Valleys / Vales

In this island, as stated in the Illustrated Universal Portuguese Dictionary, 'there are valleys of indescribable landscape in all the variations of rustic beauty: everything that is art, culture, and the work of man there becomes accessory, insignificant, almost null for contemplation, and only nature displays itself grandiose in the profusion of its spontaneous magnificence; there, the brush will fall from the hand, the strings of the lyre will tremble, and the pen of the prose writer who attempts to describe it will exhaust itself in grandiloquent banalities, because it could only give the outlines and the nuances of those paintings the power that, with its creative fiat, produced them, taking the volcanoes and the sea as its instruments. Of these valleys, we will mention five: to the east, the Machico valley, to the south, the Funchal valley, and, including this one, the Vale Formoso, whose whole forms a vast amphitheater panorama, delighting the travelers who enter the bay and the very extensive port that adorns its beaches; twelve and a half kilometers from here, in the elevated confines of the parish of Estreito de Câmara de Lobos, the valley of Jardim da Serra, opulent with varied indigenous vegetation, in the rugged recess of the inland mountains, green-black with uncultivated native trees, which almost completely encircle it, leaving only the south open, in that direction, meandering through two streams, united in a picturesque waterfall, it extends to the sea with them; to the north, the valley of São Vicente, where the small town is, head of the municipality and district of the same name, a vast, very pleasant valley in itself, and surprising due to the contrast of the inaccessible and uncultivated mountains that, topping with the clouds, surround it except to the north, by the sea; and finally, to the east, the circular valley of Penha de Águia, a gentle name, which, in its sublime conciseness, is saying that there is a very high, green-black promontory, overlooking the adjacent territory, majestic, worthy throne of the queen of the air, this valley formed by the parish of Faial and that of Porto da Cruz, and whose site, together with that rock that gave it its name, is so astonishingly beautiful that it has no rival that is humble in the gardens of Europe, perhaps in the world....'