Morning journal and courier., 1889-12-21
IN THE AZORES.

Tropic Life and 'semi-oriental Gus
 toms of the Islanders of Fayal -
 Beautiful Scenes From Saracenfc
 D0mes at Horta-CoquettIsh Fayalese
 Women.
 FATAL, Azores, Nov. 19. To the Editor of the JOURNAL AND COURIER:
 Tourists to the Azores usually land at Horta, Fayal. as it is the most trequented port of these Western Islands from England and America. It SO happened that it was the last point for me to reach, and the quaintness and picturesqueness of people and scene had somewhat worn away. But to one first coming to land, tropio life and semi- Oriental customs in this beautiful har- bor, there would be much to interest and charm. The island of Fayal, go called from the faya, a small tree, or large shrub, indi- genous to this one of the Azorean group, has an area of only about forty square miles, and a population of perhaps thirty thousand souls. In some respects it is looked upon as chief in importance, always by the Faya- lese, and principally so by people of our own country and England, because we know, at home. more of the Azores through
 
 than from wanderers from all the other Western Islands combined. So, too, Azo- rean commerce with the outside world, and all the inklings of the trifing activities within these little specks upon the sea, have their place of departure at Horta, whose roadstsad as you enter at once recalls the lesser harbors of the Mediterranean.
 The roadstead and the city lie along Fayal's southern shore, protected from the fierce northwest gales. Pico, but four miles away, stands squarely in front at the south. a bar rier eight thousand feet night against south ern winds. The islands of Graciosa, St. George and Terceira break the force of the sea from the northeast and east. And here, like checkered ribbon of white, pink and russet, the struggling shore side city nestles at the feet of mountainous hills, a crescent of Oriental moauetry, forever kissed by azure waves and forever facing the safrony rays of a languorous tropic sun. It is a beautiful scene as you swing around the western horn of the crescent, the tip of which rises into a noble headland, the Monta da Guia. Opposite, the tip of the eastern horn is formed by 0 still nobler headland, the Espalamaca. Barks and barkantines, brigs and brigantines, schooners, and now and then full rigged ship, ride at anchor upon the gently undulating roadstead. The long, struggling, circling city, quaint and olden in architecture, hugs the shore from headland to headland, feathery line of spume breaking against its huge sea walls and along it's glistening brown beaches. Like rich fringe to a mottled scarf, rising behind the town and gradually fraying out into cultivated fields and lesser gardens, are quintas and villas innumerable, delicate flashes of gray or white in wall, or russet red in roof, showing prettily from masses of embedded shrubbery. Then come tier upon tier of upland ridges with misty hollows, gradually narrowing and fading into the softened outline of Fayal's greatest heights, not four thousand feet above the sea level, where the clouds play and hide and disclose, in mimic portraiture of the grander shifting scenes forever being set for the beholder where Pico's ghostly cone overtops and sen tiuels all. Between Pico's base, where, across the lovely channel, lowly Madelena and struggling peasant hamlets peep from the dark and rugged rocks, and the gleaming band of spray at Horta's circling front, eve- " manner of the smaller of sailing craft known to Mediterranean waters are plying back and forth; bearing the gentry and peas antry of the is1ands, and conveying in that picturesquelF cumbersome way all labor is here performed the various produce and merchandise of Azorean ports. The blue and white flag of Portugal futters from countless craft. There are music and laugh- ter on boat and on shore. The sky above is the sky of Italy. The sea has that tint of azure which hints of bloom. And when one Is landed and at rest upon some pretty bal conv, air and sky, sea and mountain, street and garden, men and beasts, women and voices, all sight and sound and seeming, prompt to delicious siesta and enchant to tender repose.
 The chief street of Horta Is the Rua de San Francisco. It extends the whole length of tho city in struggling, genial sort of lazy waterside folk and scenes beneath, alongshore, and from the far prettier and more interesting thoroughfares which strag- gle down from the mountains pasb lovely quinta and garden embowered town house, or through the far more picturesque quarters of petty mercados. At intervals it widens into pleasant squares and tiny parks. In some are wells where the water carriers loi- ter. In all are beggars and feas. The shops are quaint collection of windowless store houses with blank outer walls, but tremen- dous, doors, barred at night as if for siege, where clerks and keepers stand and ogle the passing senhoras and senhoritas, leaving their wares in inextricable confusion within. This ogling is not meant or taken offensive- 1 ly. It is the daily compliment trade pays to beauty, and the fair women of Fayal would | reckon themselves sorry lot without it. Architecturally the city is vastly more in teresting than beautiful. Street fscades present the queerest of styles and studies. Here is shadowy shop of one story where of charcoal The next building may be 8 three or five story structure which houses the richest of wares, whose upper stories are fancifully decorated in gorgeous paints and giIts. Next to this, on one side of dark den, dirty cobblers beat ceaseless staccatos, H.
 and away in there stream of light shows exquisite stairs leading to some enclosed court where home of opulence is embedded in vines and roses. Everywhere are ponder