The Pico peasants have also the advantage of the Fayalese in picturesqueness of costume.  The men wear homespun blue jackets and blue or white trousers, with a high woollen cap of red or blue.  The women wear a white waist with a gay kerchief crossed above the bosom, a full short skirt of blue, red, or white, and a man’s jacket of blue, with tight sleeves.  On the head there is the pretty round-topped straw hat with red and white cord, which is now so extensively imported from Fayal; and beneath this there is always another kerchief, tied under the chin, or hanging loosely.  The costume is said to vary in every village, but in the villages opposite Horta this dress is worn by every woman from grandmother to smallest granddaughter; and when one sails across the harbor, in the lateen-sail packet-boat, and old and young come forth on the rocks to see the arrival, it seems like voyaging to some realm of butterflies.

This out-door life begins very early.  As soon as the Fayalese baby is old enough to sit up alone, he is sent into the nursery.  The nursery is the sunny side of the house-door.  A large stone is selected, in a convenient position, and there the little dusky creature squats, hour after hour, clad in one garment at most, and looking at the universe through two black beads of eyes.  Often the little dog comes and suns himself close by, and the little cat beside the dog, and the little pig beside the cat, and the little hen beside the pig,—­a “Happy Family,” a row of little traps to catch sunbeams, all down the lane.  When older, the same child harnesses his little horse and wagon, he being the horse and a sheep’s jawbone the wagon, and trots contentedly along, in almost the smallest amount of costume accessible to mortals.  All this refers to the genuine, happy, plebeian baby.  The genteel baby is probably as wretched in Fayal as elsewhere, but he is kept more out of sight.

These children are seldom noisy and never rude:  the race is not hilarious, and their politeness is inborn.  Not an urchin of three can be induced to accept a sugar-plum until he has shyly slid off his little cap, if he has one, and kissed his plump little hand.  The society of princes can hardly surpass the natural courtesy of the peasant, who insists on climbing the orange-tree to select for you the choicest fruit.  A shopkeeper never can sell you a handful of nuts without bringing the bundle near to his lips, first, with a graceful wave of salutation.  A lady from Lisbon told us that this politeness surpassed that of the native Portuguese; and the wife of an English captain, who had sailed with her husband from port to port for fifteen years, said that she had never seen anything to equal it.  It is not the slavishness of inferiors, for the poorest exhibit it towards each other.  You see two very old women talking eagerly in the street, each in a cloak whose every square inch is a patch, and every patch a different shade,—­and each alternate word you hear seems to be Senhora.  Among laboring men, the most available medium of courtesy is the little paper cigar; it contains about four whiffs, and is smoked by about that number of separate persons.