STARTING FOR CORVO.

and a Portuguese who spoke English.

57

The

weather being fine and promising, we have consulted with Dr. Mackay, who advises us to start for Corvo immediately, while, in the meantime, he has very kindly offered to make arrangements for our excursion round Flores.

CHAPTER VI.

O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here!

How beauteous mankind is!

THE TEMPEST.

I would have you know, sir errant, that in these little places every thing is talked of, and every thing censured. And my life for yours, that priest must be over-and-above good who obliges his parishioners to speak well of him.

DON QUIXOTE, book ii. chap. 4.

Island of Corvo.- Meeting of the Corvo men with their wives. -Father Lopes. - Hospitality.-Houses of the Corvo men.

– Beautiful girl.— General beauty of the women. - Visit to the Caldeira. - Crossing to Flores. — Boatmen.

APRIL 23, TUESDAY. At an early hour we left the "Flower of Fayal" for the Island of Corvo, without landing at Santa Cruz. Our boat was a large, rough, unpainted wherry, with a single sail. Our boat's crew consisted of seven men,

CROSSING TO CORVO.

59

besides the two Corvoites, whom we took with us, and who worked their passage over. We sailed and rowed, the boatmen occasionally resting on their oars, and employing their time in rolling up paper cigars, which they puffed and handed round from mouth to mouth. In the corner of the leg of mutton sail was "W. Hart, Maker, London,”-three plain words that spoke more plainly of the cause of the wealth of England than the best pointed period man's wit could have devised.

Five hours' pulling and sailing brought us to Corvo. It is a high mountain, about twenty miles round, rising abruptly from the ocean, with a rough inhospitable coast of dark serrated rocks, running in reefs from the coast, and rising high out of the water in one place, or blackening the surface in another, or sunk so deep that the waves only eddy and bubble over them. On the southern side a little village is built. It has a church, and this, with two white houses near it, are the only habitations to be seen from the sea, to mark the spot where the village stands. The land bordering the village was divided into fields by grey stone walls, between which plots of beans, green corn, tender flax, and streaks of

60

APPEARANCE OF CORVO.

yellow cabbage-flowers, made up a lively patchwork. As we neared the shore, we could discover several groups of women, with their children, who appeared to be anxiously watching our movements from behind the walls, and, as we coasted along to the landing-place, kept pace with the boat, stopping every now and then to talk and point, and then again hurried on to meet it. These we found afterwards were the wives and families of the two lost men. Expecting an extraordinary show of feeling from people so given to act and possessing so little power of concealing what they feel, we were very anxious to see the meeting between the wives and their husbands. We threaded our way through ledges and reefs of lava, which completely concealed the landing-place, to a nook among the rocks, where there was a little sandy beach used by the fishermen to haul up their boats. Here we found the joyful party eagerly waiting for the boat.

Some of the younger ones had ventured out upon the rocks, to catch the first glimpse and give the first salutation, others ran into the water, and the two wives stood near the water's edge, looking sad and frightened, with some of the young ones taking hold of their skirts; and

MEETING OF THE LOST MEN.

61

two old women, the mothers or grandmothers, probably, of the men, sat silently down on the sands. But there was no noisy joy. The men jumped on shore, clasped their wives with great affection, wept, turned away their heads, and stooped down to caress their children. The women looked over their husbands' shoulders, with eyes full of tears, and turned them down on the ground. "The wisest beholder, that knew no more but seeing, could not say, if the importance were joy or sorrow; but in the extremity of the one it must needs be." We felt as if intruding on a meeting too sacred for strangers' eyes to interrupt, and walked on towards the village.

This was nearly a mile from the landing-place; the path to it led through the walled enclosures, in which we passed several girls running towards the shore, followed by men and children. We had heard a good deal of the extreme poverty of Corvo, and if poverty means the want of shoes, and mirrors, and oranges, and cane-bottomed chairs, certainly the people can boast of none of these. Their dingy clothes, too, which are principally homespun, give them rather an unwealthy appearance. But they are poor only in