Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/71

INHABITANTS OF MADEIEA. 51 Madeira, and brushwood has become so rare that cow-dung has now to be used for fuel. The dracona, a typical Macaronesian tree, has disappeared from Porto-Santo since 1828, and has also become very rare in Madeira, where it mostly dies without fructifying. In all the lowlying grounds cultivated plants have replaced the old vegetation, fields and orchards ascending as high as 2,500 feet, which is the limit for the cultivated species of the temperate zone. But the laurel and ferns reach as far as 5,350 feet, where is met the Oreodaphne fcetenSy which emits such a fa3tid odour that the woodman is unable to fell it all at once. Fauna. The original fauna of the archipelago is very poor in species, being limited to a lizard, a bat, a bird, a bee, a grasshopper, a cricket, a few shells and insects, and a spider which weaves no web, but captures flies by fascinating them, as the snake does the frog. Of the 176 land-shells 38 are European; but each island has its special varieties, the Desertas 10, Porto-Santo 44, and Madeira as many as 61. All the quadrupeds have been introduced by the colonists, even the destructive rabbit and rats. The marine fauna is also mainly European, fewer species of the equatorial Atlantic having been discovered than naturalists had expected from the latitude. According to Lowe, the fishes are essentially Lusitanian, occupying an intermediate position between those of the British Isles and the Mediterranean. Inhabitants. Like that of the Azores, the population of Madeira is of very mixed origin. Perestrello, leader of the first settlers, was an Italian ; Jews and Moors have taken refuge in the island; Negroes have been imported as slaves; the English, masters of Madeira during the wars of the Empire, left behind them numerous families; and since the development of ocean steam navigation many strangers have settled here. But all these heterogeneous elements became successively absorbed in the dominating Portuguese race, and nearly all the inhabitants have black eyes, coarse dark hair, and a swarthy complexion, far too general not to be attributed in many cases to a Negro strain. Eeally beautiful features are seldom met, except in the rural districts, but many have a pleasant expression, due to their healthy appear- ance, graceful carriage, and well-proportioned figures. Like their Portuguese ancestry, the people are as a rule very courteous, of a mild, amiable, and cheerful temperament, and law-abiding. The population increases rapidly, having risen from 16,000 in the beginning of the sixteenth century and 64,000 in 1768, to 100,000 in 1825 and over 135,000 at present. It has thus been more than doubled in a century, while the number of births exceeds the mortality by from 1,500 to 2,000. Yet scarcity at times causes a falling off, as between the years 1839-1847, when the potato disease, followed by much distress, reduced the population by over 10,000. The malady of the vine was still more disastrous, and the visitation of cholera in 1856 caused a total loss of about 10,000, victims partly of the epidemic, partly of want and exhaustion. Several ailments prevail which one would scarcely expect to find in such a highly