dendrons and breathes of perfume. The very air is a delight, and pulsates with life, helping to sustain and enrich floral vegetation. You feel its invigorating effects and tonic influence as you move towards the undulating uplands shadowed by noble peaks. The road winds up embowered slopes, past welling springs, back and forth in zigzags, over quaintlyconstructed bridges, across the steep faces of the foothills, along narrow crests caressed by perfumed breezes, till you feel that you are fed, filled and intoxicated with the sweet air of mountain land. Every foot of arable land is under cultivation. Lava fences three feet high mark the highway on each side and divide the lots. Rivulets of water course along in stone channels by the side of the roadway, and the noise of running water, so dear to the Azorean heart, is continuous.

At the town of Lomba da Cruz the route winds to the right through gulches and mountain ravines richly clothed with chestnuts, cork oaks and alders. On every side are water threads, jets and cascades made possible by the strange formation of the erratic lava and volcanic settling. Camoëns, the Portuguese Virgil, took his descriptions of the “enchanted Island of Venus" from this immediate neighbourhood. The "sonorosa lympha fugitiva” and the springs and runnels leaping down the hillsides so beautifully woven into his "Luciad" are as brightly beautiful and inviting to-day as they were to the great poet two centuries ago.

The view from the summit of the Morro,

which we ascended in the afternoon, is entrancing. On every side are the deep, breathing waters of the ocean, whose ululations at night are strangely weird. To the south are the bold and pine-covered peaks of Balho sloping down to fertile valleys, where villages nestle, where cross-crowned spires pierce the drifting clouds, and where fields, green with waving rye and clover, stretch away to the sea and complete a ravishing panorama. As we descended the Morro our route carried us by torrent-swept defiles of rugged ranges, where centuries of rain and erosion have opened and deepened ravines into fearsome canyons. Marvellously beautiful and fair to look upon is the richness of floral apparel in which these hills are attired.

No florist in Canada could offer you, for love or money, a bouquet like unto that which you may gather and fashion here in ten minutes: heliotropes and scented verbenas, blue and scarlet salvias, dahlias and fuchsias of the more primitive kind, chrysanthemums, and great vines of the yellowflowered madre silva, gay and bright from sheer force of unchecked luxuriance. In the valley of Capellas the wind is beautiful. In the trees it is as the noise of the sea, but muffled. Every leaf that trembles adds a delicate tone to the murmur which at times is like unto the singing of bees when the hive swarms. It has the sense of touch. It is in love with the leaves and caresses the minutest blades of grass.

In this moist air, and at this time of the year

the trees have all the tints of yellow as if the leaves were expiring the gold absorbed in summer. There is no falling of the leaf, as we understand the word. Leaf after leaf detaches itself from the stem, and, proud of its golden colour, quits the parental home, and elopes with the first fair breeze that woos it. The sky, when the sun is declining, has the tint of bronze-dark orange and dark blue—and the transparent light of alabaster. At night a bird whistles notes which fall like drops of an opiate on soft marble. Truly the valley of Capellas is an idyllic vale, where nature has accumulated a profusion of riches; a Biblical Eden, where we breathe an air impregnated with an odour of luxuriant vegetation.

On our return to Ponta Delgada we lunched at Ramaltra. The only tannery on the island of San Miguel is in operation in this town, a miserable burg full of half-wild pariah dogs and smells that could be photographed. The tameness of all domestic animals on this island, of cattle, sheep, dogs, pigs and poultry, resulting from habitual kind treatment, is striking to a foreigner. We noticed this in particular in Ramaltra, where a cow walked deliberately up to one of our party, licked his hand and rested her head on his shoulder. On entering the cerejaria, or village inn, the mistress of the house approached deferentially, and courtesying, said: "Louvada seja Nosso Senhor Jesus Christus," praised be Jesus Christ our Lord. "Epara sempre seja louvada"-may He be praised forever and ever -spoke back Augusto Periera, one of our party.

This is a common salutation, and reminds one of the Irish peasant's, "God save all here," and the answer, "God save you kindly, sir." Our luncheon was really a dinner, consisting of sopa secca, "dry soup," made of wheaten bread, beef, cabbage, and mint, followed by bacalhau-dried codfish, boiled and soaked previously for eighteen hours in running water. This is a national dish among the Azoreans. Bread of rye, butter and cheese were served with Minno wine of fine fruitness and possessing a stringency and sharpness enough to take one's breath away. Then followed coffee and cigarettes. We settled our account, shook hands with the kindly people of the house, and reached home about ten o'clock. So clear was the atmosphere and bright the heavens that from the balcony of our hotel we looked out upon the ocean, and could clearly discern the island of Santa Maria floating like a misty mass fifty miles away on the Atlantic.

CHAPTER III

FURNAS AND THE GARDEN OF THE GODS

On this morn

When the exulting elements in scorn

Satiated with destroyed destruction lay
Sleeping in beauty on their mangled prey,
As panthers sleep.

-Shelley.

"SEE Furnas, and if you are going to pass the winter in the Azores, Horta is the place for you,' said senhor D'Ullua to me one morning in the breakfast room of the "Azor." Horta is the seaport city of Fayal and is grinding its teeth with jealous rage in face of the growing prosperity of Ponta Delgada. The senhor was from Fayal and was loyal to his island. He had passed a rather uncomfortable year in Boston and was successfully trying to forget his English, which he spoke in fragments. He was also making commendable but futile efforts to erase from his memory all recollection of the climate of New England which he blasphemously declared was "Nove mezes de inverno e tres de inferno"-nine months of frost and ice and three of hell. I made no attempt to contradict him for I was then an exile from my own land, driven to the South by a northern specialist.

So the next morning in the company of a Lisbon gentleman and his wife I started for Furnas. The