38 THE ATLANTIC. [chap, i, 



ing up into deep wooded dells. Beneath us, at the point where 

 the road turned along the northern shore, lay the pretty little 

 town of Eibeira Grande, the second on the island. 



This middle belt of lower land is, perhaps, with the exception 

 of the land immediately round the towns, the best cultivated 

 part of the island. The volcanic cones are covered with a young 

 growth of Pinus tnaritimus, with here and there a group of 

 poplars, or of Per sea Indica. These, and particularly the first, 

 are the trees which furnish the wood for the orange-boxes ; and 

 on our way we saw several picturesque groups of bronzed, scant- 

 ily clad Agoreans cutting down the trees, reducing the trunks 

 to lengths suitable for the different parts of the boxes, and 

 binding up the branches and unavailable pieces into scarcely 

 less valuable fagots of fire-wood. 



Every yard of tolerably level ground was under crop ; maize 

 chiefly, with here and there a little wheat, or a patch of pota- 

 toes or of tomatoes, or more rarely of sweet-potatoes, for here 

 Convolvulus hatatas seems to have nearly reached its tempera- 

 ture limit. Many fields, or ratlier patches — for each crop usu- 

 ally covers a small space which is not separated from the con- 

 tiguous patches by any fence — are fallow; that is to say, are 

 under a luxuriant crop of lupin, sown to be dug down bodily as 

 manure, so soon as the plant shall have extracted the maximum 

 of assimilable matter from the water and air. 



After passing Ribeira Grande tlie road becomes more rug- 

 ged, now passing down into a deep gorge with a little hamlet 

 nestling in it, and a bridge spanning the dry bed of a wet-sea- 

 son torrent ; and now rising over the well-cultivated spur of a 

 mountain ridge. We stopped for luncheon in a pretty little 

 ravine, well shaded by trees and watered by a considerable 

 stream. 



Posting round the world as we are doing, with very little 

 spare time at our disposal, one impression succeeds another so 

 rapidly that it is sometimes not very easy to disentangle them 



