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100 REPORT—1849., 
agricultural knowledge; they follow the practices which they have been taught by 
their fathers, and resist or neglect all change or instruction with a pertinacity which 
no prospect of profit can overcome. It is very common to see occupations unculti- — 
vated, but never abandoned ; for though the law gives the landlord a control over the 
cultivation, and the means of punishing or ejecting a refractory or a negligent 
tenant, it can only be practically enforced through the purchase of the demfeitorias, 
The caseiro may be engaged in other occupations more profitable than the cultiva- 
tion of his land, or influenced by other motives; whilst the landlord will acquiesce in 
the loss of the produce which the land is capable of yielding rather than incur the 
cost of the purchase of improvements, or what are so considered, more particularly 
when estimated far beyond their value. There are considerable tracts in some of the 
most favoured situations of the island which are in the situation I have described. 
Of all the productions of the island the vine is the most extensively and most care- 
fully cultivated ; the soil most adapted to it is a mixture of the red and yellow tufa, called 
the satbro and the pedra moile, the latter of which is very light and loose, and would be 
easily washed away if not mixed with other soil ; another soil, called the cascalha, a de- 
composing basaltic conglomerate, is also well adapted to the purpose. The clayey soil, 
called massapez, unless largely mixed with lighter and more friable materials, must be 
carefully avoided. The vines are planted in trenches dug to the depthof five or six feet ; 
they are trained upon a framework formed by the stalks of the reed (drundo sagittata) 
supported upon wooden posts or stone piers at an elevation of five or six feet from the 
ground, and tied together with twigs of the red willow (Salix rubra): vegetables and 
weeds of all kincs are cultivated or allowed to grow beneath them, which are gene- 
rally cleared away in the summer season when the vines are in bearing. It is a 
necessary effect of this system that the vines are pruned not to but from the root, so 
as to add during every year to the length of the ancient stem through which the sap 
is transmitted to the truit: they thus become weaker instead of stronger with the 
increase of age; aud at the end of little more than twenty years a vineyard must be 
destroyed and replanted. The fruit also decreases in flavour and richness the further 
it is removed from the ground,—a fact which the French and German vine-growers 
fully understand, and consequently have adopted a totally different system. The 
vineyards are seldom of great extent, the largest not exceeding three or four acres; 
they are very rarely if ever (except in the gardens of guintas in and around Funchal) 
cultivated by the proprietors, but almost always by caseiros, the same division of the 
produce prevailing in the richest and the poorest vineyards ; their produce will vary 
from one to three pipes per acre. The price to the producer during the last year 
varied from about 40 dollars in the best districts, to 10 or 12 dollars per pipe; 
towards the end of the last war the price was nearly three times as much. The 
vine in its progress to maturity is exposed to a variety of enemies; the innumerable 
multitude of lizards, rats and bees destroy generally one-sixth part of the produce. 
The grapes, which are allowed to hang until they are perfectly matured, produce the 
wines of the richest flavour, and the wine-merchants will frequently double the price 
per Jaril for wines which are thus preserved ; but when the grapes of the neighbour- 
ing vineyards are gathered, their enemies crowd to the plunder of those which re- 
main: it is only by speedily gathering them that they can be saved from entire de- 
struction. 
Most of the occupations are too small, or in situations too precipitous for the use 
of the plough, which is an instrument of the rudest materials and form; but even 
when it might be advantageously applied it is not generally used: the favourite and 
almost exclusive instrument of cultivation is the enchada, a slightly incurved pick- 
axe, which they use with great dexterity to break up rather than upturn the surface 
of the soil; the spade is rarely used, and they have neither rakes nor harrows. The 
soil is generally light and friable, and rarely requires the careful breaking-up and tri- 
turation which is necessary in other countries. The casciro is not allowed to sell 
the straw or manure which is produced on his tenure; but little care is used either 
in preserving or preparing it, and the use of artificial manures is altogether unknown. 
Water in this, as in all warm countries, is the most essential element of fertility. In 
Madeira, it is diverted into channels or /evadas, from the mountain-stream at high 
elevations, and conducted by them to the several occupations in the cultivated di- 
stricts which have acquired by purchase or hiring the privilege of using it. It is di- 
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