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There were not very many wheeled conveyances visible, for the island doesn’t lend itself to them overmuch; the few motors we saw were ancient and honourable members of the fraternity. The principal means of conveyance are the bullock-cars—wooden sledges, drawn by bulls, fine, big, sleek animals, though very leisurely in all their movements. One sees these cars going everywhere about the streets on well-greased runners. Some of the cars are very tastefully got up and drawn by bullocks as white as snow; and the motion when one gets inside is far from unpleasant. Of course, the streets are so rutted and worn in Funchal that ordinary wheels would soon come to grief; but the long sledge-runners sort of bridge the worst of the holes, as a big liner crosses from wave-crest to wave-crest without diving too deeply into the troughs, and consequently you don’t realize how ill-kept the roads really are.

As practically all Funchal is built on the side of a hill, you may be sure the streets are steep. We didn’t try to climb them unnecessarily, but contented ourselves with standing at the bottom and looking up, a much more restful occupation than working to the top and looking down. Then we had tea, where they apologized for a little meal with a big, an astoundingly big, bill. Still, although the little cakes they gave us were evidently relics of the ancient Portuguese travellers, the tea was wet and damped the dry, sawdust-like confectionery excellently.