, quite the
best, I have written. I read it to the queer girl and her queer
chaperon and they weep whenever they speak of it, which they do every
half hour. All the passengers apparently laid in a stock of
"Gallegher" and "The West" before starting, and young women in yachting
caps are constantly holding me up for autographs and favorite
quotations. Yesterday we passed the Azores near enough to see the
windows in the houses, and we have seen other islands at different
times, which is quite refreshing. Tomorrow I shall post this and the
trip will be over. It has been a most happy start. I am not going to
write letters often, but am going head over ears into this new life and
let the old one wait awhile. You cannot handle Africa and keep up your
fences in New York at the same time. I am now going out to talk to the
Boston couple, or to propose a lion hunt to Dr. Field.

Since I wrote that last I have seen Portugal. It made me seem suddenly
very far away from New York. Portugal is a high hill with a white watch
tower on it flying signal flags. It is apparently inhabited by one man
who lives in a long row of yellow houses with red roofs, and populated
by sheep who do grand acts of balancing on the side of the hill. There
is also a Navy of a brown boat with a leg-of-mutton sail and a crew of
three men in the boat--not to speak of the dog. It is a great thing to
have a traveled son. None of you ever saw Portugal, yah!

I am now in Gibraltar. It is a large place and there does not seem to
be room in this letter, in which to express my feelings about Moors in
bare legs and six thousand Red-coats and to hear Englishmen speak
again. When I woke up Gibraltar was a black silhouette against the
sky, but toward the south there was a low line of mountains with a red
sky behind them, dim and mysterious and old, and that was Africa. Then
Spain turned up all amethyst and green, and the Mediterranean as blue
as they tell you it is. They wouldn't let me take my gun into
Gibraltar. They know my reputation for war.

DICK.

GIBRALTAR.

February 14th, 1893.

DEAR MOTHER:

The luck of the British Army which I am modestly fond of comparing with
my own took a vacation yesterday as soon as I had set foot on land. In
the first place Egypt had settled down to her sluggish Nile like calm
and cholera had quarantined the ship I wanted to take to Algiers,
shutting off Algiers and what was more important Tunis. The Governor