INTRODUCTION. Ixvii 
here mount up to large and beautiful trees, and their flowers, 
glowing with the most vivid colours, are viewed against the 
most brilliant sky in the world. 
His own feelings, on being thus suddenly transported 
from the moss-grown mountains of his native country to a 
more genial climate, are thus expressed in a letter to his 
friend; “* how shall I be able to describe to you, how de- 
clare to you what I have here felt, what I have here seen ! 
How shall I be able to give you an idea of the variety, 
of the singularity of those forms, uf that beauty and that 
brilliancy of the colours, of all that magnificence of nature 
which surrounds me! We ascend the sloping ridges of 
the mountains which embrace the splendid city of Fun- 
chal; we rest ourselves on the margin of a brook, which 
falls in numberless cascades across thickets of rosemary, 
of laurels, and of myrtles;—the city at our feet, with its 
forts, its churches, its gardens, and its roadstead ; above 
us, forests of the stone pine and of chesnuts, interspersed 
with the flowers of the spartium and lavender. A whole 
legion of Canary birds makes the air resovad with their 
sweet song; and nothing here, but the snow on the moun- 
tain tops, which now and then pierce through the clouds, 
would recal to my recollection ny native country.” 
M. Von Buch observes, that neither the torrents of rain 
which fell almost daily, nor the dense clouds which con- 
stantly covered the mountains for more than half of their 
height. aor the snow which enveloped their summits, could 
restrain them from attempting to ascertain the distribution 
of vegetation on this island, and the height of its moun- 
tains. They found by the barometer, the altitude of 
Nostra Senhora da Monte to be 1778 English feet above 
