224 THE VOYAGE TO INDIA 
As a world-voyager himself his one regret for taking a new 
way back into Lisbon was not 
to have looked once more at Beleni Church, where Columbus 
dreamed that an Angel directed him to the discovery of 
the New World, if I remember aright ; and where especially 
Vasco da Gama and his successors offered up, some their 
prayers, and others their thanksgivings (to St. Nicholas, 
by the way) on the occasion of their several voyages to the 
Eastern Indies, or return therefrom. 
Still the quarter of Lisbon by wliich they returned was 
magnificent by night, albeit the high and handsome squares 
were perhaps whited sepulchres. Night also offered another 
advantage : ' After the heat of the day is over the many smells 
are in a great measure dissipated ; the dogs gone to kennel ; 
and little else but drunken seamen to disturb one's reveries.' 
The fortified rock of Malta provokes agreeable comparison 
with St. Helena and Gibraltar : for here the heat that is fervid 
on the black soil of St. Helena and scorches at Gibraltar is tem- 
pered by the yellow stone, which neither attracts like the one 
nor reflects like the other the powerful rays of the sun. There 
is a thumbnail sketch of the town with its magnificent entrance 
to the harbour, its ' church and convent bell-towers innumer- 
able, ringing all day long, many with good voices, some with 
bad,' its rocks bare of any green save the Caper plant, and 
its picturesque streets, which 
form a sort of square telescope, with busy people along the 
bottom, handsome yellow carved stone balconies projecting 
on either side, bright blue sky above, and the sea like a 
perfect jewel at the fm-ther end. 
Apropos of the carved stone work everywhere (of which 
he bought some for the Geological Museum) : 
Stone cutting and carving is indeed the besetting employ- 
ment of the Maltese ; and the facility afforded by the lime- 
stone has the same effect on this, their hereditary disposition, 
that a soft deal bench has on a schoolboy. 
At Citta Vecchia, he tells Miss Henslow, 
