FAYAL AND THE PORTUGUESE 293 
The orange orchards were rather a disappoint- 
ment. They suggested quince-trees with more 
shining leaves ; and, indeed, there was a hard, 
glossy, coriaceous look to the vegetation gen- 
erally, which made us sometimes long for the 
soft, tender green of more temperate zones. 
The novel beauty of the Dabney gardens can 
scarcely be exaggerated ; each step was a new 
incursion into the tropics, —a palm, a magnolia, 
a camphor-tree, a dragon-tree, suggesting Hum- 
boldt and Orotava, a clump of bamboos or cork- 
trees, or the startling strangeness of the great 
grass-like banana, itself a jungle. There are 
hedges of pittosporum, arbors veiled by passion 
flowers, and two specimens of that most beauti- 
ful of all living trees, the avaucarvia, or Norfolk 
Island pine, — one of these being some eighty 
feet high, and said to be the largest north of the 
equator. When over all this luxuriant exotic 
beauty the soft clouds furled away and the sun 
showed us Pico, we had no more to ask, and the 
soft, beautiful blue cone became an altar for 
our gratitude, and the thin mist of hot volcanic 
air that flickered above it seemed the rising 
incense of the world. 
In the midst of all these charming surprises, 
we all found it hard to begin upon the study 
of the language, although the prospect of a 
six months’ stay made it desirable. We were 
