PART i. INTRODUCTION TO THE INQUIRY. 5 



stance and emblazoned their edges, darted out here and 

 there in welcome force, dancing on the wavelets before 

 us, and illuminating the southern slopes of the interior 

 land ; when, in place of arid sands and roasted rocks to 

 bespeak it a chip of the Western Saharan termination of 

 Africa, we saw apparently the whole Madeiran country 

 green, green, and still more densely green, from the coast- 

 line right up to the farthest visible hills ! 



Now all these prospects of Madeiran cloud, rock, and 

 scenery, which we had thus enjoyed the good fortune to 

 behold one after another in such quick succession, were 

 no mere short-lived or trifling accident of that one 

 particular day, but do constitute the standard features, 

 through centuries, of the summer climate and appearance 

 of this, meteorologically, most anomalous little African 

 isle. For its historians have related that, in 1419, the 

 Portuguese had lived more than a year in Porto Santo 

 before they discovered Madeira, or even ventured to sail 

 in its direction ; for they imagined there was some dark 

 and dangerous abyss, if not the end of the world, in that 

 quarter ; and it required the arrival of two of Prince 

 Dom Henry's most gallant knights Joao Gonzalves 

 Zargo and Tristao Vaz Teixeira to insist on sailing into 

 the mystery. 



The late T. M. Hughes, well versed in the old Por- 

 tuguese literature, does rather contrariwise, in his grand 

 Madeiran poem in ten cantos, 1 makes Zargo take a new 



1 By name, The Ocean Flower, published by Longman, Brown, etc. 

 London, 1845. See also Part v -> PP- 54> 5 6 > and 6 4- 



