Mais abaixo seguem os três primeiros relatos, que incluem as Flores.

Muito haveria a dizer sobre este trabalho. Por exemplo, a autora retira muito coisa de outras obras contemporâneas ou anteriores, como do Walker ou dos irmãos Bullar. Em alguns casos, fica-se com a dúvida se visitou realmente o lugar, dadas as confusões e o apoio da narrativa na obra de outros (é o que se passa no caso da descrição da Fajã Grande e da Fajãzinha). As ilustrações também são, em grande medida, repescadas de outras obras. Curiosamente, nada é dito sobre pessoas em particular: a descrição é completamente genérica. Enfim, não posso saber ao certo, e é verdade que há partes do livro que parecem mostrar que ocorreu de facto uma viagem, mas, ao ler os relatos, provavelmente com injustiça minha, imagino-a numa biblioteca americana, incógnita, a ler uma colecção de obras sobre os Açores, a redigir relatos tão verosímeis quanto possível, e a enviá-los para os jornais para publicação…

Ainda assim, podem achar graça a lê-los.

George Monteiro, em 2015, editou estes relatos (embora tenha deixado um dos relatos de fora, talvez por não o ter encontrado nas suas pesquisas), tendo-os publicado pela primeira vez em Portugal no Boletim do Núcleo Cultural da Horta (ver https://bit.ly/3Pnyhba). Vale a pena ler a introdução, pois inclui uma breve biografia da autora. Alternativamente, podem ler (aqui: https://bit.ly/48iSgAp), no original, o trabalho em que George Monteiro se baseou para fazer essa pequena biografia:

PORTAGE PATHWAYS: Globe-trotting Fannie B. Ward came home to Ravenna, de Roger J. Di Paolo (editor do Record-Courier), Record-Courier, 6 de Outubro de 2013.

(O Record-Courir é um jornal diário do condado de Portage County, no Ohio.)

— Três relatos sobre as Flores —

Ilhas dos Acores

The Western Islands, Where the Sun Set in “Paradise Lost.”

Well-Known Strangers

Where They Are and How to Visit Them Easily.

Historic Ocean Track—Memories of the Great Discoverer—History and Romance.

Santa Cruz, Flores Island, Aug. 27.—Special Correspondence.—Although it may be straining the point a trifle too far to include these “western islands” among the West Indies, they are not so distant but that one may well round off a tour of the Atlantic islands with them. Besides, they are a brand new field to most Americans—a terra incognita so complete that the question I have been continually obliged to answer since announcing my intention to visit them is “Where in the world are they?” Perhaps it may be as well to forestall a dimness of geographical Information on the part of any reader of The Inter Ocean by answering the same question right here and now. The nine islands and two groups of rock which the early Portuguese named Ilhas dos Acores (Islands of Hawks), and English-speaking tongues have corrupted to Azores, lie on the warmer side of the Gulf Stream, though about in the same latitude as Philadelphia, 2,000 miles east of Boston or New York, 1,000 miles southwest of London, about 800 miles due west from the southern corner of Portugal (to which kingdom they belong), and the same distance from the northwestern end of Morocco. Sailing toward them from the west, you come first to Corvo and Flores, the two smallest and least important of the group, which lie on a line longitudinally ten miles apart; then to Fayal, Sao Jorge, Graciosa. Pico, Terciera, San Miguel, and Santa Maria, in the order named as to location. San Miguel is much the largest, being fifty miles long by from five to twelve broad; and the two heaps of uninhabited rocks are called, respectively, Formigas and Dollabaret. They are in three distinct groups, with long stretches of sea between; and, indeed, little Flores and Corvo are so far away from the others as to hardly belong to the archipelago at all. Altogether, they present a surface of about 700 square miles, and their combined population is a little less than 300,000. In other words, if the islands were pieced together their area would be six times that of London, with only one-fifteenth as many people as inhabit that city; but spread over 400 miles of the deepest part of the Atlantic they include an area of land and water greater than all England. Being historically of great interest, and scenically among the most picturesque spots on the earth’s surface, the wonder is that they have been so long neglected by pleasure-seekers and curiosity-hunters. Until of late few persons except those connected with them commercially or absconding cashiers and other individuals seeking an out-of-the-way haven of refuge have had any idea of their exact location, much less of their characteristics and the peculiarities of life there. Barely mentioned in the geographies and encyclopedias, even now the would-be student of them finds scant literary information on the subject. But all this will be changed in the near future, since three lines of vessels now make regular trips between our ports and those of the Azores, where they connect with the Portuguese and other lines, thus enabling tourist to enter Europe via the Spanish peninsula and the Mediterranean—a very welcome change from the old routes of travel. The islands make a delightful half-way station on the great ocean highway, and if one goes no farther he gets a bit of foreign travel which cannot be duplicated anywhere in the world in the way of novelty, fine scenery, and enjoyment for so small an expenditure of time, strength, and money.

