CHAPTEK XI 



THE VOYAGE TO INDIA 



THE Sidon left England on November 11, 1847, calling at 

 Lisbon, Gibraltar, and Malta on the way to Alexandria. As 

 a matter of course, the voyagers made the fourteen mile excur- 

 sion from Lisbon to Cintra. Most of the party, mounted on 

 jackasses, visited the Convent of Our Lady of the Kock ; 

 Hooker climbed a rocky hill hard by, and believed he had 

 the best of it, for outstretched before him were typical groves 

 of fruit and timber trees, and many miles of vast, grassy 

 undulating plains of Portugal, conspicuous upon them the 

 lines of Torres Vedras and many another place of note in the 

 Peninsular War, ' for which see Napier (a book I never could 

 and never shall get through).' 



The botanist sees at once in ' the multitude of Lichens, 

 which coated the granite rocks as completely (though not 

 with such fine species) as in the Antarctic plains,' a proof of 

 the prevalent dampness of the atmosphere. The traveller; 

 marvelling that a nation of discoverers should have fallen so 

 low, reflects that it was gold alone that stirred them from 

 indolence, and exclaims sadly : 



What is to become of them it is hard to say. The land is 

 rich and productive ; the climate delicious ; and they are 

 neither warlike nor romantic people, such as the Spaniards, 

 whose temperament keeps them in hot water. I have now 

 seen them in Madeira, the Cape Verdes, Brazil, and at home : 

 and they are the same all over the world. I hope never to 

 see them again. 



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