Presently we meet a girl on a donkey, sitting sideways on a funny-looking affair which does service for a saddle, and which half smothers her small mount. She has got her best shawl on, and her brightest orange handkerchief tied over her head, and because the sun is hot (and perhaps still more because she is going to visit some friends, and wishes to appear smart), she is holding up an old green umbrella.

GOING TO SEE FRIENDS.

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Next, we meet another donkey, but he is a less prosperous beast than his brother who has just gone by. Thin and tired, he droops his head, and his ears lop sideways in a depressed way; and no wonder, for hanging on either side of his pack-saddle are huge baskets filled with earth, and piled above them and across his poor little back are great bundles and sacks stuffed with green fodder. Perched, goodness knows how, on top of all, sits an old country-woman. There is hardly any donkey to be seen, except the head and legs, and a few inches above the tail. We wonder how he can get along at all, but his mistress won’t let him dawdle; and as her ruthless stick comes down with a crack on the few available inches, we feel we would give anything to save his poor thinly-covered bones.

Sights of this kind are the one thing that would make English boys and girls miserable in Portugal. Kind as the people are to one another and to their children, their poor animals are often most brutally overladen, overworked, and beaten. No one seems to think that animals need kindness and consideration, no one minds seeing acts of cruelty.

RETURNING FROM MARKET, LEIRIA.