FAYAL AND THE PORTUGUESE 283 
After a few days of gazing at objects like 
these, one is ready to recur to the maps, and 
become statistical. It would be needless to say 
— but that we all know far less of geography 
than we are supposed to know — that the Azores 
are about two thirds of the way across the At- 
lantic, and are about the latitude of Philadelphia, 
sharing, however, in the greater warmth of the 
European coast, and slightly affected, also, by 
the Gulf Stream. The islands are supposed to 
have been known to the Pheenicians, and Hum- 
boldt holds out a flattering possibility of Phoe- 
nician traces yet discoverable. This lent addi- 
tional interest to a mysterious inscription which 
we hunted up in a church built in the time of 
Philip II., at the north end of the island; we 
had the satisfaction of sending a copy of it to 
Humboldt, though it may after all be only a 
Latin inscription clothed in uncouth Greek 
characters, such as have long passed for Runic 
in the Belgian churches and elsewhere. The 
Phoenician traces remain to be detected ; so does 
a statue which is fabled to exist on the shore 
of one of the smaller islands, where Columbus 
landed in some of his earlier voyages, and, pacing 
the beach, looked eagerly towards the western 
sea: the statue is supposed still to portray him. 
In the fifteenth century, at any rate, the islands 
were rediscovered. Since then they have always 