Nowadays, too, the Azores have new interest for Americans, since Portugal has at last grudgingly recognized our principles of local government in granting autonomy to the islands, and the interesting little community are legislating for themselves at Angra, the almost unknown capital of the group. The independent blue flag that now waves above everything Azorian, with its white hawk and nine stars, contains history in a nutshell. It tells of nine mid-ocean provinces under one government, and the emblematic hawk reminds the world that their name, Acor (Portuguese for hawk), was conferred because of the great number of those birds found on the islands by navi- gators whom Portugal sent to take possession of the group. It was a fine morning in late August, after a passage from Bermuda which we would fain forget as quickly as possible, when some early prowler on deck raised the cry, “Land, ho!” at daybreak, and the sleepy passengers tumbled out to see what looked like a low cloud-bank on the horizon—the Isle of Flowers and its sister, Corvo, twenty miles away.

Crossing the wide ocean in these unfrequented ways one feels a new admiration for Columbus and the other ancient mariners; for to the “land lubber” it is a never-ending marvel how a ship, even with all the appliances of modern science to seacraft, can traverse the pathless deep with unerring accuracy to any given speck of land in the wide waste of waters, hundreds of miles from anywhere! And, by the way, this is the very same course in which Columbus sailed to immortality on his way to America, and the same in which he was afterward sent home in chains. This is the path direct to Gibraltar; to the route of the British ship that carried Napoleon to St. Helena; of Nelson to Aboukir and Trafalgar; of Childe Harold on his pilgrimage that ended in Greece. This is the enchanted region of dark blue sea under which lies the sunken continent of Atlantis—according to many authorities between Plato and Ignatius Donnelly; the same wherein Pindar located the heaven of the Greek heroes on the “Sacred Isles of the West:”

Where ocean breezes blow,

Round flowers of gold that grow

On stream and strand.

You know the rest.

This is the very scene of the conflict, on Aug. 10, 1591, made memorable by the pen of Walter Raleigh, in which the English ship Revenge, with Sir Richard Grenville, as captain, endured for twelve hours before she struck the attack of eight great Spanish armadas. She sunk two of them, each three times her own size; and after all her masts were gone, and she had been three times boarded without success, defied to the last the whole fleet of fifty-one sail, which lay around waiting for her to strike or sink. Raleigh tells us how, finally, Sir Richard, shot through body and head, and wounded in many places, was taken on board the Spanish Admiral’s ship to die, and gave up his gallant ghost with these words: “Here died I, Richard Grenville, with a joyful and quiet mind; for that I have ended my life as a true soldier ought—fighting for his country, Queen, religion, and honor; my soul willingly departing from this body, leaving behind the lasting fame of having behaved as every valiant soldier is in his duty bound to do.” That was a rather long and stilted speech for a dying man, shot all to pieces, to make; and probably, in point of fact, he said no such thing, though it reads so well in history. Sir Walter Raleigh romanced too much in his account of El Dorado and the golden cities of South America for us to have entire confidence in his famous “Report of the Truth of the Fight About the Isles of the Azores.”

As the outline of the Flores grows more distinct you see jagged volcanic peaks sloping on all sides to the sea, ending in black precipices against which the surf beats ceaselessly. A nearer view reveals green fields and cultivated uplands, cottages, and waving grain, and cloud shadows chasing each other on the hill tops and down the deep ravines. While waiting for a boat to come off with the health officer and pratique to go ashore—a business of some hours—we amused ourselves by getting all the information we could about Corvo, the nearby neighbor, of which we have a fine view.

It looks almost round, a picturesque mass of rock and forest, not five miles in diameter—in short, what it is, merely a volcanic crater, which the natives call O Caldurao, “the big pot,” whose outer sides are cultivated. This smallest and most northerly of the Azorean Archipelago exists only as a satellite of Flores, and would not be mentioned at all were it not within sight of the latter. Vessels never call there, because it has no harbor, the only means of communication with the outside world being by means of a whaleboat from Flores once a month—if winds and waves permit. But sometimes during bad weather even this is forbidden, and for three or four consecutive months the tiny island is totally isolated. At best the ten-mile row is not a pleasure excursion, owing to the boisterous waves and adverse currents, so it is not likely that we shall ever set foot on Corvo. The great drawback of all these islands is their lack of natural harbors, business being mainly carried on through two of them, where artificial harbors have been constructed. Corvo got its name (which is Portuguese for crow) from the number of those birds found upon it when discovered. The captain’s chart says that it is six miles long by three wide, rising abruptly from the ocean, with a rough, inhospitable-looking coast of dark, serrated rocks, which run in reefs from the shore, here lifting themselves high above the water, there merely blackening the surface, and again sinking to such a depth that their dangerous presence can be told only by the eddy swirling about them.

