The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-02-14
RURAL. MADEIRA.
THE CELEBRATED
 PRODUCT OF THE ISLAND,

Is TruIy a Wine Fit for the Gods-The
 Way of its CnIture-About Other
 WineA-Litus Drunkenness in Madei- Especial Correspondence of the Journal
 and Courier.)
 Funchal, Madeira, Jan. z, 1902. It would never do to leave Madeira | without paying some attention to it's
 principal industry, that of Wine making.
 For nearly six centuries the wines of
 this island have been famous-ever
 since the introduction of the vine from 1 Cyprus, by the royal house of Braganza
 In times long past they were the favor 1 ite beverage in England, for all who
 could afford the price Evidently l Shakespeare Cor Lord Bacon0 was ac-
 quainted with them, for he makes Poins | say to Falstaff: Jack, how agreest , the devil and thee about thy soul, which l thou soldest to him on Good Friday last | for cup of Madeira?" Since Falstaff's day generations of registering English
 men have continued to smack their lips | and sing songs to "Old Malmsey" until sixty years or so ago, when the Prince 1 Regent conceived the idea thatMalmsey was conducive to gout and took to drinking sherry instead. His gout, by | the way, did not improve, for lifelong gluttony went further back than wine; but all his imitators at home and Ai- slo-maniacs abroad immediately fol- lowed the fashion of forsaking malm- sey. The best physicians, however,
 have always maintained contrary opinion; and among these islanders, who natudally drink most of their own beverage, that disease of aristocracy-
 gout-is unknown. Madeira wine has
 never been especially popular in the United States, probably because ours is too new country to be generally well
 ''up" in such matters; and within the
 last quarter century, since California
 wine have come to the front, our impor-
 tation from Madeira has fallen off to
 less than twenty thousand dollars
 worth per annum.
 In former times the wine industry of
 this island yielded an annual average
 of thirty thousand pipes; up to the year
 1852, When-without the slightest warn
 ing, blight fell upon fruit and plant,
 so that in a single season the out-put of
 wine declined to less than one hundred
 pipes. That sad state of things contin-
 ued for twenty years, bringing poverty
 and distress to the islanders, and the
 vines were almost annihilated by the fungus known as oideum tuckeri Af- ter while the culture of sugar r-cane re- stored portion of Madeira's lost pros perity, and later a way was found for counteracting the blight and partially resuming the production of wine. This was done by blowing the powder of sul- phur flowers all over the vines and grapes, several times during season. a most tedious process, as may be read fly imagined. Still later came the dis covery that American vines resist the poisonous fungi; and a great many of them were imported to Madeira, with the best results But the simple-heart- ed natives imported other things from America along with the vines, with the disastrous consequences of the "knowl- edge of good and evil,' which came into Eden with the eating of forbidden fruit, and Madeira wine is no longer to be de- pended upon as pure.
 The hills of Madeira are cultivated from base to summit, some of the finest and gardens lying two thou sand, or even three thousand feet above the sea. The mountains, too, are terraced to their very tops like flights of Titan stairs. Haunting around the | island, you see peasants at work in their | poor little patches on the narrow | shelves, sometimes so far above you | that they look like ants on the moun- tain-side, and you marvel at the | amount of labor and daily climbing ne- cessary to such small results. So few and scant are the level spaces on this ! side of the island that even the thresh- ng-foors are terraced platforms, often overlapping dangerous precipices. Up and down these fearful declivities men and women travel all day, bearing 1 heavy loads on their heads; and always at a walk more rapid, more graceful and apparently more easy than one sees on the level roads of other countries. Perhaps the habit of bearing burdens on the head is respon- sible eor it. together with the free and easy movements that naturally come, lever having been hampered by corsets, shoes or too many clothes, The rural are a musical race, always singing as they trot merrily along, of- en under burdens that would stagger a mule, and challenging each other to inn when they meet on the road, l IT their oxen are treadine out wheat To be sure, the music is rather lueubri- 1 us and rendered as dolefully as a fun nal dirge, but it serves to indicate the ] heerful disposition and practical phi osaphy of the peasants. There is con- (
 derable infusion of African blood in { heir veins (which may account for the nusic), because slavery once existed in l he island and after it's abolition the ( reedmen and peasants intermarried. ' heir dwellings are matched cabins of i he rudest construction, each having l nly one room, partitioned with straw t nats. Their language is an odd patois ' f the Portuguese, subdivided into as lany dialects as there are valley par | i shes. They speak with shrill, rising 9 Infection and plaintive, pleading sort T tone which gives a ludicrously pa f hetic character even to their iests and a anter. f A1,.-