go Voyage of the Novara. 



of acquiring a more comfortable or independent mode of ex- 

 istence. Neither in Ireland, nor in the Silesian mountains, 

 nor even amongst the Indians in North or South America, have 

 we witnessed such a degree of poverty and wretchedness as we 

 beheld among the labouring classes in the mountainous dis- 

 tricts of this island. On entering a village, shoals of haggard- 

 looking beggars covered with rags were seen, whose features in- 

 dicated their unhealthy way of living, and an utter lack of the 

 most common necessaries of life. The calamities of the last 

 five years have certainly contributed to this excess of misery, 

 and a traveller who visited Madeira twenty years ago, may 

 have carried away with him quite a different impression of its 

 inhabitants. 



The race inhabiting the island, notwithstanding some fa- 

 vourable exceptions, is rather unprepossessing and decrepit, 

 owing to the elements of which it is composed. The first 

 settlers, as already stated, belonged by no means to the better 

 classes of Portugal, but consisted of a motley assemblage of 

 ruffians, who came to the newly-discovered island merely in 

 search of adventure. The admixture which afterwards took 

 place with the black race imported from Africa, materially con- 

 tributed to deteriorate the people both physically and morally. 

 Though there is not one single pure negro in the whole island, 

 yet the features of a considerable proportion of the inhabitants 

 denote their African descent. In the population of Punta da 

 Sol, a village on the west side of the island, the negro type is 

 said to be exhibited in its strongest character. 



