chatting on the sidewalks appeared to have little curiosity
regarding the visitors in their city, and the men, lounging on the steps
of the fountain, cast but careless glances in our direction; only the
boys stopped their play to gaze awhile at the passing strangers.

"This plodding team seems fitting in such a peculiar place," remarked
one of the quartet in our sled. "Although it is not rapid transit, it is
comfortable. But look, there is a more luxurious mode of traveling." As
he spoke he pointed to two Portuguese bearing suspended on a pole a
handsome hammock in which a lady reclined languidly.

At the foot of the mountain we changed from the slowly moving sleds to
the car of a cog-wheel railway, which carried us up the steep incline.
The speed of the car was not much greater than that of the ox-team. As
we ascended, scenes of beauty opened around us. Cottages built on
terraces were covered with blooming bouguain-villea or climbing roses.
Patches of cultivated land were filled with sugar cane, banana plants,
and orange trees. Palms and cacti appeared in many varieties. Flowers
bloomed on every side. Geraniums, fuschias, and heliotropes were of
enormous size. Camelias, lilies, and nasturtiums grew in profusion.
Children from the suburban cottages ran alongside the moving car,
merrily casting roses, heliotropes, geraniums, and camelias through the
open windows into our laps, and the tourists, pleased with the floral
offerings, in return tossed pennies to the running children.

When we alighted from the car, young peddlers, some bright-faced and
clean, others ugly and dirty, offered flowers and trinkets for sale and
beggars asked for money. But our pennies were exhausted and we were glad
that peddlers and paupers were not permitted to follow us into the hotel
grounds.

[Illustration: ON THE PIER WE BOUGHT FLOWERS.]

"Here you may lunch," said the guide, as we entered a hotel on the
mountain, "and get pure Madeira wine. The wine which is made in this
island was at one time its most noted production; but some thirty years
ago insects and disease so infested the vines that many vineyards were
destroyed and the quantity of wine now made is not so large as in former
years."

After having luncheon and tasting the well known wine in its purity on a
broad piazza overlooking a beautiful tropical garden, we wandered
through an interesting old church and convent near by, and then strolled
around a mountain pathway from which