We shipmates were all going to the station of the funicular railway, but our tickets did not call for bullock-sleds and so we took a clattering little horse-car, which climbed with us through up-hill streets and got us to the station too soon. Within the closed grille there the handsomest of swarthy, black-eyed, black-mustached station-masters (if such was his quality) told us that we could not have a train at once, though we had been advised that any ten of us could any time have a train, because the cars had all gone up the mountain and none would be down for twenty minutes. He spoke English and he mitigated by a most amiable personality sufferings which were perhaps not so great as we would have liked to think. Some of us wandered off down a pink-and-cream colored avenue near by and admired so much the curtains of red-and-yellow flowers — a cross between honeysuckles and trumpet blossoms — overhanging a garden-wall that two friendly boys began to share our interest in them. One of them mounted the other and tore down handfuls of the flowers, which they bestowed upon us with so little apparent expectation of reward that we promptly gave them of the international copper coinage current in Madeira, and went back to the station doubtless feeling guiltier than they. Had we not been accessory after the fact to something like theft and, as it was Sunday, to Sabbath-breaking besides? Afterward flowers proved so abundant in Madeira in spite of its being winter, that we could not feel the larceny a serious one, and the Sunday was a Latin Sabbath well used to being broken. The pony engine which was to push our slanting car over the cogged track up the mountain arrived with due ceremony of bell and whistle, and we were let through the grille by the station-master as politely as if we had been each his considered guest. Then the climb began through the fields of sugar-cane, terraced vineyards, orchards of fruit trees, and gardens of vegetables planted under the arbors over which the grapes were trained. One of us told the others that the vegetables were sheltered to save them from being scorched by the summer sun, and that much of the work among them was done by moonlight to save the laborers from the same fate. I do not know how he had amassed this knowledge, and I am not sure that I have the right to impart it without his leave. I myself saw some melons lolling on one of the tiled roofs of the cottages where they had perhaps been pushed by the energetic forces of the earth and sky. The grape-vines were quiescent, partly because it was winter, as everybody said, and partly because the wine culture is no longer so profitable in the island. It has been found for the moment that Madeira is bad for the gout, and this discovery of the doctors is bad for the peasants (already cruelly overtaxed by Portugal), who are leaving their homes in great numbers and seeking their fortunes in both of the Americas, as well as the islands of all the seas. It must be a heartbreak for them to forsake such homes as we saw in the clean white cottages, with the balconies and terraces.
But there were no signs of depopulation either of old or young. Smiling mothers and fathers of all ages, in their Sunday leisure and their Sunday best, watched our ascent as if they had never seen the like before, and our course was never so swift but we could be easily overtaken by the children; they embarrassed us with the riches of the camellias which they flung in upon us, and they were accompanied by small dogs which barked excitedly. Our train almost grazed the walls of the door-yards as we passed through the succession of the one- and two-story cottages, which dotted the mountain-side in every direction. When the eye could leave them it was lured from height to height, and at each rise of the track to some wider and lovelier expanse of the sea. We could see merely our own steamer in the roadstead, with the Portuguese war-ship, and the few other vessels at anchor, but we could never exhaust the variety of those varied mountain slopes and tops. Their picturesqueness of form and their delight of color would beggar any thesaurus of its descriptive reserves, and yet leave their beauty almost unhinted. A drop-curtain were here a vain simile; the chromatic glories of colored postal-cards might suggest the scene, but then again they might overdo it. Nature is modest in her most magnificent moods, and I do not see how she could have a more magnificent mood than Madeira. It can never be represented by my art, but it may be measurably stated: low lying sea; the town scattering and fraying everywhere into outlying hamlets, villas and cottages; steep rising upon steep, till they reach uninhabitable climaxes where the woods darken upward into the everlasting snows, in one whole of grandeur resuming in its unity every varying detail.
