A VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD.
23
1772.
August.
stuck full of sharp flints below, is dragged over them by a pair of oxen, the driver getting on it to encrease its weight. This machine cuts the straw as if it had been chopped, and frees the grain from the husk, from which it is afterwards separated.
The great produce of Madeira is the wine, from which it has acquired fame and support. Where the soil, exposure, and supply of water will admit of it, the vine is cultivated. One or more walks, about a yard or two wide, intersect each vineyard, and are included by stone-walls two feet high. Along these walks, which are arched over with laths about seven feet high, they erect wooden pillars at regular distances, to support a lattice-work of bamboos, which slopes down from both sides of the walk, till it is only a foot and a half or two feet high, in which elevation it extends over the whole vineyard. The vines are in this manner supported from the ground, and the people have room to root out the weeds which spring up between them. In the season of the vintage they creep under this lattice-work, cut off the grapes, and lay them into baskets: some bunches of these grapes I saw, which weighed six pounds and upwards. This method of keeping the ground clean and moist, and ripening the grapes in the shade, contributes to give the Madeira wines that excellent flavour and body for which they are remarkable. The owners of vineyards are however obliged to allot a
certain
