32 THE ATLANTIC. [chap. i. 



good, and, particularly in the short supply of vegetables and 

 fruit, it seems to suifer from its distance from Pico. 



On the morning of Saturday, the 5tli of July, a merry party 

 of about a dozen of us started, from Ponta Delgada to see the 

 celebrated valley and lake of the Furnas. 



As the crow flies, the Furnas village, the fashionable water- 

 ing-place of San Miguel, where the hot springs and baths are, 

 is not more than eighteen miles from Ponta Delgada ; but the 

 road is circuitous and hilly, and the entire distance to be gone 

 over was not much less than thirty miles. We engaged four 

 carriages, each drawn by three mules abreast, and warranted to 

 take us the whole distance, if we chose, without drawing bridle. 



The first part of our route lay through the long drawn-out 

 suburbs of the town, past one or two churches without much 

 character, very like those in second-class towns in Spain and 

 Portugal. We then turned toward the interior, and walked up 

 a long ascent, not to harass our mulos so early in the journey. 



The road was dreary and tantalizing. We knew that it was 

 bordered by lovely orange-groves, the last of the fragrant flow- 

 ers just passing over, and the young fruit beginning to swell, 

 and usually about the size of a hazel-nut; but of this we saw 

 nothing; our laborious climb was between two hot black walls 

 of rough blocks of lava, nine to ten feet high. As a partial re- 

 lief, however, a tall hedge of evergreen-trees planted close with- 

 in the walls rose high above them, and threw enough of shade 

 to checker the glare on the dusty road beneath. 



In the Azores at one time the orange-trees, which seem to 

 have been introduced shortly after the discovery of the islands, 

 were planted at a distance from one another, and allowed to at- 

 tain their full size and natural form. Under this system some 

 of the varieties formed noble trees with trunks eighteen inches 

 in diameter. The wind-storms are, however, frequently very 

 violent in winter, and often when the fruit was nearly ripe the 

 best part of a crop was lost, and the trees themselves greatly 



