LEAVE THE TAGUS. 301 The occasion seemed to arouse all the ancient fire and energy of the Portugueze character-my little baggage became instantly divided among three or four parties, and I was obliged to redeem some of the pieces by a small payment to the unsuccessful candidates. Next day we left the Tagus, and a few hours soon wafted us out of sight of Portugal. In closing these notes (already perhaps too protracted, respecting a country so little strange to us) I should be tempted to add a few summary remarks on the people; but in truth, though we made the best advantage of the time and opportunities which we had, neither the one nor the other were sufficiently ample to justify our generalizing any conclusion so suggested. That my impressions upon the whole were sufficiently favourable, may be gathered from what has been said; but here also I rather mistrust myself, partly on the ground of the very unpleasant prepossessions with which I recollect to, have arrived in the country; and a little too from the consciousness of a certain constitutional impatience of looking on the dark or the dismal side of things, which perhaps does not more disqualify a man as a good Whig, than as an accurate critic of men and manners. The traveller, therefore, who should take this little volume as his guide, may reasonably make some 302 LEAVE THE TAGUS. abatement of the favourable estimate it offers. He may find Lisbon more dirty-the women not so pretty-the people less intelligent and obliging than they struck me; but, after all, I am fain to persuade myself, he will discover still more to deduct from the opposite representations of other travellers-and that of the two exaggerations, my own has deviated the least widely, not from goodnature merely, but from the truth. APPENDIX I. [Page 1.] THERE is no difficulty in getting to Madeira; almost every vessel going south of the line thinks it prudent to make the island in its way; and not a few touch there; so that beside the convenience of a monthly packet. from Falmouth there are seldom wanting opportunities of conveyance from most of the considerable ports of the United Kingdom. Moreover, the wind is commonly favourable for the voyage thither; a week from Falmouth, or ten days from the Thames, is no unusual. passage. But it is not so easy to get back again. The English packet goes on to Brazil and returns by a different course; and, as much as the island lies in the way of vessels going south of the tropics, it is, from the course of the trades, altogether out of their track returning; so that no homeward bound vessel ever voluntarily nears it. Accordingly, to get to Europe, you have nothing to depend upon but the vessels that trade directly with the island itself. These are not many, as a great part of the wine is shipped in East-Indian and other ships bound on ulterior voyages. |