FAYAL AND THE PORTUGUESE — 289 
It is inevitable that even the genteel life of 
Fayal should share this parsimony. As a gen- 
eral rule, the higher classes on the island, so- 
cially speaking, live on astonishingly small 
means. How they do it is a mystery; but fam- 
ilies of eight contrive to spend only three or 
four hundred dollars a year, and yet keep sev- 
eral servants, and always appear rather stylishly 
dressed. The low rate of wages — two dollars 
a month at the very highest — makes household 
service a cheap luxury. I was told of a family 
which employed two domestics upon an income 
of a hundred and twenty dollars. Persons come 
to beg, sometimes, and bring a servant to carry 
home what is given. I never saw a mechanic 
carry his tools; if it be only a hammer, the 
hired boy must come to fetch it. 
Fortunately, there is not much to transport, 
the mechanic arts being in a very rudimentary 
condition. For instance, there are no saw- 
horses or hand-saws, the smallest saw used be- 
ing a miniature wood-saw, with the steel set at 
an angle, ina peculiar manner. It takes three 
men to saw a plank: one to hold the plank, 
another to do the work, and a third to carry 
away the pieces. Farming tools have the same 
simplicity. It is one odd result of the univer- 
sal bare feet that they never will use spades, 
but everything is done with a hoe, most skil- 
