The last time I was in this place was in 1846. All my life lies between the two visits. I was then twenty-one and a half and I shall be sixty-five to-morrow. The place looks to me to have grown a good deal, but I believe it is chiefly English residents whose villas dot the hill. There were no roads forty-four years ago. Now there is one, I am told, to Camera do Lobos nearly five miles long. That is the measure of Portuguese progress in half a century. Moreover, the men have left off wearing their pigtail caps and the women their hoods. [To his youngest daughter:--] Bella Vista Hotel, Funchal, May 6, 1890. Dearest Babs, This comes wishing you many happy returns of the day, though a little late in the arrival. Harry sends his love, and desires me to say that he took care to write a letter which should arrive in time, but unfortunately forgot to mention the birthday in it! So I think, on the whole, I have the pull of him. We ought to be back about the 18th or 19th, as I have put my name down for places in the "Conway Castle", which is to call here on the 12th, and I do not suppose she will be full. In the meanwhile, we shall fill up the time by a trip to the other side of the island, on which we start to-morrow morning at 7.30. You have to take your own provisions and rugs to sleep upon and under, as the fleas la bas are said to be unusually fine and active. We start quite a procession with a couple of horses, a guide, and two men (owners of the nags) to carry the baggage; and I suspect that before to-morrow night we shall have made acquaintance with some remarkably bad apologies for roads. But the horses here seem to prefer going up bad staircases at speed (with a man hanging on by the tail to steer), and if you only stick to them they land you all right. I have developed so much prowess in this line that I think of coming out in the character of Buffalo Bill on my return. Hands and face of both of us are done to a good burnt sienna, and a few hours more or less in the saddle don't count. I do not think either of us have been so well for years. You will have heard of our doings in Teneriffe from M--. The Canadas there is the one thing worth seeing, altogether unique. As a health resort I should say the place is a fraud--always excepting Guimar--and that, excellent for people in good health, is wholly unfit for a real invalid, who must either go uphill or downhill over the worst of roads if he leaves the hotel.