I dwell rather helplessly upon the scenery, because it was what we professedly went up or half up, or one-tenth or-hundredth up, the mountain for. Un-professedly we went up in order to come down by the toboggan of the country, though we vowed one another not to attempt anything so mad. In the meanwhile, before it should be time for lunch, we could walk up to a small church near the station and see the people at prayer in an interior which did not differ in bareness and tawdriness from most other country churches of the Latin south, though it had a facade so satisfyingly Spanish, because I suppose it was so perfectly Portuguese, that heart could ask no more. Not all the people were at prayer within; irregular files of them attended our progress to give us the opportunity of doing charity. The beggars were of every sort, sex, and age, and some, from the hands they held out, with fingers reduced to their last joints, looked as if they might be lepers, but I do not say they were. What I am sure of is that the faces of the worshippers — men, women, and children — when they came out of the church were of a gentleness which, if it was not innocence and goodness, might well have passed for those virtues. They had kind eyes, which seemed as often blue as black, and if they had no great beauty they were seldom quite ugly. I wish I could think we strangers, as they gazed curiously, timorously at us, struck them as favorably.
An involuntary ferocity from the famine which we began to feel may have glared from our visages, for we had eaten nothing for three hours, which was long for saloon passengers. At the first restaurant which we found, and in which we all but sat down at table, our coupons were not good, but this was not wholly loss, for we recouped ourselves in the beauties of the walk on which we wandered along the mountain-side to the right of the restaurant. At the point where we were no longer confident of our way an opportune native appeared and Jed us over paths paved with fine pebbles, sometimes wrought into geometric patterns, and always through pleasing sun and shade, till we reached a pretty hotel set, with its gardens before it, on a shelf of level land and commanding a view of our steamer and the surrounding sea. Tropic growths, which I will venture to call myrtle, oleander, laurel, and eucalyptus, environed the hotel, not too closely nor densely, and our increasing party was presently discovered from the head of its steps by a hospitable matron, who with a cry of comprehensive welcome ran within and was replaced by a head-waiter of as friendly aspect and much more English. He said our coupons were good there and that our luncheon would be ready in two minutes; for proof of the despatch with which we should be served he held up the first and second fingers of his right hand. Restored by his assurance, we did not really mind waiting twice the tale of all his ten fingers, and we spent our time variously in wandering about the plateau, among the wonted iron tables and chairs in front of the hotel, in being photographed in a fairy grotto behind it, and in examining the visitors’ book in the parlor. The names of visitors from South Africa largely prevailed, for the Cape Town steamers, oftener than any others, touch at Madeira, but there was one traveller of Portuguese race who had written his name in bold characters above the cry, “Long live the Portuguese Republic.” Soon after the Portuguese monarchy ceased to live for a time in the person of the murdered king and his heir, but it is doubtful if the health of the potential republic was as great as before.
That bright Sunday morning no shadow of the black event was forecast, and we gave our unstinted sympathy to our unknown co-republican. The luncheon, when we were called to it, had merits of novelty and quality which I will celebrate only as regards the delicate fish fresh from the sea, and the pease fresh from the garden, with poached eggs fresh from the coop dropped upon them. The conception of chops
which followed was not so faultless, though the fruit with which we ended did much to repair any error of kid which may have mistaken itself for lamb. Perhaps our enthusiasm was heightened by the fine air which had sharpened our appetites. At any rate, it all ended in an habitual transaction in real estate by which I became the owner of the place, without expropriating the actual possessor, and established there those castles in Spain belonging to me in so many parts of the world.
There remained now nothing for us to do but to toboggan down the mountain, and we overcame our resolution not to do so far enough to go and look at the toboggans under the guidance of our head-waiter. When once we had looked we were lost. The toboggans were flat baskets set on iron-shod runners, and well cushioned and padded; they held one, two, or three passengers; the track on which they descended was paved, in gentle undulations, with thin pebbles set on edge and greased wherever the descent found a level. A smiling native, with a strong rope attached to the toboggan, stood on each side of it, and held it back or pulled it forward, according to the exigencies of the case. It is long since I slid down hill on a sled of my own, and I do not pretend to recall the sensation; but I can remember nothing so luxurious in transportation as the swift flight of the Madeira toboggan, which you temper at will through its guides and guards, but do not wish to temper at all when your first alarm, mainly theoretical, passes into the gayety ending in exultant rejoicing at the bottom of the course.
