Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 April 1896 — A STRANGE LAND. [ARTICLE]

A STRANGE LAND.

Men Work by Lantern Light in the Gardens of Madeira. The hills of the Island of Madeira are cultivated from base to summit, some of the finest vineyards and gardens being 2,000 or even 3,000 feet above the sea, writes Fanny B. Ward. The mountains, too, are terraced to the very top like a succession of steps. Most of these are natural terraces, three or four feet apart and from thirty to forty feet wide, and the people have walled them and planted thereon their grapevines, sweet potatoes, and sugar cane. There are hundreds of these terraces on our route between the shore and mountain tops, some of them thousands of feet above the sea. We pass peasants at work in their poor little patches on the narrow shelves and marvel at the amount of labor and daily climbing necessary to such small results. So few and scant are the level spaces on this side of the island that even the thrashing floors are terraced platforms, often overhanging precipices. Up and down these fearful declivities men and women travel all day, bearing heavy loads on their heads, and always at a walk more rapid, more graceful and apparently easy than one often sees on the level roads of other countries. Each carries a stout staff, and sings as he or she trots merrily along.

It is a common thing to see men groping about their gardens with hoes and lanterns at midnight. One of the main irrigating conduits is drawn from the cataract of Rabacal, where has been accomplished one of the most daring engineering feats of the age. The waterfall is on the north side of the island, away up in the mountains, in a narrow gorge, and has a sheer descent of 1,000 feet. During most of the year it is a rather meager stream, slipping lazily down the side of the cliff. -The ridge which here divides the northern and southern slopes of the central Sierras is only About 1,400 feet thick, and a native engineer conceived the bold project of tunneling through it, catching the waterfall in Its descent and making it flow to the north side where it Is most needed. To accomplish this undertaking It was necessary for the workmen to Idwer themselves over the precipice, and thus, suspended in the air by ropes, 600 feet from the top and 400 feet from the bottom, pursue their perilous task, constantly drenched by the Ice-cold cataract. When blasting, the unrecorded heroes swung themselves to one side on the fearful face of the crag and held on by any bush or projection that met their hands until the explosion had taken place. Several men were killed before the work was completed. At last a trench was excavated in the hard rock of the cliff, by which means part of the waterfall was intercepted and conducted to the tunnel bored through the mountain and thus reduced to service.