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Updated: June 8, 2025
They had been endeavouring, during the course of the fifteenth century, to find out by sea a way to the countries from which the Moors brought them ivory and gold dust across the desert. They discovered the Madeiras, the Canaries, the Azores, the Cape de Verd islands, the coast of Guinea, that of Loango, Congo, Angola, and Benguela, and, finally, the Cape of Good Hope.
And yet, marvelous to relate, she did not founder, but kept afloat, and on the morning of March 4, sailors and Admiral saw land not far away. "The Madeiras!" cried some, just as they had cried before when off the Azores. "Spain!" cried others, more hopefully.
The Clypeaster altus, Spondylus gaederopus, Pectunculus pilosus, Cardita calyculata, and several other shells, serve to identify this formation with that of the Madeiras, and Ancillaria glandiformis, which is not rare, and some other fossils, remind us of the faluns of Touraine. The sixty-two Miocene species which I collected in the Grand Canary were referred by the late Dr.
Columbus lived in Lisbon from 1470 to 1484, married there the daughter of Bartholomew Perestrello, the discoverer and captain-general under Prince Henry of Porto Santo in the Madeiras; and, besides his voyages on the Mediterranean and to England and Iceland, went repeatedly to the coast of Guinea and lived for some years in the Madeiras.
But not to insist upon this Circumstance; if the Country Madog discovered was Madeira, or any of the Western Islands, he must have found them uninhabited, and entirely uncultivated, covered with Wood, and without any Traces of Human Beings; for as the Doctor himself says, this was the state of the Madeiras when discovered by the Portuguese in 1519. Robertson. ubi supra. Vol. I. p. 64.
My grandfather's bark 'Charming Sally', Captain Stanwix, having set out from Bristol on the 15th of April, 1736, with a fair wind astern and a full cargo of English goods below, near the Madeiras fell in with foul weather, which increased as she entered the trades.
It is probable that their "land" was nothing more than clouds which, owing to certain winds of that particular region, lie low on the horizon for a long time; but the people of the Canaries, and of the Madeiras too, all firmly believed they saw Antilla and the other "western lands" of legend; and Columbus, nodding his head wisely, told how the king of Portugal had shown him some reeds, as large as those of India, that had been washed up on the western shore of the Azores.
"We should have read up the Madeiras before leaving home," said one of the tourists at our early breakfast the morning after our arrival, "but we were too busy then with other things. While you were ashore last night I found in the library an old English book of travel that gave some information about the islands." "Share it with us while the stewards are bringing the coffee, won't you?"
The community took as much pride in her adventures as it did in his achievements. The Madeiras were very happy together all through those days, and very proud of each other. She recognised that her father was superior to the Canaan men, that they did what he told them to do, and he recognised that she was the most wonderful child, and the most beautiful, that had ever come into the world.
The old historic Madeiras, which have warmed the periods of our famous rhetoricians of the past and burned in the impassioned eloquence of our earlier political demigods, have nothing to mark them externally but a bit of thread, it may be, round the neck of the decanter, or a slip of ribbon, pink on one of them and blue on another.
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