10 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



visited Madeira on a previous occasion, I viewed the lions of 

 Funclial. As is always the case in traversing the highways 

 and byways of a foreign town unfamiliar to one, my atten- 

 tion was arrested by a variety of minute circumstances which 

 an English resident would hardly think it worth while to 

 notice. Thus, I remarked with interest the narrowness, 

 steepness, and slipperiness of the streets ; the peculiar 

 vehicles, somewhat resembling exaggerated sedan-chairs, 

 resting on curved runners, after the manner of sleighs, and 

 drawn by oxen ; the cloth-litters, slung on poles, in which 

 people were being borne along ; and last, though certainly 

 not least, the luxuriant growth of the plants in the gardens — 

 the heliotropes, to cite a single instance, attaining a height of 

 six or seven feet. 



Next morning three of the officers and myself landed to 

 make an excursion to the well-known Grand Curral, a re- 

 markable deep valley about the middle of the island, 

 surrounded by precipices from 1500 to 2500 feet high, and 

 peaks of very considerable elevation, the Pico Grande attain- 

 ing a height of between 5000 and 6000 feet. Sir Charles 

 Lyell remarks,* that " it has been compared by some to a 

 crater or caldron, for its upper portion is situated in the 

 region where dikes and ejectamenta abound," but that it 

 extends to below the region of numerous dikes, that the 

 volcanic masses do not dip away in all directions from it, as 

 from a central point, or from the hollow axis of a cone, and 

 that, in fact, it is only one of three great valleys radiating 

 from the most mountainous district of Madeira, the second 

 valley being that of the Serra d'Agoa, separated from the 

 Curral on the east by a narrow and lofty ridge, part of which 

 is surmounted by the Pico Grande ; and the third the valley 



* Elements of Geology, ed. 6th, p. 644. 



