CHAPTEE XI 
THE VOYAGE TO INDIA 
The Sidon left England on November 11, 1847, calling at 
Lisbon, Gibraltar, and Malta on the way to Alexandria. As 
a matter of course, the voyagers made the fourteen mile excur- 
sion from Lisbon to Cintra. Most of the party, mounted on 
jackasses, visited the Convent of Our Lady of the Eock ; 
Hooker climbed a rocky hill hard by, and beheved he had 
the best of it, for outstretched before him were typical groves 
of fruit and timber trees, and many miles of vast, grassy 
undulating plains of Portugal, conspicuous upon them the 
lines of Torres Vedras and many another place of note in the 
Peninsular War, ' for which see Napier (a book I never could 
and never shall get through).' 
The botanist sees at once in ' the multitude of Lichens, 
which coated the granite rocks as completely (though not 
with such fine species) as in the Antarctic plains,' a proof of 
the prevalent dampness of the atmosphere. The traveller, 
marvelHng that a nation of discoverers should have fallen so 
low, reflects that it was gold alone that stirred them from 
indolence, and exclaims sadly : 
What is to become of them it is hard to say. The land is 
rich and productive ; the climate delicious ; and they are 
neither warlike nor romantic people, such as the Spaniards, 
whose temperament keeps them in hot water. I have now 
seen them in Madeira, the Cape Verdes, Brazil, and at home : 
and they are the same all over the world. I hope never to 
see them again. 
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