Io ENGLAND TO RIO DE JANEIRO CHAP. I 
not a little on our peculiar excellence in that production. 
The fat of this was white, like the fat of mutton, but the 
meat brown and coarse-grained as ours, though much 
smaller. 
The town of Funchiale is situated at the bottom of the 
bay, very ill-built, though larger than the size of the island 
seems to deserve. The houses of the better people are in 
general large, but those of the poorer sort very small, and 
the streets very narrow and uncommonly ill-paved. The 
churches here have abundance of ornaments, chiefly bad 
pictures, and figures of their favourite saints in laced clothes. 
The Convent of the Franciscans, indeed, which we went to 
see, had very little ornament; but the neatness with which 
those fathers kept everything was well worthy of commenda- 
tion, especially their infirmary, the contrivance of which 
deserves to be particularly noticed. It was a long room; 
on one side were windows and an altar for the convenience 
of administering the sacrament to the sick, on the other 
were the wards, each just capable of containing a bed, and 
lined with white Dutch tiles. To every one of these was a 
door communicating with a gallery which ran parallel to the 
great room, so that any of the sick might be supplied with 
whatever they wanted without disturbing their neighbours. 
In this convent was a curiosity of a very singular nature : 
a small chapel whose whole lining, wainscot and ceiling, was 
entirely composed of human bones, two large thigh bones 
being laid crossways, with a skull in each of the openings. 
Among these was a very singular anatomical curiosity: a 
skull in which one side of the lower jaw was perfectly and 
very firmly fastened to the upper by an ossification, so that 
the man, whoever he was, must have lived some time without 
being able to open his mouth; indeed it was plain that a 
hole had been made on the other side by beating out his 
teeth, and in some measure damaging his jawbone, by which 
alone he must have received his nourishment. 
I must not leave these good fathers without mentioning 
a thing which does great credit to their civility, and at the 
same time shows that they are not bigots in their religion. 