It is inhabited by a small colony, of Moorish descent, about a thousand strong, who are said to be a peculiarly gentle and inoffensive people called “old-fashioned” by the other islanders. Their specialty is raising poultry—the very best in the world, says the ship’s steward; and they also produce some wheat, yams, and corn, and raise horses of a small but hardy breed. There are two natural curiosities on the little island. One is a small lake at the bottom of the extinct volcano, studded with tiny islets that present a perfect miniature representation of the Azorean Archipelago. The other curiosity is of semi-historical interest. On a cliff near the shore nature has depicted the figure of a man on horseback, with extended arms pointing to the westward. The ravages of wind and weather have nearly obliterated the likeness, but local tradition still confidentially asserts that this stone horseman had a great deal to do with the discovery of America.

The story goes that Columbus on his great voyage of discovery became completely disheartened by the difficulties surrounding him, and was on the point of abandoning his project and turning back to Spain, when a severe storm drove him close to Corvo. Seeing this rock, and its colossal horseman sternly pointing to the westward, he regarded it as a heaven sent omen, piously crossed himself and proceeded on his way to the New World. A great many Carthagenian coins have been picked up in Corvo, from which circumstance it is argued that the ancient Carthagenians must have visited this island, although there is nothing in history to show that the early Greeks and Romans had any knowledge of the Azores.

We were fortunate enough in having for a fellow-passenger a man who had spent some time in Corvo. He says the whole country is set upon edge, so to speak, rising steeply to the Caldeira; and is divided by stone walls into small, well-cultivated compartments. These fields form narrow terraces, one above another, and look from the shore like steps out into the hills. Higher up the mountain is carpeted with heath, where flocks of sheep and hogs find a living. The crater, which was once, no doubt, a turbulent pit, is now a green and quiet valley, its round sides covered with grass, and at the bottom a still, dark pond, over which broods that appearance of sad serenity peculiar to volcanic valleys. The Corvoites are quite independent of the world, producing on their own little island everything required in the way of food and clothing. But then, their requirements are simplicity itself. They have swarthy skins, go always barefooted, and generally bareheaded, and are strong, healthy, happy, and industrious; at least, the women are industrious, for they do all the field work, and are said to excel their somewhat lazy lords in all matters requiring skill and endurance.

They are noted besides for their slovenliness and red petticoats. The men wear suits of coarse brown home-spun, with coats reaching almost to the ankles, and a skull cap of the same material for dress occasions.

In trade they evince the remarkable shrewdness proverbial among the Azoreans; but so friendly and unsuspecting are they that their doors and windows are never fastened at night, and they sleep in happy ignorance of the murders and robberies committed in more enlightened quarters of the globe. They are like one large family, all living in the only village on the island. Their cottages are as alike as so many peas in a pod, all built of stone, roofed with thatch or tile with mother earth for flooring, and neither chimneys nor glass windows. They are placed in tiers, one above the other up the side of the hill, with lanes between them, too narrow, steep, and stony to be called streets.

The health officer’s boat was speedily followed by three or four others to take us ashore at Flores. These island boats are queer enough to merit description. They were evidently constructed for rough weather and are so big and heavy that they look like the dismantled hulls of schooners. All are painted black or dingy red, and no two of their four oars ever touch the water together. The oars are from fifteen to twenty feet long, and it requires two or three men to pull them. The handles are constructed of the crooked limbs of trees, in several places fastened together with a marline, and turning on the gunwale by a broad plank, through which the thole pin passes. As they crawl clumsily along in the distance, they look like huge water beetles struggling in the billows.

We reached the port of Santa Cruz in safety—and such a port! Riding in on top of a huge roller, between a Scylla and a Charybdis of black lava rocks, hardly thirty feet apart and surrounded by roaring foam, we dashed into a little bay, perhaps an acre and a half in extent, with perpendicular cliffs on either side, on whose edges the houses are perched. The boatmen picked us up in their arms and landed us high and dry, amid an eager throng of men, women, and children, who had come down to welcome the arrivals, and who received us as if we were special guests or long-lost relatives. The narrow strip of shelving beach is piled with boats and rubbish, and around the corner of an uncompleted quay the principal street of the village runs down into the water. Near the landing place a public fountain empties its musical stream into a stone trough, and was surrounded by a group of olive-skinned, barefooted girls, all with white mantillas on their heads and earthen water jars in their arms.

Fannie B. Ward.

The flowery isle

Flores, of the Azorean Archipelago, Described.

SANTA CRUZ, ITS CAPITAL

Not Much Larger than the North Side, Chicago.

Calico Coats, Musical Carts, and Other Oddities of Native Life.

