prisoner of war, was then called upon. After assuring myself that no other person then present spoke French, I profited by the moment, to request that he would watch where they were about to put me, and if possible to find means of speaking with me, as I had been a victim of the most frightful perfidy, and had reason to expect foul play. I was then taken through a long filthy passage to a dungeon: the smell of this approach, which was infectious, gave but a disagreeable presentiment of the dwelling to which it led: 1: nor was the presage deceitful. A door of solid wood was first opened, and then a heavy iron gate, in which was an opening or flat hole made by the divergent direction given to the bars, through which a plate or trencher could be thrust, in every thing resembling the den of a wild beast. The floor was damp; there was no chimney nor window; but high up, next the springing of the arch, for it was vaulted, was a square hole; and that the sky as well as earth might be hid from the tenant of this gloomy cell, a wall was built up before the opening. Nor were the other senses more regaled: the roaring noise of prisoners, the clinking of chains and the ringing of bars, was all that could be heard.

There was however allowed me a chair and a little table; and I had a small travelling mattress, which had first served me on board of ship, afterwards at the inns on the road, and now more essentially here. This I obtained permission to have spread upon the damp floor. My servant was taken to the house of the minister of the police, in spite of his entreaties to remain with me. There he met a negro servant whe spoke English and told him that he need fear nothing, for we were in a Christian country John asked him, if he knew where his master and he were

T

to be sent; whether it was to England or to Hamburg? The other said to a better country than either. He asked him, if it was to Spain? and he answered, perhaps so, or to a better country still. But as to me, I was not favored

with any explanation.

The first thing I requested to have was some tea, which was brought with bread and some butter upon a cabbage leaf. I asked for a knife, which was refused: I then had recourse to my penknife. They desired to see it, laid hold of it and kept it. And one of them asked if I had garters; for that I must give them up. My patience forsook me, and I asked them whether it was with the intention to assassinate me, that they would deprive me of every means of self-defence; or if they meant to put in practice some atrocity, such as they supposed might drive me to despair, that in such case it was better to meet danger than to fly from it: and that they should therefore find, from the lesson I should give them, that I was of a country where fortune had sometimes failed, but courage never.

Happily this scene had no tragical catastrophe: for after the first surprise seignior Joseph Timudo, the deputygaoler or book-keeper, the same who had first written down my name with Joachim, the principal turnkey, both approached with extended arms and embraced me, adding these flattering words "gusto multo esto gente:" I love those people greatly. I now had credit enough to borrow my own penknife, to eat my bread and butter, but was watched all the time by four or five of them, and surrendered it up when I had done.

Shortly after I was left alone a voice spoke through the outer key-hole. It was the French captain, to tell me to arm myself with courage, for it was said that it was I who

had made the revolution in Holland.

I had only time to

answer that it was not true, and that I had never been in Holland, when he was obliged to run away.

Next morning my doors were opened by a new set of turnkeys (for they changed daily) who saluted me with many nauseous compliments; each asking me in his turn if I had passed the night well. My first care was to see whether I could not by money, although I had but little, ransom myself from this dungeon. I was told the principal governor, seignior Francisco, was then in the country, but expected shortly. I asked when the minister was to come to see me; and they still said in a few days, but that he had too much business at present.

At length I was fortunate enough to obtain an audience of Seignior Francisco. I requested him to put me in some place where I should have good air to breathe; a view less melancholy, and the society of some person, if such there were, like myself, imprisoned without crime, or at least without any crime that was degrading. He promised me all this, and mentioned some one of my own country, who was imprisoned, he said, for something, as he understood, of a similar nature. I was then taken up stairs to a very small room, where was a Mr. M'Dermott, a master taylor and inn-keeper, whose beard was long and bushy, and whose crime was free-masonry.

Had I been a brother mason I might have derived, perhaps, some mysterious consolation from this adventure. As it was, it was a relief to hear a human voice, instead of spending day after day, and night after night, in frightful solitude. Mr. M'Dermott, my new companion, had lived long in the island of Madeira as well as in Lisbon. His conversation was not barren of anecdote and amusement,

and the window afforded a beautiful view of the river: but to enjoy that, it was necessary to climb up and crouch in it. The principal objection was that our two mattresses covered almost the entire floor, so that there was no room for exercise; and this forced me to lie upon the bed, and augmented the complaint in my chest.

But whatever consolation I found in the society of my present companion, one circumstance in his case gave me sensible uneasiness. Whilst he was in secret here, his wife and children were confined in another prison for the same crime, or for misprison of free-masonry. And he never could obtain so much from the keepers, as to know whether she was enlarged or not. One day, when any thing was sent to him by his friends, he thought to have discovered in a handkerchief or a napkin a proof that she was free: and the next day he was certain of the contrary. This barbarity towards the wife and children of a man charged only with free-masonry, was a bad omen for mine should she come to this poor country.

One night my companion was raised from his bed, hand-cuffed and taken through the streets to a judge's house to trial. He told me on his return what passed. He was asked many questions touching the danger of freemasonry to church and king; to which he opposed the instances of kings and princes that were grand master masons: and used other arguments, so well put and so well taken, that he obtained, not his enlargement nor that of his wife and children, nor any permission to hear from or to see them, nor any assurance against their transportation or his, but an indulgence, of which I profited as well as he, a permission to be shaved.

About this time my health suffering greatly from close

confinement, I demanded another audience of seignior Francisco, and obtained by like persuasion, to be changed into a very spacious room, commanding a beautiful prospect of the harbor, the country and a great part of the city. There were at least eight great windows without glass; but secured with immense bars of iron lengthways on the outside, and a massive cross-grate within: and the wall was so thick, that one might have lived in the space between as in a cage. Upon the whole however it was clean and healthy. I need not observe that there was no glazed windows, and this for two reasons: First, that such an article of luxury has yet been but sparingly introduced into this kingdom. And secondly, because according to customs of Portugal those committed to prison by the minister of the police, are for that reason alone put into secret; and being so they are not to be trusted with any thing so dangerous as glass, lest they might find the means of evading the object of their imprisonment, and rescuing themselves from misery by death.

But what rendered this place still more commodious was three little recesses which belonged to it, which might serve as bed-chambers. One of these was allotted to me, another to my servant, and the third had been for some time occupied by a young Danish nobleman, Mr. A—, who had been imprisoned here to screen him from the consequences of some military insubordination, in an emigrant regiment, into which his distresses had driven him for refuge. Seignior Francisco, before he agreed to remove me into this new apartment, had apprised me of the company I was to have. He told me that this gentleman, who was also a grandee of his country, had been recommended to him by his ambassador. That the only thing