Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 18.djvu/561

Rh shaking hands with all. Professor Virchow, talking slowly to a learned confrère on the one hand, and M. Henri Martin, deep in an Iberian controversy, on the other. Here was a spruce and speckless Frenchman, as fresh and bright as in his native Paris; there, a crumpled German, bearing evident traces of a night in the train. After all, there was ample time to exchange greetings and compliments, as well as for the more important business of eating, as the proverb, "Hurry no man's cattle," is also applied to trains in Spain. A Spaniard in a hurry was the one curiosity no member of the Congress was fortunate enough to light on, although every facility to see all the rarities of the country was politely accorded them.

At last the excruciating sound of the whistle summoned all to ensconce themselves in their snug corners of the carriages again, and only at daybreak next morning—on Sunday, September 19th, to be exact—did this first detachment of science, coated with a yet thicker layer of dust, arrive at Lisbon, after thirty-three long hours from Madrid.

Until last year a direct train accomplished this journey in ten hours less time; but Spain, tenacious of old traditions, suppressed that train as savoring too much of progress, and consequent Nihilism and dynamite.

All that Sunday the newly-arrived foreigners talked of nothing but the lovely position of Lisbon, with its many hills and broad Tagus. They much admired the great reservoir of the famous aqueduct with its tail sixteen miles long, and also the cats with no tails at all. Lisbon literally swarms with cats, and not a few have their ears and tails cropped; this is a scientific note made by a savant on the spot. There were also many speculations among this festive company as to whether they should get as much dancing as at Pesth, where—let not this confidential disclosure damage their scientific reputation—in the course of one short week did they not fit in three dances, one of which was extemporized in the waiting-room of a railway-station, in returning from a ghoul-like expedition, undertaken for the purpose of rifling some dozen Bronze-age graves? Such was their heartless levity! After this disclosure it will be no shock to hear that, on the eve of their serious work at Lisbon, most of this frivolous body patronized the bullfight. In extenuation, it must be admitted that a Portuguese bull-fight is not, like the Spanish, a public shambles and knacker's yard, but a bloodless trial of dexterity, from which the gorgeous cavaliers, on their splendid Andalusian horses, come out unharmed; and the bull, whose horns are encased in leather-and-iron gloves, is driven out very happily among a herd of tame oxen, whose business—and well the sagacious animals understand it—is to decoy him out of the arena.

The following day there was the impressive inauguration of the Congress by the King himself. The hall provided for the séances is the library of a suppressed monastery, where all the old calf and