AND PORTO SANTO. 77 



our breakfast in the well-swept cabin of our boat-master, who 

 waited on us in a snow-white shirt and trowsers, and directed my 

 attention, as if by way of antidote, to the clean, pretty little 

 peasant girls who were offering chestnuts at the door. If the 

 unfortunate man we had just visited, thought I, were wise, he 

 might make himself rich and respectable at once, by descending, 

 or rather raising himself to that class which Providence has made 

 superior in this island, although man may call it otherwise, and 

 by cultivating his own vineyard, half the profits of which, less the 

 tax to the crown, support mth some degree of comfort, a labourious 

 family, perhaps larger than his own, which lingers through a bare ex- 

 istence, in filth and wretchedness, on the remainder. But, probably, 

 this poor man could not, even if he would, take his property into 

 his own hands. The law which permitted the proprietor to enjoy, 

 not only half the profits of the labours of the tenant, but half of 

 every thing that springs up, or is reared about his cabin, warranted 

 the latter to take advantage of every means of protecting himself 

 against the non-renewal of a lease, from caprice or any more 

 interested feeling, which might dispossess him of what his own 

 exertions had improved, perhaps created. He was enjoined to 

 build walls to keep up the soil, spread over declivities, and to 

 defend it from the torrent; which walls he was to be paid for at 

 the valuation of any other tenant, sworn by the camera, when 

 compelled to quit the property. Stone abounded % and he devoted 

 the leisure of particxilar seasons, to multiplying these loose walls 

 as much as possible, whether useful or not. The quarrels with 

 the proprietor, and all these accumulated walls, are estimated, not 

 only far above their value in point of usefulness, but fir above 

 the value of the labour and materials expended. The proprietor, 



" To split the compact basalt, they make a strong fire on the mass, and then throw 

 water on it. These rude walls are valued at from six to ten dollars the brassa (about 

 7 feet 3^ inches) ; torrent, or river walls at forty. 



