Leaves from a Madeira Garden 



slowly to her anchorage in the bay of Funchal 

 amid the pearly radiance of the Madeira morn- 

 ing, we enjoy an easy confidence that our short 

 absence will have brought no startling change 

 in a land of slow and little change. But in 

 small matters there is much to stimulate our 

 curiosity. He who cultivates the soil, whether 

 for pleasure or profit, need never be dull ; and 

 if he is the possessor of a garden in this favoured 

 isle of the sea, he will surely find that much 

 has happened therein during his absence to 

 revive a never-failing wonder at the vigor and 

 variety of vegetable life. 



It is not my purpose to lay stress on details 

 which may be found in guide-books, but it may 

 be convenient to mention that Madeira is an 

 island of volcanic origin, situate, not in the 

 Mediterranean as some of my English friends 

 suppose, but in the Atlantic, 600 miles S.W. of 

 Gibraltar, and 360 miles from the African coast ; 

 that, putting aside the more or less vague tradi- 

 tions of previous visits, it was discovered and 

 colonized by the Portuguese (the *' Portugals " 

 our Elizabethan ancestors called them) about 

 1420 ; that politically it is now a province, and 

 not a colony, of Portugal ; that it is about 2)S 