Our two toboggan men were possibly vigilant and reassuring beyond the common, but one was quite silently so; the other, who spoke a little English, encouraged us from time to time to believe that they were “strong mans,” afterward correcting himself in conformity to the rules of Portuguese grammar, which make the adjective agree in number with the noun, and declaring that they were “strongs mans.” We met many toboggan men who needed to be “strongs mans” in their ascent of our track, with their heavy toboggans on their heads; but some of them did not look strong, and our own arrived spent and panting at the bottom. Something like that is what always spoils pleasure in this world. Even when you have paid for it with your money, some one else has paid with his person twice as much, and you have not equalled his outlay when you have tipped him your handsomest.
A shilling apiece seemed handsome for those “strongs mans,” but afterward there were watches of the nights when the spirit grieved that the shilling had not been made two apiece or even half a crown, and I wish now that the first reader of mine who toboggans down Madeira would make up the difference for me in his tip to those poor fellows. I do not mind if he adds a few pennies for the children who ran before our toboggan and tossed camellias into it, and then followed in the hopes of a reward, which we tried not to disappoint.
The future traveller need not add to the fee of the authorized and numbered guide who took possession of us as soon as we got out of our basket and led us unresisting to a waiting bullock sled. He invited himself into it, and gave himself the best of characters in the autobiography into which he wove his scanty instruction concerning the objects we passed. A bullock sled is not of such blithe progress as a toboggan, but it is very comfortable, and it is of an Oriental and litter-like dignity, with its calico cushions and curtains. One could not well use it in New York, but it serves every purpose of a cab in Funchal, where we noted a peculiar feature of local commerce which I hesitate to specify, since it cast apparent discredit upon woman. It was, as I have noted, Sunday; but every shop where things pleasing or even useful to women were sold was wide open, and somewhat flaringly invited the custom of our fellow-passengers of that sex; but there was not a shop where such things as men’s collars were for sale, or anything pleasing or useful to man, but was closed and locked fast. I must except from this sweeping statement the cafes, but these should not count, for women as well as men frequented them, as we ascertained by going to a very bowery one on the quay and ordering a bottle of the best and dryest Madeira. We wished perhaps to prove that it was really not bad for gout, or perhaps that it was no better than the Madeira you get in New York for the same price. Even with the help of friends, of the sex which could have been freely buying native laces, hats, fans, photographs, parasols, and tailor-made dresses, we could not finish that bottle. Glass after glass we bestowed on our smiling guide, with no final effect upon the bottle and none upon him, except to make him follow us to the tender and take an after-fee for showing us a way which we could not have missed blindfold. It was rather strange, but not stranger than the behavior of the captain of the tender, who, when he had collected our tickets, invited a free-will offering for collecting them, and mostly got it.
When we were safely and gladly on board our steamer again, we had nothing to do, until the deck-steward came round with tea, but watch the islanders swarming around us in their cockles and diving for sixpences and shillings, which they caught impartially with their fingers and toes. With so many all shouting and gesticulating, one could not venture one’s silver indiscriminately; one must employ some particular diver, and I selected for my investments a poor young fellow who had lost an arm. With his one hand and his two feet he never failed of the coin I risked, and I wish they had been many enough to enable him to retire from the trade, which even in that mild air kept him visibly shivering when out of the water. I do not know his name, but I commend him to future travellers by the token of his pathetic mutilation.
