186 SIR WILLIAM RAMSAY 



When it was all over Ramsay naturally felt the effect 

 of the strain, and in the late autumn he was ordered off 

 for a voyage, and in November, accompanied by his old 

 friend Mr Fyfe, he went to Rio de Janeiro, returning 

 after only a few days' sojourn in Rio. In 1911 Ramsay 

 became President of the British Association. In a 

 letter to Mr. Fyfe, 19th July, he writes : 



"I have finished my B.A. address this afternoon and now 

 holidays begin. I think I feel the difficulty of such work more 

 and more ; it is harder and harder to do more than one serious 

 thing at a time. My friend X complains of not being able to 

 do more than eight hours' work a day and asks me how to pass 

 his evening hours. He wants to know whether it would be 

 possible for him to learn to smoke ! Some folks find cards a 

 relief ; I don't. I find reading all that I want or need." 



In the previous May Sir William and Lady Ramsay 

 had made an excursion to Algiers, which he described in 

 a letter to Mr. Fyfe as follows : 



" We sailed from Southampton to Algiers in the Dutch boat. 

 On board were the Duke and Duchess of Wellington and their 

 daughter. You may remember that his grandfather got a grant 

 of land in Granada and a title after the peninsular war, and the 

 present Duke goes out every year to look after it. They left 

 us at Lisbon. Mag and I landed and went up to the fort on 

 the hill. A young soldier showed us round and we saw a good 

 deal. His Portuguese was a bit difficult to make out, but we 

 managed. Then we went to Belem and saw the church and the 

 school. The revolutionists have done a good deal of damage ; 

 a lot of buildings have been battered about. We spent a week 

 in Algeria. After three days in the town of Algiers we went 

 to Relizane, a little place south-west of Algiers, and then by motor 



