On my leaving him, the boy came from his hiding-place and rejoined me; he said his reason for hiding himself was fear that his master might know that it was he who brought me to him, for that the old man was ashamed of appearing in the character of a schoolmaster. I asked the boy whether he or his parents were acquainted with the Scripture and ever read it; but he did not understand me. I must here observe that the boy was fifteen years of age, and that he was in many respects very intelligent and had some knowledge of the Latin language; nevertheless he knew not the Scripture even by name, and I have no doubt that at least one half of his countrymen are, in that respect, no wiser than himself. I have questioned the children of Portugal at the doors of village inns, at the hearths of their cottages, in the fields where they labour, at the stone Mountains by the way-sides where they water their cattle, about the Scripture, the Bible, the Old and New Testament, and in scarcely one instance have they known what I was alluding to or could return me a rational answer, though in all other instances I had no reason to complain of their want of apprehension. Indeed nothing has surprised me more than the free and unembarrassed manner with which the Portuguese peasantry sustain a conversation, and the purity of the language in which they express their thoughts; and yet very few of them can write or read, whereas the peasantry of our own country, whose education is in general much superior, are in their conversation coarse and dull almost to brutality, and absurdly ungrammatical in the language which they use, though the English tongue, upon the whole, is more simple in its grammar than the Portuguese. On my way back from Mafra to Cintra I very nearly lost my life. As the night was closing in fast, we left the regular road by the advice of the guide, and descending the hill on which Mafra stands reached the bottom of the valley, from which there is a narrow pathway winding round the next hill, exceedingly steep, with a precipice on the left side; the horse on which I was mounted, and which was by no means suited for such climbing, in his violent struggles to accomplish the ascent burst the girth of the saddle, so that I was cast violently off, with the saddle beneath me. Fortunately, I fell on the right side, or I should have rolled down the hill and probably have been killed; as it was, I remained stunned and senseless for two or three minutes, when I revived, and with the assistance of the guide and the man who waits on me, walked up the remaining part of the hill, when, the saddle being readjusted, I mounted again. I was very drowsy and stupid for two or three days, from the influence of the fall, but I am happy to say at present, thanks to the Almighty, I have long ceased to feel any inconvenience from it.