“ The capital is Porto Santo, called locally the villa or town. The island is very unproductive, water being scarce and wood wholly absent. Around the little town there is a considerable tract of pretty level ground covered by calcareous sand containing fossil land-shells. At each end of the island are hills, of which Pico do Facho, the highest, reaches the altitude of 1663 ft. Barley, but little else, is grown here, the limited requirements of the inhabitants being supplied from Funchal. ”

“ Amongst the trees most worthy of note are four of the laurel order belonging to separate genera, an Ardisia, Pittosporum, Sideroxylon, Notelaea, Rhamnus and Myrica,—a strange mixture of genera to be found on a small Atlantic island. Two heaths of arborescent growth and a whortleberry cover large tracts on the mountains. In some parts there is a belt of the Spanish chestnut about the height of 1500 ft. There is no indigenous pine tree as at the Canaries; but large tracts on the hills have been planted with Pinus pinaster, from which the fuel of the inhabitants is mainly derived. ”

“ A large majority of the land shells are considered to be peculiar. Many of the species are variable in form or colour, and some have an extraordinary number of varieties. Of the land mollusca 91 species are assigned to the genus Helix, 31 to the genus Pupa, and 15 to the genus Achatina (or Lovea) . About 43 species are found both living and fossil in superficial deposits of calcareous sand in Madeira or Porto Santo. These deposits were assigned by Lyell to the Newer Pliocene period. Some 12 or 13 species have not been hitherto discovered alive. ”

“ As the thermometer has never been known to fall as low as 46° at Funchal, frost and snow are there wholly unknown; but snow falls on the mountains once or twice during the winter, very seldom, however, below the altitude of 2000 ft. Thunderstorms are rare, and scarcely ever violent.
Madeira has long had a high reputation as a sanatory resort for persons suffering from diseases of the chest. Notwithstanding the ever-increasing competition of other winter resorts, a considerable number of invalids, especially English and German, winter at Funchal. ”

“ About 250 species of marine fishes taken at Madeira have been scientifically determined, the largest families being Scombridae with 35 species, the sharks with 24, the Sparidae with 15, the rays with 14, the Labridae with 13, the Gadidae with 12, the eels with 12, the Percidae with 11, and the Carangidae with 10. Many kinds, such as the mackerel, horse mackerel, groper, mullet, braise, &c.., are caught in abundance, and afford a cheap article of diet to the people. Several species of tunny are taken plentifully in spring and summer, one of them sometimes attaining the weight of 300 ℔. ”

“ The deficiency of water is a great obstacle to the proper cultivation of the land, and the rocky nature or steep inclination of the upper parts of the islands is an effectual bar to all tillage. An incredible amount of labour has been expended upon the soil, partly in the erection of walls intended to prevent its being washed away by the rains, and to build up the plots of ground in the form of terraces. ”

“ A little tobacco is grown, and is made into cigars of inferior quality.
The total foreign trade of Madeira was valued at £628,000 in 1900. The principal exports are wine, sugar, embroidery, vegetables, fruits and wicker goods. Coal is imported for the ships calling at Funchal, which is the headquarters of Madeiran commerce and industry. Spirits, beer, olive oil, soap, butter, linen and woollen goods, straw hats and leather, are manufactured for home consumption, and there are important fisheries. ”

“ The greater part of the interior is uninhabited, though cultivated, for the towns, villages and scattered huts are usually built either at the mouths of ravines or upon the lower slopes that extend from the mountains to the coast. The ridges between the ravines usually terminate in lofty headlands, one of which, called Cabo Girão, has the height of 1920 ft., and much of the seaboard is bound by precipices of dark basalt. The north coast, having been more exposed to the erosion of the sea, is more precipitous than the south, and presents everywhere a wilder aspect. ”

“ About seventy other species have been seen from time to time in Madeira, chiefly stragglers from the African coast, many of them coming with the leste wind.
The only land reptile is a small lizard (Lacerta dugesii) , which is abundant and is very destructive to the grape crop. ”

“ The basalt yields an excellent building-stone, various qualities of which are quarried near Camara de Lobos, five or six miles west of Funchal.
In Porto Santo the trachytic rocks bear a much greater proportion to the basaltic than in Madeira. An adjacent islet is formed of tuffs and calcareous rock, indicating a submarine origin, upon which supramarine lavas have been poured. ”

“ Its cultivation was resumed and sugar machinery imported. A Sugar. considerable quantity of spirit is made by the distillation of the juice or of the molasses left after extracting the sugar, and this is consumed on the island. The cane does not flourish here as luxuriantly as within the tropics; but in localities below 1000 ft., where there is a good supply of water, it pays the cultivator well.
The grain produced on the island (principally wheat, barley and Indian corn) is not sufficient for the consumption of the people. ”

“ Most of the common table vegetables of Europe are plentiful. Besides apples, pears and peaches, all of poor quality, oranges, lemons, guavas, mangoes, loquats, custard-apples, figs, bananas and pineapples are produced, the last two forming articles of export. The date palm is occasionally grown, but its fruit is scarcely edible. On the hills large quantities of the Spanish chestnut afford an item in the food of the common people. ”

“ The women’s outer garments consist of a gaudily coloured gown, made from island material, with a small cape of coarse scarlet or blue woollen cloth. The population tends to increase rapidly. In 1900 it amounted to 150,574, including 890 foreigners, of whom the majority were British. The number of females exceeds that of males by about 6000, partly because many of the able-bodied males emigrate to Brazil or the United States. ”

“ Madeira (pop. 1900, 148,263) , the largest island of the group, has a length of 30 m., an extreme breadth of 12 m., and a coast-line of 80 or 90 m. Its longer axis lies east and west, in which direction it is traversed by a mountain chain, the backbone of the island, having a mean altitude of 4000 ft., up to which many deep ravines penetrate from both coasts and render travel by land very difficult. Pico Ruivo, the highest summit, stands in the centre of the island, and has a height of 6056 ft., while some of the adjacent summits are very little lower. ”

“ The prevalent winds are from the north or from a few points east or west of north, but these winds are much mitigated on the south coast by the central range of mountains. The west wind usually brings rain. That from the east is a dry wind. A hot and dry wind, the leste of the natives, occasionally blows from the east-south-east, the direction of the Sahara, and causes the hill region to be hotter than below; but even on the coast the thermometer under its influence sometimes indicates 93°. ”

“ The proportion of endemic kinds is very large, and it is remarkable that 200 of them are either wingless or their wings are so poorly developed that they cannot fly, while 23 of the endemic genera have all their species in this condition. With regard to the Lepidoptera, 11 or 12 species of butterflies have been seen, all of which belong to European genera. Some of the species are geographical varieties of well-known types. ”

“ In various parts are elevated tracts of comparatively level ground. These are supposed to have been formed by the meeting of numerous streams of lava flowing from cones and points of eruption in close proximity, various ejectamenta assisting at the same time to fill up inequalities. Deep down in some of the lateral ravines may be seen ancient cones of eruption which have been overwhelmed by streams of melted matter issuing from the central region, and afterwards exposed to view by the same causes that excavated the ravines. ”

“ As to Algae, the coast is too rocky and the sea too unquiet for a luxuriant marine vegetation, consequently the species are few and poor.
Inhabitants.—The inhabitants are of Portuguese descent, with probably some intermixture of Moorish and negro blood amongst the lower classes. The dress of the peasantry, without being picturesque, is peculiar. Both men and women in the outlying country districts wear the carapuça, a small cap made of blue cloth in shape something like a funnel, with the pipe standing upwards. The men have trousers of linen, drawn tight, and terminating at the knees ”