1880 Facts about Port and Madeira by Henry Vizetelly

Some other Funchal Wine-Stores.

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acquires after being subjected to the combined beat and motion ofa voyage to tbe tropics in a ship's hold. Messrs. Henriques and Lawton have their stock of Madeiras stored in an ancient,incomplete,semi-palatial-looking building, erected by a Portuguese lady of rank, and abandoned by her spendthrift son,who before disposing ofthe house stripped it of everything that could be removed,such as the carved woodwork and other decorative adjuncts,leaving nothing butthe bare carcass of the building. However,it now forms a very compact range of armazens,in which a large quantity of wine,including many choice varieties, is stored. The firm was originally established in Madeira in the year 1757 under the style of Murdoch, Shortridge, and Co. Rather more than half a century ago— namely,1826—the then members ofthe firm had the ill-luck to get entangled in a lawsuit with some disputatious Portuguese. The suit dragged on through the various courts, and finally led to a breach of treaty rights, and the English and Portuguese G-overnments, unable to come to an agreement, referred the entire affair to the HamburgSenate, after a Select Committee of the House of Commons had investigated and reported very deci dedly iu Messrs. Murdoch and Co.'s favour. In 1862,six-and- thirty years after the suit originally commenced,the arbitrators awarded .£20,260 as damages to the English firm; but their costs and losses in connection with the affair amounted by this time to nearly £50,000, so that although they eventually had some kind ofjustice done them,it was at an immense pecuniary sacrifice. At Messrs. Henriques and Lawton's we passed through a dilapidated porte-cochere, with tall stone pillars on either side, into a spacious paved courtyard, where the dismantled mansion reared its massive fa9ade, pierced with numerous large orna mental windows, on our left hand, and a lower range of stores, partially overgrown with vines, rose up in front. Through the house a second paved court is reached, roofed in with leafy vines trained in corridors, beneath the shade of which numerous coopers are at work. The estufas of the firm,which include an