CHAP. I.] BERMUDAS TO MADEIRA. 43 



and then a large buzzard, Buteo vulgaris^ on account of whose 

 abundance the islands were first named from the Portuguese 

 word iiQor (a kite), rose slowly and soared in the still air. A 

 genuine blackbird, Turdus merula, poised himself on the top 

 of a fir-tree, and sung to us about home ; a chaffinch, Fringilla 

 tintillon, very nearly genuine, hopped on the path and acted 

 otherwise much like an English chafiincli ; a bullfinch, Pyi^rliu- 

 la murina, so like the real thing as to have given rise to some 

 discussion, piped in the thicket ; and the canary, Serimis CanOr 

 rius, here no albino prisoner, but a yellow-green sparrow of un- 

 limited rapacity in tlie way of garden-seeds, settled on the trees 

 and twittered in large flocks. I walked down to the baths by a 

 short cut across the hills with Mr. Brown in the afternoon, and 

 got a great deal of pleasant information from him. It seems 

 that he was very much identified with the late rapid progress of 

 gardening and forestry. Between twenty and thirty years ago 

 he went from England, a young gardener, to lay out the splen- 

 did grounds of M. Jose do Canto at Ponta Delgada ; he assisted 

 in various schemes of horticulture in the interest of M. Ernest 

 do Canto, M. Antonio Borges, and other wealthy proprietors, 

 and among other things designed the pretty little public garden 

 at Furnas, which we passed through on our way to the springs. 

 The house which Mr. Brown now occupies, with about four 

 hundred acres of land, belongs, singularly enough, to a London 

 physician, and Mr. Brown acts as his factor. It is most com- 

 fortable and pleasant — just one of those places to suggest the 

 illusory idea of going back sometime and enjoying a month or 

 two of rest. 



The principal boiling springs are about half a mile from the 

 village. Pound them, over an area of perhaps a quarter of a 

 mile square, there are scorched-looking heaps like those which 

 one sees about an iron-work, only whitish usually, and often 

 yellow from an incrustation of sulphur. Over the ground 

 among one's feet little pools of water collect everywhere, and 



