is fenced in by tall, solid lava walls, which will
last a thousand years in this land where frost is
unknown. They are very thick, and are often
plastered and whitewashed and capped with projecting
slabs of cut stone. Trees from gardens above
hang their swaying tendrils down, and contrast their
bright green with the whitewash or the black lava of
the walls and make them beautiful. The trees
and vines stretch across these narrow roadways sometimes
and so shut out the sun that you seem to be riding
through a tunnel. The pavements, the roads, and
the bridges are all government work.
The bridges are of a single span—a single
arch—of cut stone, without a support, and
paved on top with flags of lava and ornamental pebblework.
Everywhere are walls, walls, walls, and all of them
tasteful and handsome—and eternally substantial;
and everywhere are those marvelous pavements, so neat,
so smooth, and so indestructible. And if ever
roads and streets and the outsides of houses were
perfectly free from any sign or semblance of dirt,
or dust, or mud, or uncleanliness of any kind, it
is Horta, it is Fayal. The lower classes of the
people, in their persons and their domiciles, are
not clean—but there it stops—the
town and the island are miracles of cleanliness.
We arrived home again finally, after a ten-mile excursion,
and the irrepressible muleteers scampered at our heels
through the main street, goading the donkeys, shouting
the everlasting “Sekki-yah,” and singing
“John Brown’s Body” in ruinous English.
When we were dismounted and it came to settling, the
shouting and jawing and swearing and quarreling among
the muleteers and with us was nearly deafening.
One fellow would demand a dollar an hour for the use
of his donkey; another claimed half a dollar for pricking
him up, another a quarter for helping in that service,
and about fourteen guides presented bills for showing
us the way through the town and its environs; and every
vagrant of them was more vociferous, and more vehement
and more frantic in gesture than his neighbor.
We paid one guide and paid for one muleteer to each
donkey.
The mountains on some of the islands are very high.
We sailed along the shore of the island of Pico,
under a stately green pyramid that rose up with one
unbroken sweep from our very feet to an altitude of
7,613 feet, and thrust its summit above the white
clouds like an island adrift in a fog!
We got plenty of fresh oranges, lemons, figs, apricots,
etc., in these Azores, of course. But I
will desist. I am not here to write Patent Office
reports.
We are on our way to Gibraltar, and shall reach there
five or six days out from the Azores.
A week of buffeting a tempestuous and relentless sea;
a week of seasickness and deserted cabins; of lonely
quarterdecks drenched with spray—spray
so ambitious that it even coated the smokestacks thick
with a white crust of salt to their very tops; a week
of shivering in the shelter of the lifeboats and deckhouses
by day and blowing suffocating “clouds”
and boisterously performing at dominoes in the smoking
room at night.
