112 FOUNDLING HOSPITAL. more than the disposal of these children. The large foundling hospitals on the continent of Europe are huge catacombs for infants; the mortality there is prodigious; and in England the other extreme is now being tried, to the great increase of coroners' inquests and trials for childmurder. The laws of Portugal are very ample on the subject of illegitimate children; and the result of them seems to be that the mother is not found in any case to declare the father of her child, against her will; but provided she chooses to nurse it herself, she must then support it altogether. If, however, the sense of shame overcomes her maternal feelings and she takes it to the foundling hospital, where the wheel is provided for the reception of the infant, it is immediately taken care of and put out to nurse at the expense of the municipality; and it is said that at the Island of St. Michael's the practice is, in nine cases out of ten, to carry the child to the wheel. If the infant is a boy, he is apprenticed at the age of seven years to some tradesman, handicraft, or farmer; and if a girl she is sent into domestic service in some family; but until they are of an age sufficient to earn wages, they MARRIAGES AND BIRTHS. 113 are fed and clothed at the charge of the municipality; and should the funds of the municipality be insufficient, the state makes up the deficiency. The proportion of annual marriages to the whole population of the Azores is said to be one to every forty-two persons, and the proportion of annual births to be one to every nineteen persons; and that there are one hundred legitimate children to every fifteen illegitimate. The average age at which men marry who live in the country is estimated at twenty, and women at seventeen; and the average in towns, men twenty-eight, women twenty-four.* Read's Report to the Poor Law Commissioners, 1834. Vol. xxxix, Appendix (F) p. 643. VOL. II. I CHAPTER VIII. The varied earth, the moving heaven, By secret fire and midnight storms That wander round their windy cones, Of living things are full of strange Astonishment and boundless change. A. TENNYSON. The Island of St. George's.— Ursulina.—Recent volcanic eruption.-Vellas.- Fish-market.—Coast of Pico.- Return to Horta. PICO, MAY 23.-Crossed to Fayal from Pico with a pleasant breeze, and arranged to go to the Island of St. George's to-morrow morning. Fayal was more than usually brilliant in the CROSSING TO PICO. 115 sunset. On the top of the caldeira was a canopy of soft clouds of a heavy leaden colour, brightly gilded at the edges. It hung over the island, and reflected the rays in long streaks on the mist. The evening sky was green, melting into weak blue, with the shining evening star in its "forehead," lustrous as a gem. Pico was bronzed by the yellow light, its peak wellclothed in amber clouds. Below these was every variety of light and shade, the small craters on its sides, standing out prominently as the slanting beams lighted up their western parts, and threw the opposite ones into deep but delicate shadow. A few white-sailed boats were skimming home before us to the little town of Madelena, which was just dotted out with white on the shore of Pico. We followed slowly, before a quiet breeze, the surf rolled up the beach with a lazy see-saw motion,-the boat bumped the shore, recoiled, bumped again,—and as we walked up the shingles was drawn high and dry beyond the reach of the waves. The men untucked their linen trowsers, collected their oars, and straggled home; the sun went down, and the cone of Pico throwing off its armour of light, was changed to a flat wall of gloomy shadow. 116 VOLCANIC ERUPTION. May 24.-At a very early hour this morning, our men had launched their boat, and were impatient to start with the flood-tide. The morning was pleasant, and so still, that the long swelling waves of the Atlantic were without a ripple. Looking along them they were as white as glass, and looking into them they were bright cobalt, and so transparent, that every stone at the bottom of six or seven fathom water might be seen as clearly as the pebbles in a brook. We coasted along the shore as far as a point, beyond the little town of Madelena, and then struck off in a direct line for the town of Ursulina in St. George's, which is distant about a dozen miles from this point of the shore of Pico. Our object was to see the seat of the last volcanic eruption in the islands, which took place as recently as May 1808. It was a matter of considerable curiosity to see some recent lava, about the origin of which there could be no mistake, in order to compare it with older specimens collected in the other islands. Here, in St. George's, the operation of stone-making, on the grand scale, had gone on before the eyes of persons still alive; while the other formations (although plainly derived from the same vast cal |