MADEIRA.
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charts is correct; at the same time there is so little, or I may say, no intercourse between them and Madeira, that whether they are round or square, whether they are one hundred, or one thousand leagues off, whether they make wine or beer, are matters of much doubt. Yellow fever, it also appears, rages in some, and the plague in others; the wine, if it can be called wine, is, according to a few enterprising merchant-adventurers, so detestable, that the smallest admixture of it would infallibly spoil forty times its quantity of the true old London Particular: so that all the idle stories which we hear ignorantly handed about in England of wine from Fayal and Teneriffe being re-exported from Madeira as the genuine production of the latter island, are, without question, entirely false. And such being the case, it is truly wonderful that a spot comparatively so inconsiderable should be able to supply the enormous demand for the wine called Madeira, from England, the European continent, the West Indies, and both Americas. The town of Funchal stretches along the margin of the bay for nearly a mile and a half, but it is barely a third of that size in breadth in any part. It is by no means so dirty as the Portuguese like, but the English residents are so influential here, that they have been able to exercise a tyranny of cleanliness, which the natives sullenly endure at the hazard of catching colds. The cathedral is a fine building, the