the Tinta. It is sometimes known as "the pure juice of the grape," being naturally less potent than the others. Mixed with water, it is very palatable, and a fit accompaniment for the meats, with which it should leave the table.

Then there is also the VERDEILHO, a rare wine produced from the white grape. It is a strong-bodied wine, too potent for general consumption, and seldom used in its natural state.

Such are the best of the normal wines of the island. Others are made of their commixture, among which that exported as Madeira Wine;" the component parts of which are principally the Verdeilho, the Tinto and Bual; and wines of various kinds, differing in color, taste and quality, are mingled together from the "mother butts," and exported.

Instead of keeping their wines in cellars, as many of us do, the Madeira proprietors store them above ground. The interior of their "bodegas"-storehouses-is kept deliciously cool, the heat and glare of the sun being watchfully excluded. It is a perfumed

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THE AMOUNT PRODUCED.

promenade through them, hedges of butts diffusing on either side an unrivaled fragrance-an ever-fresh bouquet of various aromas. Some visitors are accustomed to scent their handkerchiefs or fingers; others, their breath.

A bountiful season has given from 25,000 to 30,000 pipes; of which, however, it is safe to say, never more than one fifth was good wine. It behooves the intended purchaser, therefore, to acquaint himself with the exporter's reputation for good taste as well as probity.

Intoxication is rarely or never the vice of vine-producing countries. Neither in Portugal, Spain, on the Rhine, nor in France, did I see other than an exceptional case of inebriety. In Madeira, even among the peasantry, a drunkard is a less reputable person than a thief; necessity, they say, may sometimes make the one, but nothing save his own degraded inclination, the other. They drink wine always, and never to excess. "No nation is drunken," says Jefferson in his Letters, "where wine is cheap; and none sober where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage." It is the discovery of the process of distillation which (like the civil feuds of Rome) "has filled the world with widows and with orphans." Prohibit distillation, and abolish the duties on wines, and no necessity would exist for the enforcement of "Maine Laws."

CHAPTER IX.

ARRIVAL OF PRESIDENT ROBERTS-DINNER OF THE CONSUL-MR. ROBERTS'S ACCOUNT OF LIBERIA-ITS TRADE AND PROSPERITY-LINE OF STEAMERS BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND THAT WESTERN COAST.

ONE day His Excellency, J. J. Roberts, the President of Liberia, arrived in Madeira. He came in an English ship of war, which had been placed at his disposal by the Queen. He was on his return to his Presidency from England and France, in both of which countries he had been well received. He had dined with her majesty in England, and had had several interviews with "the nephew of his uncle" at the Tuileries.

He was accompanied by his wife and another woman -perhaps one of the ladies of the bed-chamber—of the color and somewhat of the figure of the Queen of Clubs! Ethiopian wholly.

But the president is quite a nice-looking man, six feet, and "well proportioned." He was not darker than many we meet in America, who have no taint of African blood-and was of agreeable manners, and intelligent. He became a guest, the day or two he tarried at Madeira, of the American Consul, and conducted himself always like one accustomed to society.

The Consul gave him a dinner, to which he invited the island-dignitaries, the governor, and foreign consuls. The duty fell on me of attending the sable lady

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DINNER AT THE CONSULATE.

to the table, and of sitting next to her. It would have shocked les convénances in the United States; but I had left my prejudices with my country, and black as my companion was, I attended to les petits soins of my position as faithfully as if she had been the fairest of skin. She seemed to like the Champagne, which she carried as well as any other lady of the haut ton; while with her Portuguese neighbor on her other side, she drank glass with glass of the Tinta; but all the while conducted herself with the strictest propriety. I did indeed think her not indisposed to a flirtation. with the dessert; but her confession of marriage of course restrained any inclination of the kind one might otherwise have been disposed to indulge. Nor did I suppose her pressure of my hand, as I led her from the table, indicated aught else than a grateful acknowledgment of my attentions to her appetite.

Mrs. Roberts was quite pretty, with an olive complexion, and sparkling eye. She was quiet, unpretending, with somewhat, as the French would say, of "a talent for silence." But she seemed to appreciate what others said, and intimated her sympathy; and such persons are far more interesting companions than mere makers of words.

Mr. Roberts seemed to retain much attachment for his native country, though his lot there had not always been happy. I believe he was born a slave, perhaps in Virginia. If so, he was doubtless emancipated when young-for otherwise it had been difficult, if possible, to attain the manner, equally removed from servility and presumption, which distinguished him.

He said much of the great opportunities our country possessed for a lucrative trade with Liberia and the coast, and the little attention paid to it, while England was every year doubling her profits from that source.

PROSPERITY OF LIBERIA.

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The average import of palm-oil alone for some years past into Liverpool, he said, had been at least 15,000 tons, valued at £400,000 sterling; and England had received altogether as much as $200,000,000 of gold from Africa, and a part of this from Liberia.

He spoke enthusiastically of the fertility of the country. A semi-annual crop of corn, of sweet potatoes, and other nutritious vegetables was easily raised, and in much greater abundance than on the same quantity of land in the United States. An acre of well-cultivated land, he said, would produce $300 of indigo. Coffee, better than Mocha, grew luxuriantly, and dyes of all shades, and for all uses, abounded, while most of the tropical productions grew as spontaneously there.

Some eight thousand of the present inhabitants of Liberia, I understood him to say, were natives of the United States. Some eighty thousand of native Liberians had become civilized, learned the value of civil government, and enrolled themselves citizens of the Republic. Her Republic had not only suppressed the slave-trade along its own coast, but had entered into treaties with several tribes to the number of two hundred thousand men, for the discontinuance of the dreadful traffic.

He told us that the value of the exports of the Republic amounted from half to a million of dollars, and was increasing at the ratio of forty per cent. annually.

The Queen of England and the Emperor of the French had promised him every facility in their power to augment and secure the commerce of the country, as well as to promote in every way its general prosperity. Two lines of steam-propellers are already established between England and Liberia; both very lucrative, and daily becoming more so: while French capital is promised for a French line.

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