Page:Letters from India Vol 1.djvu/19

 I shall never be brought on board again but by a guard of marines. We go on Friday night. This island is entirely lovely. Nothing is worth a day at sea, but as that cannot be avoided I am glad Madeira is our resting-place. We landed at three yesterday, after visits from the consul, salutes, &c., and got into palanquins at the landing-place, and were carried through a long narrow street with occasional intervals of gardens, where are palms and bananas and great orange-trees covered with fruit, and odd Murillo-looking women taking great care of each other’s hair—in short, everything looked tropical, and like a book of travels, and untrue. By-the-by, that puts me in mind that we went out of our course one night at sea, to avoid Cape Finisterre. Can’t you hear poor Mrs. Mather’s voice teaching us Cape Finisterre? and I never believed it was a real thing, or that it would ever come Cape-ing and Finisterre-ing into my actual path of life; but there is no saying how things may turn out, only there is no use in learning it all beforehand.

Well! our palanquin-bearers trotted us into the hall of a large house belonging to a Mr. Stothard, which George had been told to make