Friday, July 27, 2007

Beautiful Madeira

Ii is a group of islands off the the coast of Portugal known as the Autonomous Region of Madeira which are composed of the following - Madeira Island, Desertas Islands, Porto Santo Island, and the Savage Islands.

These beautiful islands are covered in laurisilva forests. The bigest laurisilva forestis in Madeira, it occurs between 300 and 1400 meters altitude in the northern slope of the island.

Many of these great forests were cut down for sugar cane. We see that sugar used to be the "white gold" of Madeira and brought much wealth to the island.

There is still today, a sugar mill in Calheta village that has the original crushing machines run by a steam engine that is about 200 years old. This relic of a bygone age is the only one left in the world.

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