Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-11-30

our road, now nearly an unfrequented briddlt
path, came TO an apparently abrupt termina.
tion. Quietly dismounting, old Manuel
babe me follow, and in a moment more j
seemed that half the space beneath the hori-
zon had disappeared.
"Seep said Manuel with lofty gesture,
"there lie the Seven Cities before youp
No real seven cities were to be seen. But
we stood upon the brink of undoubtedly the
| yastest extinct volcano crater In the world.
| We were nearly 5000 feet above its lowest
levels. 1t was over nine miles in circumfer-
ence. AT score of places near us on the
north and east sides, one could step from q
bunch of upland heather and fall sheer 800
! feet. Though now but little after midday
its lower swails were purply and dark.
Hawks circled about its jutting teeth-like
edges in search of prey. A thousand feet
below, gulls like flakes of snow, futtered,
poised and uttered their gurgling, whistling
cries. Two lakes like bits of polished glass,
reflect in midday the stars. These are
Lagoa Azul and Lagoa Grande. The first
is light blue in color, and the second,
though connected with the former by living
stream, is deep green.
A PECULIAR DIFFERENCE.
No one has ever taken the trouble to ac-
count for this startling difference in color,
nor to settle the question how the as remark
able name of Settle Cidades, or "Seven
Cities, where there never was a city, came
to be given the lone and eerie spot. On one
side OF the valley crater are seven ghoStly
hollows or tarns, whose centers show the
CLEAN of shadowed pools. Sette concavi-
dades means "seven hollows;" and, in any
event, if you come to the Azores and jour
ney to this wondrous and grewsome crater,
you will come in fact not to "SeVen Cities"
nor to any other number, but to the great
valley of the ''Seven Hollows." Away
down, down there in the dark and purple of
the western edge of the basin are few tiny
specks Of white.
This, Manuel tells me, is the village of
Sette Cidades. The only signs of life in the
splendid but lonely spot are there. So round
and round we went, here crowding the lava
walls lest we topple over; there clinging to
the furniture of our dOnkeys for precipitous
upward scrambles; again barely escaping
plunges over deep abysses, often passing
wholly underneath mistlike waterfalls from
the heights above; and, at last, coming to
cIrcllng gentle descents where we gladly re-
mounted our donkeys, which seampered into
the little village as if conscious of possible
hospitalitles for the coming night.
But both they and myself were disap-
pointed. The one ramshackle estalugem or
inn was beneath old ManuePs notice. But
little beyond we would find friends and
true Azorean hospitality, he said. wanted
to loiter in the place, such quaint little
Caatskili village 1t was. But my guide was
unrelenting, and our donkeys were merci-
lessly larrupped and goaded into a lively
pace.
SIMILAR LEGEND.
As best might told Manuel how like
Irving's simple village it was and of poor
old Rips adventures in the CatskiIls His
eyes instantly kindIed. In Portugal, he
said, and here in this very spot, the legend
had its prototype. Surely our great Ameri-
can escriptor or literator must have carried
his masterpiece over in his baggage from
Portugal, whence it had come from his own
beloved island of St. Michael And as we
ascended the mountain side, pausing at |
times to emphasize his tale with gestures |
toward the receding village below and the |
darkening and forbidding heights above, old |
Manuel unfolded the centuries-old legend of |
the Azorean Rip Van Winkie.
Dobrado Madraco, who had no other |
name, for his peasant neighbors had from |
his boyhood called him "tWo-fold yagrant"
with his wife Gritadora, or 'tbrawling wo-
man, " had for many years kept the little
bodega or inn which we had passed in the |
sleepy village of Seven Cities below More
truly speaking, the inn had kept them. Do
brado loved quiet and peace elis4iestas in i
the sun upon the long wooden benches in
front of their inn, which seldom boasted a
guest, the children of the village b!eachers
and the mountain goatherds, and, above all.
q full fagon of the sweet wine of Fayal.
GritadorR loved only the sound of her own
remorseless tongue. 1t ran like the upland
wind mills by day, but worse than all like
torrent by night. So shrlI and
devilish became her termagant uproar as
the years passed on that Dobrado was worn
to skeleton for lack of sleep, and one by
one the peasants left the village to get be-
yond the piercing sounds OF the vixen'S aw-
ful tongue. One dreary night when the At
antic was pounding the cliffs until the
sland trembled, Gritadora's fierce spirit
'utran even her tongue. Seizing pike she
poor Dobrado out into the night
hrieking her denunciations above the
torn, and following him like the tempest
tself half way up the mountain, never eeas-
ng her outcries and punishment until her
fugitive husband had fallen in swoon of
oain and fright and thus escaped her in the
darkness; whereupon the vixen returned in
'eace and qniet to the village.
SAVED FROM A sCoLD.
banking the Virgin both for his life and
he peace Of the tempest, resolved to pene-
rate the vast forests at the brow of the
from which he had often seen
be smoke lazily curling as he half dozed
etore his inn door. Hours of the night
assed as he clambered the mountain; but
be falling trees and all hidden dangers
7ere as nothing to the terrors from which q
e had at last escaped; and on suddenly I
merging from deep gorge along which he t
ad for some time travelled over frequented
pad, he came upon an assembly of appar- l
ntly black people making merry about i
umberless fires. I
He begged their hospitality, and, in Gods '
anne, their succor from an awful woman's q
wful tongue He was welcomed royalty, G
iyen food and drink, and finally, overcome I
y 2excess of fatigue and promotions, :
iven couch of fir boughs; and, as all his
fe he had never known peaceful slumber :
q account of the vicious clatter of Grita- I
ora's voice, fell into such deep sleep that q
ON that time to this he has never awak-
continued Manuel, "our !
land proverb, applied to a scolding wife, .
lat 'he should have couch with the car
)neiros. L
Scarcely had he finished this tale when we a
merged from the same defle into a large 9
mp of mountain carboneiros. or charcoal =
lrners, at the precise spot where Dobrado
I'd been succored from the shrew Gritadora. p
hese proved to be old friends of Manuel. i
ho, with swarthy faces and profuse greet :
gs, promised us both good cheer and merry. +
ID, with loud laughter and iests, whether i
not deserving, "Dobrado couches'' for the o
ght. EDGAR L. WAKEMAN. z
"A BAD BELL BOY. q q