312 OUTDOOR STUDIES 
few went out shooting or fishing occasionally ; 
but anything like employment, even mercantile, 
was entirely beneath their caste ; and they only 
pardoned the constant industry of the Ameri- 
can Consul and his family as a sort of national 
eccentricity, for which they must not be severely 
condemned. 
A good school system is being introduced 
into all the Portuguese dominions, but there 
is no bookstore in Fayal, though some dry- 
goods dealers sell a few religious books. We 
heard a rumor of a Portuguese “ Uncle Tom” 
also, but I never could find the copy. The old 
convent libraries were sent to Lisbon, on the 
suppression of the monasteries, and never re- 
turned. There was once a printing-press on 
the island, but one of the governors shipped 
it off to St. Michael. “There it goes,” he said 
to the American Consul, “and the Devil take 
it!” The vessel was wrecked in the bay. 
“You see,” he afterwards piously added, “the 
Devil as taken it.” It is proper, however, 
to mention that a press and a newspaper have 
been established since our visit, without further 
Satanic interference. 
Books proved to be scarce on the island. 
One official gentleman from Lisbon, quite an 
accomplished man, who spoke French fluently 
and English tolerably, had some five hundred 
