and Pico de Neve, (whose bare summit towers above the others)
immediately behind it. As we’sail past the cliffs and rocks which
follow, we shudder at the sight of the peasantry, crawling down to
cultivate a niche scarcely accessible, and on the very brink of
eternity ; whilst the fishermen let themselves down by ropes to
some favourite point, regardless of the rude crosses, which, erected
on the lofty crags, record the sad fate of many who have preceded
them. Approaching MachicO, the basalt becomes of a deeper,
duller red, loses all traces of columnar form, is full of horizontal
fissures, and presents vast caverns near the sea, sometimes divided
by rude shafts, and sometimes blocked up by huge fragments,
recalling the cave of Cacus. Of all formations, the basaltic presents
the most sublime scenery, and suggests the grandest natural catastrophes
to the poet : we cannot wonder at the pleasing gloom Of
Ossian, when we recollect, that he sung amongst its vast columnar
caves, and frowning peaks. The bay of Machico seems to have
been formed by a great slip of the eastern cliffs, and is so inviting,
that it is not surprising, that our countryman Machim should have
directed his shattered bark to its shelter, rather than explore
any further.
“ With longing eyes observing to survey
Some smooth ascent, or safe sequestered bay.
Between the parting rocks at length he spied ,
A falling stream with gentle waters glide,
Where to the Seas the shelving shore declined,
And formed à bay, impervious tò thè wind.”
The fragments of basalt washed down by the river, or torrent, of
Machico, abound in olivine (sometimes presenting the regular
crystallization of chrysolite), pyrites, and lime ; the latter, generally
botryoidal, and lining small cells.
My last excursion was to the Lagoa, or The Crater, as it has been
called by some, about eleven miles to the eastward of Funchal
It is within a mere hillock, of an imperfect, conical form, on a plain
2406 feet above the sea, from which it is only three miles distant
on the south east, it is about ten miles distant from the east, and
thirty from the west end of the island, and has peaks or mountains
in its rear, rising from 2000 to 3600 feet above it. These mountains
being composed of ridges or streams of basalt, of the same
nature as that at the water side, alternating with tufa and scoriae,
and, intersected by descending dikes, even at a height of 5000
feet, no one can conceive them to have been masses lifted up from
the sea, at the foot of which a crater afterwards opened, as in the
formation of Sabrina. The interior form of the Lagoa is certainly
in its favour, but there is no wall, or even fragment of a wall, nor,
indeed, is there an atom of lava, pumice, or obsidian to be picked up
in its neighbourhood. There is not a single ridge or stream of
basalt to be traced from it, nor is there a single bed of scori®, both
of which would have remained in evidence, however long the
crater may. have ceased to vomit them ; 1 the remoteness of which
period makes the absence of all traces of sulphur still more extraordinary
: in short, the mineralogist would quit it totally disappointed.
Its size, which every observation on record would require
to be the more considerable, from its very low position, is truly
diminutive, the greater axe of the ellipse (bearing \E. 3.0°, S.)
being only ; about 240 feet, the lesser (bearing S. .38°, W.) only
190 ifeet, and the depth only fifty-four feet. There was a small
pool of rain water in it about a foot deep, and the whole surface
was covered with a deep bed of vegetable earth, which, from the
evidence of that in the neighbourhood, probably reposes on tufa1.
1 The length of Madeira, from Porta de Pargo to Porta St. Lorenzo, is9f P. leagues
f32J G. miles), according to the survey of Col. Paulo d’Almeida, being 6 G. miles
less than the distance between, the same points in Johnston's Geo-hydrographic Survey
of Madeira, published by Faden in 1790: the greatest breadth is from Porta da Cruz