Santa Cruz, Flores Island, Sept. 1.—Special Correspondence.—The queerest little capital I ever came across occupies a site which seems to have been planned by nature on purpose for the principal town of the island. How can I describe it to you, when ink and paper fail to convey any idea of its crazy outlines and strange combinations of color? Everywhere Flores bears strong marks of its igneous origin and most of its shores are totally inaccessible from the sea. Being environed by reefs and walls of black lava, cliffs of red cinders and chocolate-colored earth, mountains rising abruptly out of the water, and lofty precipices, dark with verdure, down which streams fall in silvery threads to the surf below. In some places the cliffs are several hundred feet high, in others dwindled down to a few yards. The whole rests apparently upon sheets of black lava, the lowest visible layer of its composite parts, which having run out to the sea in a melted state was suddenly stopped, cooled, and shaped Into every conceivable variety of jagged, rough, Irregular rocks, among which the ocean now rolls with ceaseless violence, dashing clouds of spray over the sharp projections and breaking with mighty roar on the huge, detached masses that strew the shores. Above the lava are the volcanic products, such as deep, loose beds of scoriae baked red as bricks, capped by a firm brown tuff; above this, decomposed vegetable soil covered with greenest herbage, and over all the bluest sky that ever arched a flowery bit of earth.

Where Santa Cruz, the capital and chief port of Flores, stands[,] a stream of lava flowing to the sea has formed a high, level platform, about two miles long by half as broad, upon which the town is built. Three sides of this flat promontory are exposed to the sea, the fourth flanked by a high, abrupt hill, its sides richly cultivated, its summit overgrown with cedars, and crowned with an ancient tower. Subsequent eruptions have covered the lava with loose, volcanic matter, tuff, and cinders, forming fruitful soil, where good crops of corn, wheat, potatoes, flax, and vegetables are grown. The town has a few long, straggling streets, most of them converging into a little square.

At the foot of the principal street is a small cove and beach, where the fishermen’s boats are hauled up.

In front of the cove is a bar of lava, connected with the jagged rocks on each side. A small passage, capable of admitting only an undersized schooner, leads over the bar, which is hemmed in and screened from winds and waves by high walls of brown tuff. The town covers a very large space, considering its scanty population, for fields intervene between many of the houses. Some of them are perched upon the cliffs, so close to the edge that their doors actually overhang the water. We are told that it is not uncommon for children and even grown people to fall over the precipice to the rocks below, generally with fatal effect. Indeed, the dangers of the locality are the stock in trade of the army of crippled beggars that beset the strangers in Santa Cruz.

The houses are all built of stone, never more than two stories high and oftener but one. They have remarkably thick walls, always whitewashed outside, tiled, or furze-thatched roofs, green doors, and heavy, rude-looking balconies, with green Venetian blinds, in the Moorish style. All the houses are set close upon the border of the street—that is, with no yard, or space in front of them, and whenever a field or vacant spot comes between, there a high stone wall is built, so that in walking about the town you see little, except what is immediately before or behind. The first floor of the larger houses is seldom inhabited, being used for stores or workshops.

In the rear of the ground floor a broad flight of stairs—in the older houses, always of black stone, polished by long usage—leads up to the living apartments. None of the “front doors” have bells, and but few of them big brass knockers; so when you desire admittance your knuckles or stick or umbrella handle come into vigorous play, unless you aspire to be strictly in style from the Azorean standpoint, in which case you clap your hands as loudly as possible. There are no sidewalks and everybody perambulates in the middle of the street, where the pavement is usually the natural rock, the edges of which have been planed off by the passage of human feet. At nearly every corner is a public fountain, where dark-eyed, olive-skinned, Rebeccas are always filling their antique jars; and near by other women are scrubbing clothes by the wayside, on flat stones, over which water splashes from a bamboo spout set in the solid rock.

Of the local and social life of Santa Cruz there is little to be said. People wander about the streets, in a listless sort of way, as if so overcome with the Lethean air of the place that they are past ever wishing for anything to do. The few shops are scantily furnished with English cotton and woolen stuff, hardware, and ready-made clothing. United States fish, oil, groceries, and notions, Brazilian rum, coffee, and sugar, West India tobacco, molasses and liquor, Portuguese salt, tea, and such spiritual necessities as crucifixes, sacred images, relics, indulgences, and dispensations. The shops are so dimly lighted that purchasers must take the goods out into the street for inspection, and paying customers appear to be as rare as angels’ visits.

The liveliest place in town (if anything can be called lively in Santa Cruz), is the landing, when a ship heaves in sight, whose cargo is to be discharged in boats. This is the acme of Flores activity; but for every man who is engaged in carrying bales, boxes, and barrels on his shoulder from the boats to the neighboring warehouses, a dozen others are seen leaning idly against the sunny side of a building, or lying under the lea of their empty boats drawn up in the shade.

Another popular resort is the public square, which is also the market place. Here the country women, sitting contentedly on the rough pavement, or the stone steps of some building, with wicker baskets of fruit or vegetables before them, drive sharp bargains, the sharper because the few purchasers are also actuated by the proverbial Azorean spirit of shrewdness in trade.

Time is of no value to anybody in Flores, so the traders can afford to haggle over the value of half a penny from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof. On this square is the hotel—or what passes for one in these parts—of which conscience, though somewhat travel-hardened, will not permit a favorable word. Directly opposite is the combination prison and courthouse—a long, dingy, two-storied edifice, where the blindfolded goddess is supposed to preside above and her mandates be carried out below.

