Tell the "Micropholis" man that it is a fossil lizard with an armour of small scales.
CHAPTER 2.17.
1885.
[On April 8, he landed at Folkestone, and stayed there a day or two before going to London. Writing to Sir J. Donnelly, he remarks with great satisfaction at getting home:—]
We got here this afternoon after a rather shady passage from Boulogne, with a strong north wind in our teeth all the way, and rain galore. For all that, it is the pleasantest journey I have made for a long time—so pleasant to see one's own dear native mud again. There is no foreign mud to come near it.
[And on the same day he sums up to Sir M. Foster the amount of good he has gained from his expedition, and the amount of good any patient is likely to get from travel:—]
As for myself I have nothing very satisfactory to say. By the oddest chance we met Andrew Clark in the boat, and he says I am a very bad colour—which I take it is the outward and visible sign of the inward and carnal state. I may sum that up by saying that there is nothing the matter but weakness and indisposition to do anything, together with a perfect genius for making mountains out of molehills.
After two or three fine days at Venice, we have had nothing but wet or cold—or hot and cold at the same time, as in that prodigious imposture the Riviera. Of course it was the same story everywhere, "perfectly unexampled season."
Moral.—If you are perfectly well and strong, brave Italy—but in search of health stop at home.
It has been raining cats and dogs, and Folkestone is what some people would call dreary. I could go and roll in the mud with satisfaction that it is English mud.