Impediments to Improvement of Agriculture. 67 



l^iastres annually, as well as that of every morgado, the 

 annual value of which did not exceed the sum of 600 piastres. 

 As, however, a great number of these entails exceed 200 

 piastres, these oppressive restrictions still weigh upon four- 

 fifths of the land, notwithstanding the above-mentioned laws. 

 Among the creditors who still have claims, there are three 

 nunneries (which alone, of all other similar institutions, 

 outlived the revolution of 1821), the hospital of Funchal, 

 and the Portuguese Government. The institution of these 

 vinculos and morgados produced a kind of feudal depen- 

 dency between the cultivator of the estates {caseiro^ and the 

 landlord or holder of the morgado. On the occasion of his 

 marriage, or the birth of an heir to the latter, the caseiro 

 brought presents of such fruits as his land produced; when 

 the landlord removed from the town into the country, the 

 caseiro carried his litter and luggage ; in conversation the 

 caseiro addressed the landlord as meu amo (my lord). The 

 revolution of 1821 did away with many of these usages, 

 and in various ways altered the relation between the caseiro 

 and the landlord. 



Another impediment to the improvement of agriculture, 

 is the system of parcelling ground into small allotments, 

 which has been continued up to the present time. The farms 

 are in general extremely small. In the richer and more fertile 

 parts of the island they rarely exceed an acre in extent, very 

 often they are not half so large, and sometimes not even 

 the tenth part of an acre. The late Conde de Carvalho, 



F 2 



