exiled Stuart, and, as you part, he detains you, saying, “Sir, will you give me some little thing, (alguma cousinha,)—­I am so poor?” Overwhelmed with a sense of personal humility, you pull out three half-cents and present them with a touch of your hat, he receives them with the same, and you go home with a feeling that a distinguished honor has been done you.  The Spaniards say that the Portuguese are “mean even in their begging”:  they certainly make their benefactors mean; and I can remember returning home, after a donation of a whole pataco, (five cents,) with a debilitating sense of too profuse philanthropy.

It is inevitable that even the genteel life of Fayal should share this parsimony.  As a general rule, the higher classes on the island, socially speaking, live on astonishingly narrow means.  How they do it is a mystery; but families of eight contrive to spend only three or four hundred dollars a year, and yet keep several servants, and always appear rather stylishly dressed.  The low rate of wages (two dollars a month at the very highest) makes servants a cheap form of elegance.  I was told of a family employing two domestics upon an income of a hundred and twenty dollars.  Persons come to beg, sometimes, and bring a servant to carry home what is given.  I never saw a mechanic carry his tools; if it be only a hammer, the hired boy must come to fetch it.

Fortunately, there is not much to transport, the mechanic arts being in a very rudimentary condition.  For instance, there are no saw-horses nor hand-saws, the smallest saw used being a miniature wood-saw, with the steel set at an angle, in a peculiar manner.  It takes three men to saw a plank:  one to hold the plank, another to saw, and a third to carry away the pieces.

Farming-tools have the same simplicity.  It is one odd result of the universal bare feet that they never will use spades; everything is done with a hoe, most skilfully wielded.  There are no wheelbarrows, but baskets are the universal substitutes.  The plough is made entirely of wood, only pointed with iron, and is borne to and from the field on the shoulder.  The carts are picturesque, but clumsy; they are made of wicker-work, and the iron-shod wheels are solidly attached to the axle, so that all revolves together, amid fearful creaking.  The people could not be induced to use a cart with movable wheels which was imported from America, nor will they even grease their axles, because the noise is held to drive away witches.  Some other arts are a little more advanced, as any visitor to Mr. Harper’s pleasant Fayal shop in Boston may discover.  They make homespun cloth upon a simple loom, and out of their smoky huts come beautiful embroideries and stockings whose fineness is almost unequalled.  Their baskets are strong and graceful, and I have seen men sitting in village doorways, weaving the beautiful broom-plant, yellow flowers and all, until basket and bouquet seemed one.