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CHAPTER XIV.

DR. JOHNSON.-It would require great resignation to live in one of these islands.

BOSWELL. I don't know, sir; I have felt myself at times, in a state of almost mere physical existence, satisfied to eat, drink, and sleep, and walk about and enjoy my own thoughts; and I can figure a continuation of this.

DR. JOHNSON.-Ay, sir; but if you were shut up here, your own thoughts would torment you: you would think of Edinburgh or London, and that you could not be there.

BOSWELL'S TOUR.

Voyage to Lisbon.— Lisbon.—Cintra.-Convents.—Mr. Beckford's Villa.-The Queen and Prince.-The Palace.-Mafra. -Lisbon.-English burying-ground.-Portugal; its literature and indolence.

JULY 26, Atlantic Ocean, off St. Michael's. — A messenger from Ponta Delgada came puffing into our Furnas cottage on Tuesday morning with news that the "Tarujo Segundo," a Portuguese

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brigantine of two hundred and thirty tons' burthen, having taken in her cargo of beans, would sail for Lisbon on the following Thursday. Accordingly beds, boxes, fossils, portmanteaus, poultry, cloaks, and mineral waters having been strapped to the asses, passports duly written and pounced, kind friends shaken by the hand, and importunate boatmen despatched, at noon yesterday we found ourselves once more among the dirt and good-temper of Portuguese sailors, and stood out of the roadstead of St. Michael's, amidst screeching hens, crowing cocks, and greasy passengers, with every prospect of a favourable voyage. A lazy breeze swept us out of sight of land, and a still lazier Atlantic swell,-long, unbroken, and emetic, confined our fellow passengers to their berths. They were a Coimbra student with his younger brother, who lugged on board an unwieldy clasped trunk of the precise size and pattern of that carried before the Queen of Sheba in Claude's picture of her embarkation, a fresh-coloured trader and his wife, a cheesemonger with a store of cheeses made in the Island of St. George's, which he was carrying to Lisbon for sale; a jocose nondescript, boisterous and disagreeable; a plethoric cur dog, and

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a quiet ex-sergeant of the "caçadores," making a sum total of nine passengers for the one cabin and its four berths.

The means of getting to England direct, at this time of the year, are uncertain. Englishbound vessels occasionally touch at St. Michael's for provisions, and in them a chance passage may be had; but the arrival of these is precarious, their stay short, and the ass-journey to Ponta Delgada from the Furnas so long, that bathers would in general be unable to reach them in time. But between St. Michael's and Lisbon numerous Portuguese vessels, now laden with beans, and a little later with Indian corn, are constantly plying, in some of which there are coarse accommodations for passengers.

Some one has said that travellers make no friendships; they are rolling stones that gather no moss. We have not found it so here. The pleasurable feelings at the prospect of being once more in England are mixed with regret at leaving friends whom we may never again meet. Most fortunately we had letters of introduction to Mr. Hickling, the Vice-Consul of the United States, to whose hospitality and unvarying attentions during the eight months we have re

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sided here, we are infinitely indebted. Although strangers, he put at our disposal for several months his country-houses at Villa Franca and the Furnas, and in visiting other parts of this as well as the other islands, he spared himself no trouble in affording us every necessary assist

ance.

Sunday, July 28th.-Calm day. The evidences that it is Sunday are that two of the passengers have washed their faces for the first time since Thursday; the captain has produced a pack of well-stained cards with the corners worn into semicircles, and is playing with three of the passengers; a sailor in the forecastle, in a filthy woollen shirt and corresponding canvass trowsers, is fingering with his rough tarred hands the tinkling strings of a guitar, and looks as pleased with himself as any other "ladies' man." The cheesemonger is occupied in the odoriferous task of scraping and oiling the rinds of his cheeses; while the rest of the party have been lying beneath the awning on mats.

Tuesday, July 30.—I am more impressed with the wealth and resources of England since I left it; but I am less surprised at them. The compass of this Portuguese vessel was made at Wap

WEALTH AND RESOURCES OF ENGLAND. 261 ping; the quadrant in Holborn; the knives are stamped "sheer steel;" the bell for the watch, and the iron of the windlass, are from an English foundry; the captain uses an English watch, and calculates by John Hamilton Moore's "Seaman's complete Daily Assistant;" "Sailmaker" is stamped on one of the sails, and the passengers are dressed in Manchester prints or Leeds' cloth. Everywhere it is the same; you meet in the solitary mountain paths of these almost unknown islands a pedlar with two square boxes slung on each side of his ass, and see him in the villages tempting the women with the bright handkerchiefs and gay prints from Manchester. In the obscurest village the neat blue-paper needle-case from Birmingham hangs from a string at a cottage door-way, to tell that English needles are sold within; and in crossing in an open boat between two of the remotest islands, Flores and Corvo, an English sailmaker's name and residence were printed legibly on the sail. V tells me that the other evening he had just landed in a fishing hamlet,—a lonely place at the mouth of a deep ravine which parts two gloomy mountain ridges,—when his reveries were disturbed by a fellow-passenger, who having caught sight

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