Madeira Island, Portugal
The silence was not good for me.
I decided to leave, and undertake a voyage around the island. I had set no definite limits to it.
Between two mountains, two high and steep walls of basalt, which is impossible to ascend, there yawns a fissure in which the water winds among rocks.
These blocks have been loosened from the flank of the mountain by infiltration in order to make a passageway for the spring.
The spring grew into brook, which has thrust at them and jolted them and then moved them a little further.
Later the brook when it became a torrent took them up, rolled them over and over and carried them even to the sea.
On each side of this brook, frequently interrupted by cascades, there is a sort of path. It leads though a confusion of trees (…).
It is a mad vegetation, growing always wilder, more entangled, denser, until as we ascend toward the centre of the island, it has become an almost impenetrable thicket.
Paul Gauguin