through it from the hills; and, as we descended the steep zigzag path cut in the southern cliffs, its limits were faintly marked out by the blue curtain of wood-smoke which hung over the cottages. The fires had just been lighted for the evening meal. The setting sun shone up the mouth of the hollow with a soft yellow light, illuminating one side and throwing the other into tender shadow. In one place the sunshine glittered on a thin silvery waterfall, which slowly turned over the edge of the distant precipice, in another it sparkled through a shower of spray, into which a snowy thread was broken in its long fall from the heights; and, as the soft clouds of vapour, into which other waterfalls dispersed, were wafted to and fro in the light evening breeze, like the cloud of incense from a censer, -it slightly tinged them with gold. Above our heads the hazy cliffs towered in their bold semicircle, diversified in colour by various shades of

green, brown, and grey; and, where the ledges of lava which projected through the soil had been wetted by streams and waterfalls, or by oozings from above, by streaks and bands of shining black. The sea in front of this vast theatre was brightly lighted by the sun, which, however, went

down soon afterwards behind a bank of heavy clouds, and left the valley and the village, with the cliffs behind, cold and lustreless.

Leaving this deep-seated valley, we passed through narrow lanes of stone walls to the dull and miserable village of Fajem Grande, where we were to sleep for the night. It was so late, that the villagers had returned from the fields; and, as strangers are not often to be seen there, a good deal of curiosity was excited by the arrival of a couple of palanquins, and the bustle of the bearers. We were set down before a low house in the middle of the village, having one dusty window and a loose chinky door, at which our men rapped for some time without effect, until first a dog heard them and answered, and then a gaping girl reconnoitred us round the corner of the house, and suddenly retreated; and, at last, after repeated knocking, the master of the house appeared, and asked us to walk in. In his dress and general appearance, he was a fair type of a large class of young men to be seen in the island.

The men of Flores may, with few exceptions, be properly divided into two classes; those who

wear boots, and those who do not.

The bare

92

THE MEN OF FLORES.

footed men are the peasants of the place, clad in dark woollen jackets, and white linen or chocolate-coloured linsey-woolsey trowsers, parti-coloured conical caps of knitted cotton or worsted, or carapuças of the same colour as their jackets, and with small turn-up triangular snouts. The materials of their dress are commonly made in the island; and, as there is no pretension about them, but, as with the costume of most of the peasantry in the Azores, the choice of dyes is good, no glaring colours offend the eye.

with the class who wear boots.

Not so, however,

They are a little

higher than the peasantry; and, instead of encouraging home manufactures, procure their dress from England; and, having a dangerous taste for gaudy finery, buy and wear the brightest cotton prints that Manchester can produce, which, with frequent washing and hot suns, soon lose their brilliancy, and hang about the shoulders flimsy and faded.

In such a suit of faded prints was the person dressed who opened the door. The smart cotton jacket from Manchester was wrinkled and soiled, the trowsers were dirty, and the American hat of crumpled straw had lost much of its transatlantic

FLORES COTTAGE.

bloom. The room in which we sat

93

so melan

choly and dark as to look like a place of interment was a store and granary, as well as a sitting-room. It had upon the black earthen floor sacks of wheat, beans, and flour, field-tools and potatoes, as well as massive wooden chairs, with dropsical legs, ungainly benches and chests, as capacious and immoveable as the muniment chests in a parish vestry. From the rafters under the roof were suspended hundreds of the yellow bunches of Indian corn, with long canes, ox goads, and poles; and on the table where we dined, there were all the contents of Swift's kitchen-drawer, and "something more;" tin-canisters, candlesticks, broken lanterns, shattered looking-glasses, rusty razors, cups full of aged corks, cracked tea-pots, china dishes, loose candles, rusty keys, empty wine-bottles, wooden stools, all more or less harmonised (like ruins in a fog) with thick films of grey dust.

nails,

After offering us seats, our entertainer went into the next room for a moment or two, and reappearing with a short clay pipe, well saturated with tobacco-juice, pressed us to smoke, sat down on his chest, lighted his pipe, and after a silence

of some minutes repeated the same question about the rumoured war between England and Russia, which had been propounded at Largens; and, although he did not express his disappointment in quite so broad a way as the governor, looked equally blank at our answer. There was, however, a topic of livelier interest, after a long day's journey, than Russian wars or tobaccopipes; and having fully discussed that topic, we went out to look at the village before it was quite dark.

--

Loose stone walls of dark lava, three or four feet high, with thatched and tiled cottages behind them, of the same gloomy colour; here and there a larger and more decent house staringly white-washed, or of sombre weather-stained white, standing close to the street, without yard or wall in front; stony lanes between the houses and walls, abounding in grunting hogs, chubby children, poultry, and peasants, were all that we saw in the streets of Fajem Grande. A group of the villagers stood where three roads met, and brightened up the street with their various-coloured costumes, and a few late labourers were coming home with their weary oxen, who dragged between them the wooden plough, used in the