By-and-by we felt the gentle stir of the steamer under us; the last tender went ashore, and the divers retired in their cockles from our side. Funchal began to rearrange the lines of her streets, while keeping those of her roofs and house-walls and terraced gardens. We passed out of the roadstead, we rounded the mighty headland by which we had entered, and were once more in face of that magnificent drop-curtain, which had now fallen upon one of the most vivid and novel passages of our lives.
II. TWO UP-TOWN BLOCKS INTO SPAIN
There is nothing strikes the traveller in his approach to the rock of Gibraltar so much as its resemblance to the trade-mark of the Prudential Insurance Company. He cannot help feeling that the famous stronghold is pictorially a plagiarism from the advertisements of that institution. As the lines change with the ship’s course, the resemblance is less remarkable; but it is always remarkable, and I suppose it detracts somewhat from the majesty of the fortress, which we could wish to be more entirely original. This was my feeling when I first saw Gibraltar four years ago, and it remains my feeling after having last seen it four weeks ago. The eye seeks the bold, familiar legend, and one suffers a certain disappointment in its absence. Otherwise Gibraltar does not and cannot disappoint the most exacting tourist.
The morning which found us in face of it was in brisk contrast to the bland afternoon on which we had parted from Madeira. No flocking coracles surrounded our steamer, with crews eager to plunge into the hissing brine for shillings or equivalent quarters. The whitecaps looked snow cold as they tossed under the sharp north wind, and the tender which put us ashore had all it could do to embark and disembark us upright, or even aslant. But, once in the lee of the rocky Africa breathed a genial warmth across the strait beyond which its summits faintly shimmered; or was it the welcome of Cook’s carriages which warmed us so? We were promised separate vehicles for parties of three or four, with English-speaking drivers, and the promise was fairly well kept. The carriages bore a strong family likeness to the pictures of Spanish state coaches of the seventeenth century, and were curtained and cushioned in reddish calico. Rubber tires are yet unknown in southern Europe, and these mediaeval arks bounded over the stones with a violence which must once have been characteristic of those in the illustrations. But the English of our English-speaking driver was all that we could have asked for the shillings we paid Cook for him, or, if it was not, it was all we got. He was an energetic young fellow and satisfyingly Spanish in coloring, but in his eagerness to please he was less grave than I could now wish; I now wish everything in Spain to have been in keeping.
What was most perfectly, most fittingly i
n keeping was the sight of the Moors whom we began at once to see on the wharves and in the streets. They probably looked very much like the Moors who followed their caliph, if he was a caliph, into Spain when he drove Don Roderick out of his kingdom and established his own race and religion in the Peninsula. Moslem costumes can have changed very little in the last eleven or twelve hundred years, and these handsome fellows, who had come over with fresh eggs and vegetables and chickens and turkeys from Tangier, could not have been handsomer when they bore scimitars and javelins instead of coops and baskets. They had baggy drawers on, and brown cloaks, with bare, red legs and yellow slippers; one, when he took his fez off, had a head shaved perfectly bald, like the one-eyed Calender or the Barber’s brother out of the Arabian Nights; the sparse mustache and short-forked beard heightened the verisimilitude. Whether they squatted on the wharf, or passed gravely through the street, or waited for custom in their little market among the hen-coops and the herds of rather lean, dispirited turkeys (which had not the satisfaction of their American kindred in being fattened for the sacrifice, for in Europe all turkeys are served lean), these Moors had an allure impossible to any Occidental race. It was greater even than that of their Semitic brethren, who had a market farther up in the town, and showed that a Jewish market could be much filthier than a’ Moorish market without being more picturesque. Into the web of Oriental life were wrought the dapper figures of the red-coated, red-cheeked English soldiers, with blue, blue eyes and incredible red and yellow hair, lounging or hurrying orderlies with swagger-sticks, and apparently aimless privates no doubt bent ‘upon quite definite business or pleasure. Now and then an English groom led an English horse through the long street from which the other streets in Gibraltar branch up and down hill, for there is no other level; and now and then an English man or woman rode trimly by.
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells Page 1300
