Leaves from a Madeira Garden 



returned to the pier the steamer was gone. 

 The girl's parents were on board, and must 

 have been consumed with anxiety at her dis- 

 appearance, as they could get no news of her 

 until they reached Capetown. This, and not 

 the absence of tooth-brushes, is the really tragic 

 side of such occurrences. The young couple 

 were hospitably entreated here, and proceeded 

 the following week. Let us hope that the tale 

 had an appropriate conclusion. 



I have wandered afar from our mountain 

 Quinta — perhaps not inappropriately, for it is a 

 convenient starting-point for many excursions. 

 It lies on the very brink of a delightful ravine, 

 the source of Funchal's easternmost river, known 

 to the English as the Little Curral. If this 

 valley lacks the sensational features of Madeira's 

 wildest gorges, it is rich in all the elements of 

 the picturesque. Up hill and down dale you 

 walk or ride, with miniature precipices yawning 

 below you, while rocky eminences, aping in 

 their form the greater mountains, stand clear 

 against the sky above. Villages with peaked 

 thatched roofs, almost Japanese in character, 

 hang on to the slopes in the most inconvenient 

 situations. Arum lilies growing wild fleck 



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