A flight of rickety steps on the outside of the building leads up to the courtroom, above the door of which is nailed a time-faded, weather-worn coat of arms of Portugal. The funny part of it is that offenders, punished by imprisonment, are compelled to carry out the sentence themselves, and be their own jailers. A passage-way running through the center divides the ground floor into two rooms, the main difference between them being that one has a floor and the other has not.

At two or three windows of the unfloored rooms there is a pretense of iron grating, but it is pretense merely, for most of the bars are broken, and the openings are the rendezvous and loitering places of friends of the incarcerated, and all the gossiping loungers of the town. Cells there are none, a few rude bunks against the unplastered stone walls, covered with dirty blankets, answering for sleeping places. The smoke-begrimed rafters are festooned with old garments, bed clothes, and strings of onions and garlic, and an old table, two or three rickety old chairs, and half a dozen empty boxes, complete the furnishings.

Such are the eccentricities of prison discipline in Flores that a criminal, when jailed, is given the key of his bastille, allowed to admit parties of his friends to enliven the tedium of durance vile; and it is rumored that he may even let himself out after dark, to take regular “constitutionals” through the city streets, or make sub rosa visits to his family. Indeed, it is rather a privilege than otherwise for the poor Azorean to “get took up,” in the expressive language of the gutter, for then he is sure of enough to eat, without the necessity of toil. Ridiculous as all of this may seem, there is slight need for more rigid discipline.

The small island—only about twelve miles long by seven wide—where everybody knows everybody else, would afford an escaped prisoner no opportunity for concealment, while the visits of vessels are too few and uncertain for the hope of flight to foreign lands to be indulged in. The people are so far from being vicious that murders are unknown among them. Thieving is almost equally rare, and what little is discovered is charged upon wicked visitors from other islands. Fighting and wife beating are the common misdemeanors, and, as in other countries, jealousy is the root of evil.

Above everything else in Santa Cruz towers the great cathedral, on its elevated knoll near the center of the city, one of the largest churches in all the Azores, capable of accommodating at least half the population of the island, and a conspicuous landmark far out at sea.

It is built entirely of black lava rock, in the Moorish style of architecture, with two tall towers and Saracenic domes and windows, and would be imposing, though dingy white In color, except that here and there great patches of whitewash have dropped off, leaving the original color of the stone in unsightly blotches. The facade is somewhat fantastically ornamented, after the Portuguese fashion, but the interior is plain, almost to nakedness.

Seven rows of massive square stone pillars, running the whole length of the building, support the broad arches of the roof, but the walls are damp and slimy with moisture, and weeds grow up in the deserted corners of the aisles. At some recent period the chancel and altar have been newly carved, and their freshness contrasts strangely with the moldy walls, Niches and altars are filled with rudely carved Images of the saints, adorned with paper flowers and surrounded with green boughs, but there is none of that profuse gilding, tinsel, and “ginger-bread work” commonly seen in Portuguese churches. Adjoining the main building is the sacristy, where the church treasures are kept, and for a small consideration the custodian will show you all the vestments, gold and silver utensils, banners, and procession day images.

Not far from this church, going through narrow lanes of squalid huts, thronged with lean pigs, cats, dogs, and naked children, you come to the most interesting structure on the island—the old convent of the Franciscan brotherhood, which, like the cathedral, was built a little more than three centuries ago.

Dom Pedro I., father of the last Emperor of Brazil, abolished convents throughout the Azores in the year 1834; but this old pile is still not without its usefulness. In former days strangers visiting these islands were accommodated in the convent, where rooms were set apart for them, and as long as they chose to remain they were treated as guests of the friars.

Now the dormitories are let to tenants, mostly a low class of natives, and cells and cloisters which once resounded with monkish Ave Marias are filled with filth and rubbish, while the history of its builders is rapidly becoming traditional.

The chapel belonging to it is a fine specimen of the renaissance-Italian style, as seen in colonial churches, its profuse ornamentations calculated to Impress an ignorant populace. In the outskirts of the town, standing conveniently close to the roadside, is another popular Institution—the Foundling Hospital of the district of Santa Cruz. It is a small cottage, provided with a drum turning in a hole in the wall, into which an infant may be put from the outside and secretly deposited in an inner room. A person sleeps in the cottage at night, to receive babies that may be left, and see that they are put out to nurse.

This is done at the expense of the municipal body, from a fund set aside for the purpose, and it is said that the number of waifs thus provided for is out of all proportion to the population of Flores. However, this national provision for unwelcome mites of humanity has one good result, viz., that infanticide is unknown in the Azores.

The people of Flores are famous for their good looks, and many of the younger women have a piquant style of beauty that is really very attractive. While the upper class dress about in the English or American style, the middle and lower classes have a distinct fashion of their own.

Both sexes of all ages go barefooted, and when attending mass they carry their shoes in their hands (those who can afford such luxuries), and put them on at the church door. The women generally wear a handkerchief, white or colored, silk or cotton, over their heads, and tied tightly under their chins, a shawl or cloak over the shoulders; substituted in many instances for a double skirt, of English calico or home-made woolen stuff, dark blue in color, with a checkered or striped band around the bottom, and a binding of the same on the placket hole, the skirt being so disposed that the placket hole comes outside, between the shoulders.

