Had We Not Been Accessory
After The Fact To Something Like Theft And, As It Was Sunday, To
Sabbath-Breaking Besides?
Afterward flowers proved so abundant in
Madeira in spite of its being winter, that we could not feel the larceny
a serious one, and the Sunday was a Latin Sabbath well used to being
broken.
The pony engine which was to push our slanting car over the
cogged track up the mountain arrived with due ceremony of bell and
whistle, and we were let through the grille by the station-master as
politely as if we had been each his considered guest. Then the climb
began through the fields of sugar-cane, terraced vineyards, orchards of
fruit trees, and gardens of vegetables planted under the arbors over
which the grapes were trained. One of us told the others that the
vegetables were sheltered to save them from being scorched by the summer
sun, and that much of the work among them was done by moonlight to save
the laborers from the same fate. I do not know how he had amassed this
knowledge, and I am not sure that I have the right to impart it without
his leave. I myself saw some melons lolling on one of the tiled roofs of
the cottages where they had perhaps been pushed by the energetic forces
of the earth and sky. The grape-vines were quiescent, partly because it
was winter, as everybody said, and partly because the wine culture is no
longer so profitable in the island.
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