Though very passionate, and addicted to the use of the knife, for the purpose of taking summary vengeance, the Portuguese are nevertheless arrant cowards. Indeed, it is a question by no means settled, whether all classes of men, in any country, who fly to cold steel or to fire-arms in every petty quarrel, are not cowards at heart. We had an evidence of Portuguese cowardice in an affray which occurred between some of the citizens of Lisbon and a party of our marines. Six of the latter, ignorant of the palace or municipal regulations, wandered into the queen’s gardens. Some twenty of the Portuguese, on witnessing this bold intrusion on the privacy of the queen, rushed upon them with long knives. The marines, though so inferior in number, faced about with their bayonets, and, after much cursing and chattering, their enemies, considering perhaps that the better part of valor is discretion, took to their heels, leaving the six marines masters of a bloodless field. These recontres were quite common between them and our men; the result, though sometimes more serious, was uniformly the same. As an illustration of the manners of this people, I cannot forbear the insertion of another fact. I was one day walking leisurely along the streets, quite at my ease, when the gathering of a noisy multitude arrested my attention. Looking up, I was shocked at seeing a human head, with a pair of hands beneath it, nailed to a pole! They had just been taken from the body of a barber, who, when in the act of shaving a gentleman, was seized with a sudden desire to possess a beautiful watch, which glittered in his pocket; to gain this brilliant bauble, the wretched man cut his victim’s throat. He was arrested, his hands were cut off, then his head, and both were fastened to the pole as I have described them. Upon inquiry, I ascertained that this was the ordinary method of punishing murder in Portugal; a striking evidence that civilization had not fully completed its great work among them. Civilization humanizes the feelings of society, throwing a veil of refinement and mercy over even the sterner acts of justice; at any rate, it never tolerates such barbarism as I saw at Lisbon.