ing and climbing lamps which defined the course of
the streets.

The morning broke in sunshine, and after early breakfast the launches
began to ply again between the ship and the shore and continued till
nearly all the first and second cabin people had been carried off. The
people of the steerage satisfied what longing they had for strange
sights and scenes by thronging to the sides of the steamer until they
gave her a strong list landward, as they easily might, for there were
twenty-five hundred of them. At Madeira there is a local Thomas Cook &
Son of quite another name, but we were not finally sure that the alert
youth on the pier who sold us transportation and provision was really
their agent. However, his tickets served perfectly well at all points,
and he was of such an engaging civility and personal comeliness that I
should not have much minded their failing us here and there. He gave the
first charming-touch of the Latin south whose renewed contact is such a
pleasure to any one knowing it from the past. All Portuguese as Funchal
was, it looked so like a hundred little Italian towns that it seemed to
me as if I must always have driven about them in calico-tented
bullock-carts set on runners, as later I drove about Eunchal.

It was warm enough on the ship, but here in the town we found ourselves
in weather that one could easily have taken for summer, if the
inhabitants had not repeatedly assured us that it was the season of
winter, and that there were no flowers and no fruits. They could not, if
they had wished, have denied the flies; these, in a hotel interior to
which we penetrated, simply swarmed. If it was winter in Funchal it was
no wintrier than early autumn would have been in one of those Italian
towns of other days; it had the same temperament, the same little
tree-planted spaces, the same devious, cobble-paved streets, the same
pleasant stucco houses; the churches had bells of like tone, and if
their facades confessed a Spanish touch they were not more Spanish than
half the churches in Naples. The public ways were of a scrupulous
cleanliness, as if, with so many English signs glaring down at them,
they durst not untidy out-of-doors, though in-doors it was said to be
different with them. There are three thousand English living at Funchal
and everybody speaks English, however slightly. The fresh faces of
English girls met us in the streets and no doubt English invalids
abound.

We shipmates were all goin