ves stupidly
staring about to find something which was old,--a square inch of surface
anywhere which looked like anything ever seen before,--that we might
take our departure from that, and then begin to improve our minds.
Perhaps this is difficult for the first hours in any foreign country;
certainly the untravelled American finds it utterly impossible in Fayal.
Consider the incongruities. The beach beneath your feet, instead of
being white or yellow, is black; the cliffs beside you are white or
red, instead of black or gray. The houses are of white plaster on the
outside, with wood-work, often painted in gay stripes, within. There are
no chimneys to the buildings, but sometimes there is a building to the
chimney; the latter being a picturesque tower with smoke coming from
the top and a house appended to the base. One half the women go about
bareheaded, save a handkerchief, and with a good deal of bareness at the
other extremity,--while the other half wear hoops on their heads in the
form of vast conical hoods attached to voluminous cloth cloaks which
sweep the ground. The men cover their heads with all sorts of burdens,
and their feet with nothing, or else with raw-hide slippers, hair
outside. There is no roar or rumble in the streets, for there are
no vehicles and no horses, but an endless stream of little donkeys,
clicking the rough pavement beneath their sharp hoofs, and thumped
solidly by screaming drivers. Who wears the new shoes on the island does
not appear; but the hens limp about the houses, tethered to the old
ones.

Further inspection reveals new marvels. The houses are roofed with red
and black tiles, semi-cylindrical in shape and rusty in surface, and
making the whole town look as if incrusted with barnacles. There is
never a pane of glass on the lower story, even for the shops, but only
barred windows and solid doors. Every house has a paved court-yard for
the ground-floor, into which donkeys may be driven and where beggars or
peasants may wait, and where one naturally expects to find Gil Blas in
one corner and Sancho Panza in another. An English lady, on arriving,
declared that our hotel was only a donkey-stable, and refused to enter
it. In the intervals between the houses the streets are lined with solid
stone walls from ten to twenty feet high, protecting the gardens behind;
and there is another stone wall inclosing the town on the water side,
as if to keep the people from being spilled out. One must g