Madeira (hydrographic features: streams)

These natural watercourses, which generally run along the beds of deep, narrow valleys, are very numerous on this island and carry a great volume of water in the winter season. They rise on the slopes of the central mountain range and flow into the ocean, some of them fed by tributary streams that increase their volume and the speed of their course. ‘All of them, in winter,’ says the illustrious annotator of the Saudades, ‘carry abundant water, often torrential: they then fill up and at times overflow, bringing down from the mountains thousands of tons of boulders of greater or lesser size, many of them so large that they can afterwards be removed only in pieces; and all of them, rolling in the torrent against one another, make a sinister noise as they collide, until, blocking the beds of these same streams, they raise them above the adjoining land, and this land, once blocked, does not remain, but is carried off by the diverted waters a great distance out to sea, dissolved into mud; in summer, however, their flow of water becomes scanty, and some streams even run dry, because the water is diverted both for irrigating the land along their banks and into the levadas (irrigation channels), which take up the running water there and carry it to fertilise distant crops across the whole coastal area of the island.’ From time to time these streams turn into raging torrents which burst their beds, flood the banks on either side and violently sweep away large stretches of cultivated land, animal pens and even dwelling houses, at times causing considerable loss of life and property to those who live nearby.

In the article Ribeiras (‘streams’) we shall give a detailed list of the streams of this island, naming the places where they rise and reach the sea and describing their course, and also indicating their tributaries and the points where they join.