ut one street on the island passable to such an equipage,
and but one such equipage to enjoy its privileges,--only one, that is,
drawn by horses, and presentable in Broadway. There are three other
vehicles, each the object of envy and admiration, but each drawn by oxen
only. There is the Baroness, the only lady of title, who sports a sort
of butcher's cart, with a white top; within lies a mattress, and on the
mattress recline her ladyship and her daughter, as the cart rumbles and
stumbles over the stones;--nor they alone, for, on emerging from an
evening party, I have seen the oxen of the Baroness, unharnessed,
quietly munching their hay at the foot of the stairs, while a pair of
bare feet emerging from one end of the vehicle, and a hearty snore from
the other, showed the mattress to be found a convenience by some one
beside the nobility. Secondly, there is a stout gentleman near the
Hotel, reputed to possess eleven daughters, and known to possess a
pea-green omnibus mounted on an ox-cart; the windows are all closed with
blinds, and the number of young ladies may be an approximation only.
And, lastly, there sometimes rolls slowly by an expensive English
curricle, lately imported; the springs are somehow deranged, so that it
hangs entirely on one side; three ladies ride within, and the proprietor
sits on the box, surveying in calm delight his two red oxen with their
sky-blue yoke, and the tall peasant who drives them with a goad.

After a few days of gazing at objects like these, one is ready to recur
to the maps, and become statistical. It would be needless to say (but
that we all know far less of geography than we are supposed to know)
that the Azores are about two-thirds of the way across the Atlantic, and
about the latitude of Philadelphia; sharing, however, in the greater
warmth of the European coast, and slightly affected, also, by the Gulf
Stream. The islands are supposed to have been known to the Phoenicians,
and Humboldt holds out a flattering possibility of Phoenician traces yet
discoverable. This lent additional interest to a mysterious inscription
which we hunted up in a church built in the time of Philip II., at the
north end of the island; we had the satisfaction of sending a copy of it
to Humboldt, though it turned out to be only a Latin inscription clothed
in uncouth Greek characters, such as have long passed for Runic in the
Belgian churches and elsewhere. The Phoenician traces yet remain to be
discovered