The men of Flores may be divided into two classes—those who wear boots and those who do not. The barefooted gentry show the best taste in the matter of colors, according to our ideas. They wear jackets of dark woolen and trousers of white linen or chocolate-hued linsey-woolsey, with parti-colored conical hats of knitted cotton or wool, or carapucas of the same color as their jackets. The materials for these garments are all of island manufacture. Those a little higher up in the social realm do not encourage home industries to so great an extent, but procure their hats (straw) from the United States and their dress materials from England.

Having a taste for finery, many of them sport jackets of the brightest cotton prints that Manchester can make. That is, they are bright and jaunty in their first state, but hot suns and frequent washings soon fade them, and starch seems to be an unknown commodity in Flores, or else the sea damp takes it out of everything; at any rate, the calico coats speedily take on dejected airs, and hang about the shoulders of the Azorean dandies as limply as half-wrung dishrags. Most of the middle-aged men have been whalers, and can speak a little English; and everybody you meet lifts his hat (if he wears one), or bows politely, and expects you in return to compliment. Another very noticeable thing in Flores is the ox carts, that creak noisily through the streets of the capital, and waken the echoes in the hills as they roll off countryward. They are of the same construction as those used in the interior of Portugal—probably the very same as those of Cervantes time, when that author likened some “terrible noise” he was describing in the story of Don Quixote’s adventures to that caused by the ponderous wheels of a cart. I thought I had seen queer vehicles in other parts of the world, but certainly these bear off the palm. They consist of an oblong slab of wood, which ends in a pole, supported upon two huge wheels, revolving with the axle in a wooden socket, like a child’s toy; the whole concern surmounted by a wicker basket, shaped not unlike the body of a Roman chariot. The wheels are solid chunks, chipped out in more or less circular form, and the axle is of chestnut wood., especially selected for its squeaking properties. The din they keep up is modulated between a shriek of dire distress and a dying groan; but it is music in the peasants’ ears on the lonely roads, and each cart man boasts of the particular tune creaked by his own vehicle… It is warranted to keep off spooks and bogies (and no wonder!), and. like the railway engineer’s whistle, it serves to notify wife and sweetheart of his coming. The cattle also become accustomed to this doleful accompaniment, and will no more work without it than a tow-path mule missing the lurid language to which he is accustomed.

Fannie B. Ward.

Among the Azores

Flores Island and Villages Seen from the Sea.

CLIMATE AND PRODUCTS

City of Horta, Its Harbor and Surroundings.

Lupine, Growing Luxuriantly, One of the Most Valuable Crops.

Horta, Fayal Island, Sept. 5.—Special Correspondence.—If time and weather permit you will find it pleasant to take a row around Flores Island, before sailing away to other parts of the archipelago. Generally speaking, you need not be afraid to trust your life anywhere an Azorean boatman will take you, for they are the most cautious and timid of creatures, so far as going to sea is concerned. And, indeed, there is a reason for the excessive timidity which sometimes seems to border on the ludicrous, in the uncertain seas that environ their little world. They may start off on a fine day, with a fair wind, to make the shortest cruise, and the weather suddenly becomes so tempestuous that they lose sight of the island altogether, and are blown to sea and perish; or their boats are pounded to pieces on the rocks. In this way two boats and their crews were lost only a few weeks ago, in going the six miles between Santa Cruz and the next town, on the same side of the island. But you forget these bugaboos when bounding over the long swells of the mid-Atlantic in a good stout wherry, with the sun shining and the wind just strong enough to white-cap every wave; and perhaps a spice of possible danger ahead adds zest to the enjoyment.

It is hard to tell which is bluest, the sky above, or the sea below; except in streaks. where white clouds skurrying over give to the mighty deep that tender tint of blue sometimes seen in a child’s eye. Should it “come on the blow,” as the sailors say, a few minutes would make a vast difference in this treacherous tranquility. It is not uncommon to cross from Flores to Corvo on a balmy morning, intending to return in an hour or two, and be detained there several weeks before it is possible to come back over the boisterous ten-mile channel between the two islands; and in winter the boats seldom venture out at all.

Although the entire population of Flores Island is less than 13,000, it contains several villages besides Santa Cruz, most of them along the coast. Largens is the nearest town, and between it and the capital you see a little river hurrying to the ocean (the Riberia Cruz), and long stretches of stunted cedar trees—a species of timber so plentiful in Flores, that it not only furnishes the people with fuel, but is shipped to the other islands for boat-building purposes. Flores is semi-circular in form, almost entirely walled by high cliffs, indented with numerous small bays; and nearly every bay has its hamlet along shore. At Largens there are many proofs of the inhospitable character of the coast in the remains of wrecks strewn all about. Here piles of spars and heaps of beams and bulwarks tells melancholy tales of disaster; there the smart, green panels and black-arched roof of some unfortunate ship’s “companion” have been joined to the dark walls and dingy thatch of a native house. Planks, seasoned by long cruises in many seas, serve as cottage doors, and on them some letters of the name of the ship from which they came may be traced.

