Leaves fyom a Madeira Garden 



Many books have been written about 

 Madeira, but they have generally been on 

 somewhat prosaic lines, statistics of temperature 

 and rainfall being especially the concern of their 

 authors. The poets — certainly in our language 

 — do not seem to have found much inspiration 

 in the island's beauties. Combe, the author of 

 "Dr. Syntax," produced a curious work, a sort 

 of guide-book combined with verses after his 

 manner, the whole designed apparently to illus- 

 trate some very exaggerated coloured caricatures 

 of Madeira types, somewhat in the style of 

 Rowlandson. And it has been my good fortune 

 to light upon a remarkable book entitled "The 

 Ocean Flower," a poem in ten cantos, pub- 

 lished in London in 1845. The author was 

 T. M. Hughes, whom I judge by internal 

 evidence to have been of the male sex. The 

 object of this astonishing work is to relate the 

 discovery, colonization and early history of 

 Madeira, embodying what used to be called a 

 " chorographical " description of the island. 

 The following verses, which describe Zargo's 

 selection of the site for a town which he named 

 Funchal, from the fennel which abounded there, 

 are a fair specimen of the writer's style : — 



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