Tomorrow I shall post this and the trip will be over. It has
been a most happy start. I am not going to write letters
often, but am going head over ears into this new life and let
the old one wait awhile. You cannot handle Africa and keep up
your fences in New York at the same time. I am now going out
to talk to the Boston couple, or to propose a lion hunt to Dr.
Field.
Since I wrote that last I have seen Portugal. It made me
seem suddenly very far away from New York. Portugal is a high
hill with a white watch tower on it flying signal flags. It is
apparently inhabited by one man who lives in a long row of yellow
houses with red roofs, and populated by sheep who do grand acts
of balancing on the side of the hill. There is also a Navy of a
brown boat with a leg-of-mutton sail and a crew of three men in
the boat--not to speak of the dog. It is a great thing to have a
traveled son. None of you ever saw Portugal, yah!
I am now in Gibraltar. It is a large place and there does not
seem to be room in this letter, in which to express my
feelings about Moors in bare legs and six thousand Red-coats
and to hear Englishmen speak again.
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