Madeira, on the Way to Italy 



763 



Where the "Old Madeira" Begins 

 A wine press of the old primitive type 



of the island informed us that the house- 

 wives neglected their homes, injured their 

 health, and ruined their eyesight in order 

 to make the beautiful embroidery which 

 every female tourist takes away with her. 

 One firm, the Madeira House, sold $1,200 

 worth to one steamer load of Americans 

 alone in a single day. Another dealer 

 showed the writer a cablegram from the 

 son of the governor of Para, who was 

 just leaving Brazil for Paris, ordering 

 $720 worth of embroidered petticoats. 



In the old days, when Madeira wine 

 was all the fashion and American clippers 

 carried it around the Horn and back 

 again to age it, the island prospered, and 

 English firms made fortunes in a hurry. 

 The island has a monopoly, an agricul- 

 tural monopoly, such as France has in 

 her truffles and her Bordeaux. Nowhere 

 else in the world could the same wine be 

 produced, and the wealthy of the great 

 cities demanded it at any price. Times 



have changed, and doctors say that Ma- 

 deira is bad for gout. The demand has 

 decreased, fraudulent adulterated "Ma- 

 deiras" have been illegally put on the 

 world markets, and the vineyards still 

 stand, but no great fortunes are now 

 made in the wine business of the island. 

 For one who wants sight-seeing and 

 things to do, Madeira is not the place to 

 go. You cannot expect that thirty miles 

 of mountainous country, so steep that 

 horses cannot be used on it and over 

 which you must either walk or be carried 

 in canvas hammocks, will be the place to 

 taken an automobile or have anything 

 more exciting about it than is furnished 

 by dangerous landing places on the coast 

 or precipitous cliffs and ravines of vol- 

 canic rock ; but there is a class of people 

 to whom the wonderful scenery does 

 appeal, who revel in the sunshine, the 

 colors, the odors of the flowers, the 

 quaint roadside scenes, and who are in- 



