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pery, false, and ruinous. No other animal but an ass or a mule could carry you up it, and in some places the steps are so high, and the struggle of the animal to lift his burthen is so slow and uncertain, as to make it doubtful whether he will overcome the difficulty or roll back. At last he gives a grunt and succeeds; and then moves on at a better pace. Another high step follows, and with the help of his driver he slowly grunts up this. Then he rests and labours up once more; again sighs and scrambles, until, all the difficulties of the ascent being surmounted, he brings you to a more level pumice road over the mountains of the Furnas. Here your difficulties end, and you descend the rest of the way. Man and beast seem refreshed and jog on in better spirits.

It was quite dark when we came to the valley, and the night being fresh but calm, a heavy column of white vapour had settled over the Caldeiras. Two or three lights twinkled in the windows of the principal houses, and all was still except the dogs and grasshoppers, who yelped and chirped most vigorously. It is in a climate like this, where grasshoppers are noisy in their mirth above any of their kind in England, that

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you can realise the time when "the grasshopper shall be a burden." I could easily imagine an irritable old man sitting rather late at his cottage door, finding the rasping din of these insects extremely burthensome.

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