WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 133 



steps there were figures, men, women, and boys, mostly 

 resting, some in brilliant colours, some in sombre tints ; 

 and these and white boats at their moorings were reflected 

 in the waving dark ripples of the basin. For an artist I 

 would say this hundred yards of light and shade and colour 

 is worth all Venice. 



Perhaps the colour of the light is the charm of the Azores ; 

 it is that Gulf Stream rich, colourful light that to me seems 

 to increase south-westerly as you follow it, say from the west 

 of Kirkcudbright to Spain, and westwards, till you come 

 to the Saragossa Sea a quality in the atmosphere that 

 makes the night here redundant with colour and the day 

 superlative. 



Why do you not see quite such soft richness of colour in 

 the air farther east ? There is greater velvetyness of colour 

 here in the Azores than in Madeira, or the west of Spain, 

 or anywhere in the Mediterranean, or the Far East. 



I could sit here for weeks, day and night, watching the 

 changing effects, the queer parrot-coloured weathered boats, 

 with their furled-up white cotton sails coming alongside the 

 steps ; the steps are greenish black volcanic stone, white- 

 washed, and the stone shows here and there, and the white 

 is of infinite variety of tints and the sunlight is so soft and 

 mellow that patches of colour, say a man's pink shirt, or a 

 patch of emerald-green cloth, catch the eye with their soft 

 intensity and your eye goes back and forwards revelling in 

 the pleasure of the soft clash of battling colour, and tints. 



The boats that come in from the blue are vivid in colouring, 

 brilliant emerald, yellow, and scarlet, with thick white cotton 

 sails. The largest are three-masted feluccas, long and 

 narrow, with sails like swallows' wings. Each has a crew 

 of at least eleven men and boys, with brown faces and black 

 hair and beards. They go barefooted, and wear a peaked 

 pointed knitted cap exactly the same as we have in the Fair 

 Isle off Shetland ; and each figure is a joy for ever of sun- 

 bitten, faded-coloured garments of many colours. Then 

 think of these figures in the blue night moving noiselessly 

 with bare feet, unloading short yellow planks for pineapple 

 boxes in half electric, half moonlight, the velvety shadows 



