376 Notes on Sport and Travel iv 



of the gun-room mess on board his ship. I infer 

 from what I have heard that if Jack Fish was the 

 boatman who stuck the other boatman, he must be 

 at least a hundred years old, for the story cannot be 

 traced to its original letter, so long has it been told. 

 At last we got off in one of the gaudily-painted 

 Lisbon boats, running before the wind across the 

 lake to the south-east. The morning was well worth 

 the turning out for, the sunrise just beginning to tint 

 the sky before us, while behind glimmered the gas- 

 lamps of Lisbon, looking blinking and disreputable 

 in the pure fresh morning light. Running up an 

 estuar>% we landed near a closed country house of 

 some size, and entering the fir woods we followed up 

 the estuary for about a mile till we came to a village. 

 This was in the last stage of dilapidation, but 

 picturesque in the highest degree, a perfect study for 

 an artist fond of broken lines. 



The end of the straggling street seemed blocked 

 up by a hedge of mighty aloes, most of them in 

 bloom, with flower-stems of twenty or more feet high, 

 and eisfantic reeds twelve or fifteen feet high with 

 stems as thick as gun-barrels. There were two or 

 three men lounging about, dressed in bright blue 

 garments, scarlet sashes, and bright green night-caps 

 with red edges, who greeted us kindly through their 

 noses after the fashion of their country. Two or 

 three ox-carts, with the wheels made of a solid slice 

 of tree, — a thousand years behind Pompeii, — croaking 

 and screaming along ; and then a turn to the right to 