Among them we made out the “Nancy Jane, Nantucket,” and “The Plymouth, Baltimore.” Largens, entirely uninteresting in itself, is surrounded by fields, divided checkerboard fashion by stone walls, in which women were working, with their clumsy, short-handled hoes. Fajen Grande is also built near the water’s edge, with high, dark cliffs behind it. The streets are bordered with loose walls of black lava stone, behind which are cottages of the same gloomy color, thatched or tiled, with occasionally a more pretentious two-storied mansion of weather-beaten white, standing close to the street, without wall or yard in front. We found the stony lanes between these walls (too narrow to be called streets), abounding in pigs, poultry, and half-naked children, while groups of peasants in their calico jackets and scarlet petticoats gave color to the scene, and a touch of picturesque- ness was added by some field-laborers dragging a huge wooden plow between them, and a wicker-top oxcart, with solid chunks of wood for wheels, creaking slowly through the village.

Wherever the cliffs that environ Fajen Grande are not too nearly perpendicular[,] small ledges have been cut out and planted with corn, flax, potatoes, cabbages, and onions. These rise in steps, to such a height that the upper ones look green lines dividing the layers of lava that show through their edges. The lava strips are bare, except where cushions of moss and lichens have given them soft tints of gray, or ferns and long grasses lean over.

A little way back in the valley stands one of the natural curiosities of the island—a huge, isolated cone-shaped mass of black lava, several hundred feet high, rising like a nude cairn or pillar. There is no more accounting for how it came there than for the flies in amber. It is too large to have been carried down by a flood, and much too heavy for any force to have blown it through the air and planted it “right end up with care.”

Perhaps some sportive volcano shot it up from the depths of the earth like a rocket, and down it came into this green hollow of the hills with force enough to plant it forever. The sides of this valley, like all of them in Flores, are dark with cedars, and lower down are corn fields and orange groves; and, by the way, the oranges of this island, though small, are among the very best in the world.

The next village rejoices under the odd name of Fajemsinho, and all the way between it and Fajen Grande are precipitous mountains, covered with heath and masses of columnar rock, interspersed with cultivated fields in every canyon or hollow.

Fajemsinho would not be worthy of notice as a village, were it not connected with some of the finest scenery of the Azores. It occupies the level floor of a magnificent amphitheater of cliffs, facing the open air, surrounded on three sides by vineyards, orange groves, and fields of wheat and corn.

To get to these fields, you have to cross the cliffs by a steep, zigzag path cut in the face of them, more fit for goats to traverse than for human beings. Yet the only road to Ponta Delgada, a considerable inland village, lies that way, and by it the inhabitants of Fajemsinho must go every day to and from their field labors.

We climbed a little way up, and were well rewarded by the backward view. The afternoon shone up the mouth of the gorge with a soft, yellow light, illuminating one side and throwing the other into shadow. It glittered on a silvery waterfall which tumbled over the edge of a nearby precipice to the surf far below and turned to burnished gold the whole broad expanse of sea in front.

Clouds of vapor above the cascade wavered to and fro in the breeze like incense from a swinging censer, and over all towered the hazy cliffs in their threefold semi-circle, diversified in color to every shade of brown, green, and gray, bright red in places, with bands of shining ebony wherever the lava ledges, protruding through the soil, were wet by streams of waterfalls.

While toiling up this stony way, which seemed more like the ruined stairs of an ancient abbey than a path, grasping the heather on the inner side for greater safety and ramming our improvised alpenstocks down hard between the rocks, to prevent a slip, which would have dropped us into the surf roaring at the foot of the precipice, we were astonished to see both men and women come tripping down it, carrying heavy burdens on their heads, as lightly and as securely as we run up and down stairs at home.

Of course, their careless confidence comes from having been always used to it, and we noticed that their bare feet seemed to grasp every stone they stood upon, much as a bird’s claw grasps a bough.

We met a Fajemsinho girl with a great bundle of wood on her head. Poising herself for one moment on a single stone to let us pass, she acknowledged our salutation with a smiling “Boa tarde” (good afternoon). Then, gathering up her red petticoat in one hand and steadying the fagots with the other, she bounded down the mountain side with steps as fearless and graceful as ours were the reverse.

Speaking of Azorean agriculture—though these volcanic islands, all rugged, lofty, and precipitous, present such an unpromising appearance from the sea—a closer inspection reveals luxuriant vegetation, rich pastures, and beautiful woods. The climate, though humid, is delightful, and, combined with the natural fertility of the soil, brings every sort of vegetable product to the utmost perfection.

Sugar cane, coffee, and tobacco grow luxuriantly on some of the islands, besides the vineyards and groves of orange and lemon trees. There is no doubt that fruits and plants of all kinds, from all countries, could be cultivated here with greater success than in most other parts of the world, but, unfortunately, the natives have neither the energy nor intelligence to turn the natural advantages of their position to the best account.

