Leaves from a Madeira Garden 



village of Sta. Anna. Here are masses of 

 hydrangeas, which must be glorious in summer, 

 and the hedges are full of fuchsias and other 

 flowering plants. At this season the air is 

 still fresh and keen, for Sta. Anna lies at an 

 elevation of eleven or twelve hundred feet. 



Using Sta. Anna as a centre, the traveller 

 may explore much of the northern coast ; he 

 may ascend the six thousand feet of Ruivo, 

 the highest summit of the island, or, by means 

 of the levadas which tap their streams, he may 

 find his way into the great valleys and their 

 ramifications which extend deep into the 

 central range. The village itself lies a short 

 distance from the edge of the sea-clifi^s, which 

 are here about one thousand feet high and rich 

 in all the elements of savage grandeur. 



Here he may look down on little coves and 

 isolated beaches, such as Stevenson would have 

 loved to endow with the romance of a piratical 

 past, and he may dream of days when 

 perchance they were put to nefarious, if 

 picturesque, uses. In some of its features 

 this coast recalls the fantastic pictures of 

 Gustave Dore ; solitary and peaked rocks 

 stand out in the sea, and the ceaseless fret of 



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