From the best accounts that could be procured at Madeira, there perished in and near the city of Funchal, five hundred and fifty persons. The ravages were chiefly confined to the eastern parts of the town where the loss was immense in bridges, houses, streets and other property, public as well as private--there was one magnificent church totally destroyed, standing near the sea, and called in the portuguese tongue, Nossa Senyora da Caillou (lady of the beach) besides this, there were five handsome chapels carried away. Five very considerable streets with their immense stone buildings have entirely disappeared, or but some insignificant parts remaining. The water rose in a short space of time from 14 to 16 feet in the adjacent parts of the city, and bursting into the buildings, where it did not much injure the latter, it greatly damaged the merchantile property lodged therein. There were about two hundred persons supposed to be lost in other parts of the island, particularly in the villages, and small towns. The following circumstance it was asserted, added not a little to the devastations occasioned by the accumulation of water in the vallies. The governor, with several other considerable landholders in the mountains, had, for several years back, been in the practice of erecting stone dams across the vast and spacious valley above the city, at different intervals of distance for the purpose of watering the adjacent grounds, or leading off streams in a variety of directions--when the immense body of rain fell in October last, all this gave way, and carried death and destruction therewith.--_Freneau's note._ ON THE PEAK OF TENERIFFE 1804[183] No mean, no human artist laid The base of this prodigious pile, The towering peak--but nature said Let this adorn Tenaria's isle; And be my work for ages found The polar star to islands round. The conic-point that meets the skies Indebted to volcanic fire, First from the ocean bid to rise, To heaven was suffer'd to aspire; But man, ambitious, did not dare To plant one habitation there: For torrents from the mountain came; What molten floods were seen to glow! Expanded sheets of vivid flame, To inundate the world below! These, older than the historian's page Once bellow'd forth vext nature's rage. In ages past, as may again, Such lavas from those ridges run. And hastening to the astonish'd main Exposed earth's entrails to the sun; These, barren, once, neglected, dead, Are now with groves and pastures spread. Upon the verdant, scented lawn The flowers a thousand sweets disperse, And pictures, there, by nature drawn, Inspire some island poet's verse, While streams through every valley rove To bless the garden, grace the grove.