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poorly clad, some with straw hats, some with Montero caps of 
coarse cloth; the cart-drivers with long goads over their 
shoulders. The women wear long blue mantles, with enor- 
mous hoods, at the bottom of which you can scarcely discern 
the human face divine. 
' * The island, to a certain height, is cultivated like a gar- 
den. The fields are small, but regular, and bear crops of 
wheat and maize, the former ready for the sickle, the latter 
half grown, and to be reaped in September or October. The 
lea fields are covered with a crop of yellow lupine, which when 
it springs to a height of three feet, is ploughed down to serve 
as manure. The soil is extremely light, and easily laboured. 
* The riding cattle are mules and donkeys. Horses are 
rarely used, being considered dangerous on account of the 
imperfection of the roads. The carts are drawn by a couple of 
oxen, yoked by the neck, and having their near horns attached 
to each other by a thong, a necessary precaution against their 
injuring passengers in the narrow lanes. These carts are 
extremely rude and clumsy, the body solid, shaped like a 
battledore excavated in the fore part to receive the nether end 
of the oxen. The wheels are of three pieces of solid plank, 
fashioned like those of the Irish car, the iron binding several 
inches thick, with the external edge not above an inch thick, 
admirably adapted for cutting up the lanes into ruts, which 
they do in no time, to the depth of ten or a dozen inches 
through the solid lava. In this process of grinding they make 
a horrible creaking noise, which, when half a dozen carts 
follow in a string, is heard at a vast distance, sounding like 
an ill-tuned band playing an Irish lament. 
..* All the butcher-meat required for the consumption of the 
town is slaughtered on Friday, when the citizens must lay in - 
their stock for the week. Beef and mutton are pretty good at 
334. per lb.; poultry good at 6d.; eggs remarkably large at 
2d. per dozen; potatoes tolerable at ls. 6d. a bushel; bread 
execrable, black, and sour; fish plentiful, and in great variety. 
* Fayal owes its origin to subterraneous fire, and seems to 
have suffered some tremendous convulsion, by which whole _ 
hills and headlands have been overturned. On its summit 
