238 DR. HOOKER’S MISSION TO INDIA. 
or Art, and worthy of a much longer visit than we were able to 
make to it. But I must first speak of Lisbon and the “Golden 
Tagus,” in both of which objects, however, I was grievously dis- 
appointed. The former, like almost every object in Portugal, looks 
best from a distance. Its long rows of white-washed houses show 
filthy on a near approach; and the magnificent palaces of the old 
nobility are sinking, like their owners, to decay. Civil war has 
brought poverty in its train. In all the shops splendid jewellery 
and fine plate are offered at prices infinitely below their value, for 
money is not to be had. The streets are generally steep, and with 
hardly any exceptions very narrow: a few consist of houses eight 
or ten stories high ; and here and there you come upon public 
gardens, enclosed with handsome and lofty railings. The suburbs 
are very extensive, and they swarm with wretched beggars and 
herds of quarrelsome dogs, alike annoying to the stranger. 
I saw no good trees near Lisbon, only Olives, vergreen Oaks, 
Orange, Pomegranate, and the great Datura. We made an ex- 
cursion to Cintra, fourteen miles distant, and losing our road, 
wandered among the low, rounded and bare hills, among which 
the Tagus winds its way. Iwas not sorry for the mistake and 
delay, for they enabled me to see more of the country. Vegetation 
was most scanty ; the plants were all but burnt up, a few Zuplor- 
bias, Genistas, and Bupleura, some Astragali, and an unsightly 
Centaurea, alone remaining. In a village, to which we wandered 
and whence we were directed to the right path four or five miles 
distant, the scenery was prettier, for I saw water, green grass, 
groves of Olives, Vineyards, and scattered woods of Oak. Here 
and there were white convents with gay gardens round them. 
The hills showed a few Stone-Pines, bent by the winds, and m. 
the bottom of the valley grew Weeping Willows and Arundo 
Phragmites (?). The agriculture is most slovenly, and the fields 
are enclosed with rough stone walls: the roads are not much 
better of their kind, being rugged and dusty, and adorned, at every 
mile or so, with the pile of stones and a cross, of which I need 
not explain the meaning. The only objects which struck me as 
curious and peculiar, are the windmills. Without having seen — 
