Otherwise, Madeira is vastly superior. I rode across from Funchal to Sao Vicente, up to Paul da Serra, then along the coast to Santa Anna, and back from Santa Anna to Funchal. I have seen nothing comparable except in Mauritius, nor anything anywhere like the road by the cliffs from Sao Vicente to Santa Anna. Lucky for me that my ancient nautical habit of sticking on to a horse came back. A good deal of the road is like a bad staircase, with no particular banisters, and a well of 1000 feet with the sea at the bottom. Your heart would rejoice over the great heaths. I saw one, the bole of which split into nearly equal trunks; and one of these was just a metre in circumference, and had a head as big as a moderate-sized ash. Gorse in full flower, up to 12 or 15 feet high. On the whole a singular absence of flowering herbs except Cinerarias and, especially in Teneriffe, Echium. I did not chance to see a Euphorbia in Madeira, though I believe there are some. In Teneriffe they are everywhere in queer shapes, and there was a thing that mimicked the commonest Euphorbia but had no milk, which I will ask you about when I see you. The Euphorbias were all in flower, but this thing had none. But you will have had enough of my scrawl.
Ever yours affectionately,
T.H. Huxley.
CHAPTER 3.7.
1890-1891.
[Three letters of the first half of the year may conveniently be placed here. The first is to Tyndall, who had just been delivering an anti-Gladstonian speech at Belfast. The opening reference must be to some newspaper paragraph which I have not been able to trace, just as the second is to a paragraph in 1876, not long after Tyndall's marriage, which described Huxley as starting for America with his titled bride.]
3 Jevington Gardens, Eastbourne, February 24, 1890.
My dear Tyndall,
Put down the three half-pints and the two dozen to the partnership account. Ever since the "titled bride" business I have given up the struggle against the popular belief that you and I constitute a firm.
It's very hard on me in the decline of life to have a lively young partner who thinks nothing of rushing six or seven hundred miles to perform a war-dance on the sainted G.O.M., and takes the scalp of Historicus as an hors d'oeuvre.