CHAPTER II.
FROM LISBON TO MADEIRA.
My allotted week in Lisbon came to an end only too soon: in the society of friends, and in the Camonian room (Bibliotheca Nacional), which contains nearly 300 volumes, I should greatly have enjoyed a month. The s.s.Luso (Captain Silva), of the 'Empresa Insulana,' one of the very few Portuguese steamers, announced her departure for December 20; and I found myself on board early in the morning, with a small but highly select escort to give me God-speed.
Unfortunately the 'May weather' had made way for thecacimbas (mists) of a rainy sou'-wester. The bar broke and roared at us; Cintra, the apex of Lisbon's extinct volcano and the Mountain of the (Sun and) Moon, hid her beautiful head, and even the Rock of Lisbon disdained the normal display of sturdy flank. Then set in abrise carabinée, which lasted during our voyage of 525 miles, and theLuso, rolling like a moribund whale, proved so lively that most of the fourteen passengers took refuge in their berths. A few who resisted the sea-fiend's assaults found no cause of complaint: the captain and officers were exceedingly civil and obliging, and food and wines were good and not costly.
From Madeira theLuso makes, once a month, the tour of the Azores, touching at each island—a great convenience—and returning in ten days.
Early on Thursday, the 22nd, the lumpy, churning sea began to subside, and the invisible balm seduced all the sufferers to the quarter-deck. They were wild to sight Madeira as children to see the rising of the pantomime-curtain. There was not much to gaze at; but what will not attract man's stare at sea?—a gull, a turtle, a flying fish! By the by, Captain Tuckey, of the Congo Expedition, remarked the 'extraordinary absence of sea-birds in the vicinity of Madeira and the Canaries:' they have since learned the way thither. Porto Santo appeared as a purple lump of three knobs, a manner of 'gizzard island,' backed by a deeper gloom of clouds—Madeira. Then it lit up with a pale glimmer as of snow, the effect of the sun glancing upon the thin greens of the northern flank; and, lastly, it broke into two masses—northern and southern—of peaks and precipices connected by a strip of lowland.
It is generally held that the discovery of the Madeiran group (1418-19) was the first marking feature of the century which circumnavigated Africa, and that Porto Santo was 'invented 'by the Portuguese before Madeira. The popular account, however, goes lame. For instance, the story that tried and sturdy soldiers and seamen were deterred from advancing a few miles, and were driven back to Portugal by the 'thick impenetrable darkness which was guarded by a strange noise,' and by anile fancies about the 'Mouth of Hell' and 'Cipango,' reads like mere stuff and nonsense. Again, great are the difficulties in determining the nationality of the explorers, and settling the conflicting claims of the French, Genoese, Portuguese, Spanish, English, and Arabs. History, and perhaps an aptitude for claiming, have assigned the honour exclusively to Lusitania: and every guide-book tells the same old tale. But I have lived long enough to have seen how history is written; and the discovery was, at best, a mere re-discovery, as we learn from Pliny (vi. 36), whose 'insulae purpurariae' cannot be confounded [Note: Mr. Major, however, would identify the Purple Islands with O
