Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/40

 I saw it. A rude box or vat, about twelve feet square and two feet deep, was filled with grapes. Then an old man, an old woman, two dirty looking boys and girls,  and two black boys stepped into the tub, the latter  having the blackest faces I ever saw, and I have seen a  great many. There was a striking contrast between their faces and their large, handsome ivory teeth and  the whites of their eyes. While stamping the juice out of the grapes, they would sing and thrust their hands into  their hair, scratching their heads furiously. From their appearance I do not imagine that they knew what a  comb was. It was a very warm day, and they exerted themselves so violently that the perspiration fairly  streamed from them. Their only articles of clothing were dirty, ragged shirts. I was astonished and disgusted, especially at the appearance of the two black boys, who looked as if they had been parboiled. After the grapes had been sufficiently trodden out, the tired  laborers sat down, one after another, on the edge of the  vat, while the old man scraped their legs and feet, commencing with the old lady. It takes about two bushels of grapes to produce one gallon of wine. Madeira wine, once shipped, can never again be introduced into the  islands. This recalls one of my early voyages to the West Indies. We went out with a cargo of New England rum, and returned with the same rum, which was sold at  a high price as real old Jamaica.

The Madeira Islands belong to Portugal, and have a population of about one hundred thousand inhabitants,  including the blacks. The houses of the working people would here be called huts. They are composed of walls