Their implements are of the rudest kind. In sowing they throw the seed about at random, calculating on the bounty of nature for a rich return, and they are never disappointed.

Altogether, the islands produce annually upward of 17,000 pipes of wine and about 160,000 boxes of oranges and lemons—which are mostly sent to England, the United States, Hamburg, and Brazil.

They also export considerable salted pork and beef to Madeira and Portugal, and a great deal of coarse linen made from home-grown flax. One of their most valuable productions is lupine, which here grows to extraordinary size, and is raised in great quantities.

The farinaceous seeds of it, after being soaked in sea water to get rid of their bitter taste, are a favorite article of food among the poorer classes; the green leaves are excellent fodder for the cattle; the dry stalks are used for firewood, and the rest is plowed under for fertilizer.

They say that the most dry and sandy soil, if “green manured” with lupine, is rendered fit for any crop. This is the very same “cornfield weed,” you know, which has been cultivated from time immemorial in Southern Europe and parts of Asia; the same which was the favorite “pulse” of the ancient Greeks and Romans; which the Athenians used to counteract the effect of drink, and Horace mentions as being used for money on the stage. Cato, Virgil, and Pliny refer to it, and 400 years ago Gerard wrote: “There be divers sorts of flat beans called lupine, some of the garden, and others wilde.” It is yet extensively cultivated in many parts of the world, especially in Egypt and the Mediterranean countries, for food, forage, and a fertilizer.

There are over eighty species of the shrubby tribe Genisteae, of the order Leguminosae all with flowers of pea-like form, blue, white, purple, or yellow, in long, terminal spikes, and with flat seeds bitter as gall until the flavor has been somewhat taken out of them. One variety, that with the blue flowers (lupine tremis, I believe), grows wild in our own country, in sandy places, from Canada to Florida: and we sometimes cultivate another species in our gardens, those with beautiful pink. white, or yellow flowers, though unaware of their very ancient and honorable family.

The range of the thermometer in the Azores is from 45 degrees Fahr, the lowest known extreme, or 48 degrees, the ordinary extreme of January, to 86 degrees, the highest known extreme of July near the level of the sea. But though the climate is so temperate and equable, the extremes of sensible heat and cold are greatly increased by the dampness of the atmosphere, which is so great that paper hangings will not adhere to the walls and the veneering of furniture soon slips off.

The island of Fayal comes next in due course, sailing southwest from Flores 114 miles. It is, perhaps, the most frequented of all the Azores, after St. Michael, as it has one of the best harbors in the archipelago and lies directly in the path of vessels crossing the Atlantic.

At any rate it has long been famous in America, and doubtless in Europe also, as the old-time paradise of absconding bank cashiers and swindlers of all sorts and conditions, who found it advisable to retire for a time from the public gaze.

The island got its singular name from a green shrub, the faya, which carpets all its valleys and clothes its mountains from top to bottom. Seen from afar, it is one immense conical mountain, rising to the clouds and bearing every trace of comparatively recent volcanic formation.

Its chief town, Villa da Horta, lies at the southwestern extremity, on a broad, deep, semi-circular bay, which is protected by two bold promontories that form the horns of the crescent. Besides its own headlands, Monte da Guia and Espalamaca, facing each other like watchful sentinels, the harbor of Horta is somewhat sheltered by the long island of Sao Jorge to the northward, while only four miles away the magnificent volcano of Pico lifts its broad shoulders as an efficient breakwater to the southeastern gales. Just north of Monte da Quia, the southwest headland, stands Monte Quemada, or Burnt Mountain, with its curiously colored red and brown cliffs and base of blackened slag, and cultivated terraces, like ancient battlements. It juts sharply into the sea, and on the reef extending from it is an uncompleted breakwater.

Among the patches of grain and corn and vineland, separated by tall hedges of cane, which crown the heights and terrace, their sides, you see the remains of ancient fortifications and two or three old castles, all fallen to decay. The first view of the harbor and city flashes upon the traveler like a dream of beauty. Villa da Horta occupies the entire shore of the bay, and clings to the steep sides of the hill that rises abruptly from the water’s edge—the quaint monotony of its one story, whitewashed buildings, with dingy red roofs, all apparently precisely alike, rising one above another, relieved by the bright green of orange groves and gardens, over which scores of windmills swing their lusty arms as if challenging any number of Azorean Don Quixotes to mortal combat. The principal street of the city follows the curve of the bay, all the way from Monte Quemada to Espalamaca, the two horns of the crescent, and is protected from the encroachments of the sea by a high, thick, parapeted wall of masonry. In front of this the ocean waves lapse gently upon a beach of glittering black sand. In the suburbs villas peer out from embowering foliage, and behind all, the smooth topped hills trend gradually toward the center of the island, until they are lost amid the clouds that encircle their summits.

Fannie B. Ward.