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STYLE OF BEAUTY.

When the fullness of figure is relieved by height it almost becomes an advantage; and in the first freshness of youth I have seen an under-tint of carnation glowing through the dark cheek with great richness, and as it were sunniness of effect add to this fine arms; small and well-formed feet; a profusion of jet-black hair; the depth and darkness of eye which I have spoken of; and withal a languid, lazy, almost boudeuse expression of countenance and carriage; and you have a Madeira belle of which I think I have, at least, seen one exemplar.

What charms they have, they quickly lose. They marry early, and from their singular habits of inaction and indolence soon grow fat; and it is incre dible how short a time effaces all trace not merely of beauty, but of youth. I have seen women of five-and-twenty whom it was difficult to believe under forty.

Jan. 21. It is not every day that we can get to the mountains here; at this season they are frequently, perhaps more days than not, enveloped in clouds. This morning, however, the summits looked open, and we were tempted to an excursion to the ice-house; a deposit for snow, situate at nearly the highest point of the mountains visible from Funchal. We ascended by the road described on a former day; and, passing round the heads

ICE-HOUSE/VI

59.

of several ravines (among the rest a very deep one, distinguished as that of the Waterfall,) reached a kind of level Fell, or Serra, called the Balcão. The ascent is one of nearly three hours. In clear wea→ ther the view of Funchal from hence is very striking. We were but just in time to see it to-day, for bright as had been the morning, the clouds were beginning to gather fast around us.

At the ice-house we gave our men and horses a rest, and rambled on foot towards the Pico dos Arieros, a very lofty summit, that rises a little to the north-west of it. A narrow ridge here divides the heads of two deep ravines, and forms an isthmus between them. That to the south is a branch of the Curral; it appeared of great depth; the sides of almost precipitous rock, but affording in every rift an anchorage for the Til and Vinhatico to strike deep their roots, and thence stretch their broad shadow over the abyss below. The hollow was filling fast with vapour, which seemed to rise incessantly from the bottom, and hung its white shroud over every crag of the precipicethere was something almost mysterious in this motion of the cloud-and in the glimpses which it betrayed of the gray rock and dark green foliage between its snowy drifts.

The ravine to the north was already completely filled with this mist. It lay quiet and massed in

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MOUNTAIN-MISTS.

the hollow, nearly reaching to the spot where we stood. We amused ourselves with rolling pieces of frock down into their hidden depths, and in listening to the course of the missive, the bounds and rebounds of which continued to be audible for a time incredibly long after it had been lost to our sight.

The employment was amusing enough, but we paid for it rather more than it was worth. The clouds in the mean time had covered the higher summits of the mountains around us, so that when we thought of returning, they were no longer distinguishable. Deprived of these landmarks, it was not difficult for us to lose our way, which we soon found that we had effectually done; and, instead of approaching the ice-house, were descending the misty depths of a steep ravine, of which we knew neither the name nor the direction.

In the present state of the atmosphere, and utterly ignorant as we were of our bearings, there was little chance of recovering the track to the ice-house. After much rambling to no purpose, we began to abandon all hope of being able to do so, and thought it the best course to descend to the bottom of the ravine, which we suspected might be that of the Waterfall, and so make our way as well as we could along the rivercourse to the city. The scheme we might have

LOSE OUR WAY.

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known was impracticable, for the heads of these ravines are invariably enclosed by perpendicular cliffs; the bottoms, too, are commonly impassable from the rocky masses that cover the surface, and the windings of the torrent, which sweeps from one side to the other. However, for want of a better alternative, we began our descent; in some parts it was not without difficulty, but we soon came to a point where the aplomb of the precipice debarred all further progress. At the same time a partial breaking of the mist disclosed the hollow below us-a deep narrow ravine, enclosed between cliffs which, over-hung with vinhaticos, shewed black in the dusk.

We climb back again, and after a time fall in with a slight goat-track, which at length leads us to the edge of another and apparently much wider and deeper chasm than that which we had left. The day was now near its close. Already the chances were that we should pass the night in the mountains; a necessity which, in this climate, I did not contemplate with any peculiar dread, but my companion, who is something of an invalid, was not by any means equally reconciled to it. Persuading himself that the valley beneath us was that of the Curral, he proposed that we should descend, and endeavour to make our way to the house of the Padre of the Livramento church. It seemed

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ADVENTURE IN THE

hardly possible that by any error of reckoning we 'could have got in the direction of the Curral; however I'acquiesced, thinking that at any rate we should get a warmer and more sheltered gîte for the night below, than on these summits. Accordingly we began to go down, following the path as long as we could; but it soon became undistinguishable, and we then hastened our descent in the most direct way, forcing a passage through the thicker part of the underwood that clothed the steep; and often hanging from one tree till we got a footing on another below it. It was a wild and gloomy scene-the depths of the ravine beneath seemed deepened and darkened by the mists, which continued to roll their white waves about in the valley, producing the strangest and most impressive effects of light and form-the roar of the torrent became more audible as we got lowerand every effect, whether of sound or sight, was heightened by the dusk of twilight—and perhaps, too, by the circumstances of our situation, which had enough of adventure and uncertainty in it to excite the imagination, without oppressing us by the apprehension of any very serious inconve nience.

We descended a good way, (several hundred feet I should guess) and pretty rapidly, for latterly our course had not been much out of the perpendi