nurse that system, and that the surest way to prevent its return
was to enlighten their minds: I added that I had brought a small
stock of Bibles and Testaments to Evora, which I wished to leave
for sale in the hands of some respectable merchant, and that it he
were anxious to help to lay the axe to the root of superstition and
tyranny, he could not do so more effectually than by undertaking
the charge of these books. He declared his willingness to do so,
and I went away determined to entrust to him half of my stock. I
returned to the hostelry, and sat down on a log of wood on the
hearth within the immense chimney in the common apartment; two
surly looking men were on their knees on the stones; before them
was a large heap of pieces of old iron, brass, and copper; they
were assorting it, and stowing it away in various bags. They were
Spanish contrabandistas of the lowest class, and earned a miserable
livelihood by smuggling such rubbish from Portugal into Spain. Not
a word proceeded from their lips, and when I addressed them in
their native language, they returned no other answer than a kind of
growl. They looked as dirty and rusty as the iron in which they
trafficked; their four miserable donkeys were in the stable in the
rear.

The woman of the house and her daughter were exceedingly civil to
me, and coming near crouched down, asking various questions about
England. A man dressed somewhat like an English sailor, who sat on
the other side of the hearth confronting me, said, "I hate the
English, for they are not baptized, and have not the law," meaning
the law of God. I laughed, and told him that according to the law
of England, no one who was unbaptized could be buried in
consecrated ground; whereupon he said, "Then you are stricter than
we." He then said, "What is meant by the lion and the unicorn