288 OUTDOOR STUDIES 
Fayal is not an expensive place. One pays 
six dollars a week at an excellent hotel, and 
there is nothing else to spend money on, except 
beggars and donkeys. For a shilling an hour 
one can ride, or, as the Portuguese phrase 
perhaps circuitously expresses it, go to walk on 
horseback on a donkey, — dar um passeio a 
cavalho n'um burvo. The beggars, indeed, are 
numerous; but one’s expenditures are always 
happily limited by the great scarcity of small 
change. A half cent, however, will buy you 
blessings enough for a lifetime, and you can 
find an investment in almost any direction. 
You visit some church or cemetery ; you ask a 
question or two of a lounger in a black cloak, 
with an air like an exiled Stuart, and, as you 
part, he detains you, saying, “ Sir, will you give 
me some little thing (e/guma cousinha), —I am 
so poor?”’ Overwhelmed with a sense of per- 
sonal humility, you pull out three half cents 
and present them with a touch of your hat; he 
receives them with the same, and you go home 
with a feeling that a distinguished honor has 
been done you. The Spaniards say that the 
Portuguese are “mean even in their begging :” 
they certainly make their benefactors mean ; 
and I can remember to have returned home, 
after giving away a fataco (five cents), with a 
debilitating sense of too profuse philanthropy. 
