Six months in the West-Indies, in 1825

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MADEIRA.

elegant, the chapel classical, and the summerhouse, at a little distance, commands a most magnificent prospect of the varied landscape below. In returning more quietly through the town, I saw that happen to others which had not happened to me. Some of the midshipmen, being on shore, had been making themselves amends for spare living and hard watching during the gale, as they had a clear right to do: then they must ride, and were started of course in the manner which I have described. As the fortuitous concourse of atoms would order it, at the angle of a street which they were doubling, they met the Bishop of Madeira in his palanquin; the two foremost weathered him, and bore away; the two hindmost came athwart hawse upon his Lordship, threw him upon his beam ends, and themselves went down head foremost in the mud. This had like to have been a sad business with these young gentlemen, but Dom Frei Joaquim de Menezes Ataide not being hurt, and knowing the land privileges of his Majesty's naval officers, hoped there was no limb broken, got into his seat again, and wished them a good evening, which was very kind of the Bishop, who is indeed a good man, and much respected in his diocese *. * The name of the Bishop puts me in mind of his protege, the great poet of Madeira. Francisco de Paula Medina e Vasconcellos has written an epic poem, en-


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