Message #160363

[Autolocus]

OCCURRENCE OF NAME IN THE AZORES 79

original colony archbishop and bishops and congregations,
military commanders, and mailed soldiery had all been some-
how destroyed or had melted apart and drifted away. All
that remains certain is the continued presence of the name of
the Seven Cities on that spot.

Some ruins are said to have marked it formerly, but very
little is visible now, if we may trust the following description
by an intelligent visitor in the middle of the last century:

Emerging from these sunken lanes, so peculiar to the island of St.
Michael's, we come to the green hills which border the village and the
valley of the Seven Cities. . . . From these dull evergreen moun-
tains, stretching before us without apparent end, we speedily had an
unexpected change. Suddenly the mountain track up which we were
climbing ended on the edge of a vast precipice, hitherto entirely con-
cealed, and at a moment's transition disclosed a wide and deeply sunk
valley with a scattered village and a blue lake. The hills which hemmed
them in were bold and precipitous, tent-shaped, rounded and serrated.
Others swept in soft and gentle lines into a little plain where the small
village was nestled by the water side. The lake was of the deepest blue
and so calm that a sea bird skimming over its surface seemed two, so
perfect was its image in the water. The clouds above were floating in
this very deep lake, and the inverted tops of the hills on every side were
perfectly reflected in its bosom. A few women on the shore seemed
rooted there, so steady were their reflections in the water, and the cattle
standing in the shallows stood like cattle in a picture. . . . The
sides slope gradually from this part of the valley into the level ground
where the village stands. It is a small collection of cottages, without
a church or a wineshop or a store of any kind, and at the time I entered
it was enveloped in clouds of wood smoke which rose from the fires used
in the process of bleaching cloth. This and clothes washing are the chief
occupations of the villagers. . . .

A portion of the lake is separated from the larger one by a narrow
causeway. It is singular to notice the difference made in the two pieces
of water by this small embankment; for, while the large lake is clear
and crystalline, this is thick, green, and muddy, and as gloomy as the
Dead Sea, with no clouds or birds or bright sky reflected in it. 24

Perhaps a little excavating archeology might not be amiss in
the neighborhood of the causeway and the green dead lakelet.
But at least it is satisfactory to have a good external account

2 < Joseph Bullar and Henry Bullar: A Winter in the Azores and a Summer in the
Baths of the Furnas, 2 vols., London, 1841; reference in Vol. 2, pp. 242-247.