Morning journal and courier., 1889-11-30

loiter in the place, such quaint little Caats- kill village it was. But my guide was unre- lenting, and our donkeys were mercileesly larrupped and goaded into a lively pace. As best might told Manuel how like Irving's simple village it was, and of poor old Rips adventures in the Cattskills. His eyes in stantly kindled. In Portugal, he said, and here in this very spot the legend had its pro- totype. Surely our great American escrip- tor or literator must have carried his master piece over in his baggage from Portugal, whence it had come from his own beloved is- land of St. Michael. And as we ascended the mountain side, pausing at times to eIn- phasize his tale with gestures towards the reeeding village below and the darksning and forbidding heights above, old Manuel unfold ed the centuries old legend of the Azorean Rip Van Wrinkle.
 Colorado Madraeo, who had no other name, for his peasant neighbors had from his boy hood called him 1.-two fold vagrant," with his wife Gritadora, or 'fbrawling womap," 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. Dalbrado loved quiet and peace, his siestas in the sun upon the long wooden benches in front of their inn, which seldom boastsd 8 guest, the chil- dren of the village bleachers and the moun- tain goatherds, and, above all, full hagon of the sweet wine of Fayal. Gritadora loved only the sound of her own remoIaeless tongue. 1t ran like the upland wind mills by day, but worse than all like mountain torrent by night. So shrill and devilish be- came her termagant uprear as the years passed on that Colorado was worn to skele- ton for lack of sleep, and one by one the peasants left the village to get beyond the piercing sounds of the vixen's awful tongue. One dreary night when the Atlantic was pounding the cliffs until the island trsmhled, Gritadora's fierce spirit outran even her tongue. Siezing a pike, she belabored poor Colorado out into the night, shrieking her deaunciations above the storm, and follow ing him like the tempest itself half way up the mountain, never ceasing her outcries and punishment until her fugitive husband had fallen in swoon of pain and fright, and thus escaped her in the darkness; where- upon the vixen returned in peace and quiet to ths village. Colorado at last arose, and, dsvoutly thanking the Virgin both for his life and the peace of the tempest, resolved to penetrate the vast forests at the brow of the mountains, from which he had often seen the smoke lazily curling as he half dozed before his inn door. Hours of the night passed as he clambered the mountain: but the falling trees and all the hidden dau- gers were as nothing to the terrors from which he had at last escaped; and on sud- denly emerging from a deep gorge along which he had for some time travelled over 8 fresuented road, he came upon an assembly of apparently black people making merry about numberless fires. He begged their hospitality, and, in Gods name, their suc- cor from an awful woman's awful tongue. He was welcomed royalty, given food and drink, and finally, overcome by excess of fatigue and happy emotions, given couch of fir boughs; and, as all his life he had never known peaceful slumber on account of the vicious chatter of Gritadora's voice, fell into such deep sleep that from that time to this hs has never awakened-s'whence," continued Manuel, 'tour island proverb, applied to one with a scolding wife, that 'he should have a couch with the carboneiros.'
 Scarcely had he finished this tale when we emerged from the same de6le into large camp of mountain carboneiros, or charcoal burners, at the precise spot where Colorado had been succored from the shrew Gritadora. These proved to be old friends of Manuel, who with swarthy faces and profuse greetings promised us booth good cheer and merry, and, with loud laughter and jests, whether or not deserving Colorado couches" for the night. EDGAR l.. WAKEMAN.