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 OLD AND NEW 
 
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 POETUGAL 
 
 OLD AND NEW 
 
 BY 
 
 OSWALD CEAWFUED 
 
 HER MAJESTY'S CONSUL AT OPOP.TO 
 AUTHOR OP 'LATOUCBE'S TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL 
 
 Wtlr Pus an* Illustrations 
 
 LONDON 
 C. KEGAN PAUL & CO., 1 PATERNOSTER SQUARE 
 
 1880 
 
 *T\ 
 

 
 ('/'*. !•///*/.< of trandation mid of reproduction are reserved) 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 This book is partly made up of contributions to the 
 ' Fortnightly Keview,' the ' New Quarterly Magazine,' 
 and the ; Cornhill Magazine.' I have modified these 
 papers greatly, interpolated much new matter, cor- 
 rected where my knowledge has increased, and in 
 many, I may say in most parts, I have altogether 
 rewritten my first essays. 
 
 I have called my book 4 Portugal : Old and New,' 
 hoping thereby to make the title as descriptive as I 
 could. I trust the name may not be thought preten- 
 tious, or the book altogether a nondescript, or the 
 chapters of it disjointed. 
 
 I am afraid the title may to some critics seem to 
 promise a great deal more than I have performed. 
 Portugal, Old and New, may indeed be taken to mean 
 an account of all that Portugal has been and all that 
 she now is ; but this of course would be an impossible 
 expectation to fulfil with a work in one volume. 1 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 hope the reader expects nothing from rne so exhaus- 
 tive or so ponderous. 
 
 My book is so far nondescript that it is neither a 
 book of history, nor of criticism, nor of pure descrip- 
 tion ; nor an antiquarian work, nor a social nor a sta- 
 tistical one, nor a book of travel ; but it is a medley 
 of all these things, and yet, if I have only succeeded 
 in carrying out my conception, it is not disjointed. 
 
 In the inns of the more uncivilized parts of this 
 Peninsula it is common to offer to the travel- 
 ler, not a dinner of separate courses, but one where 
 they are mingled and compounded into a single dish. 
 A large, deep pipkin is set before him, in which meat 
 and game and fowl of all available kinds, vegetables 
 of every variety, pot herbs and garnishing and spices, 
 have been seethed all together. Into this pipkin, or 
 QUq, the guest dips a spoon at a venture and, perhaps 
 half famished with long fasting and eager for meat or 
 game, he is disappointed at drawing forth nothing 
 more satisfying than a piece of yellow gourd or a 
 scarlet capsicum. On the other hand, the fastidious 
 traveller, trifling with his Olla and diving for the 
 lightest sustenance, may get a more substantial morsel 
 of beef or bacon than he cares for. 
 
 The reader of my book may, I fear, meet with ill 
 luck of the same kind. There is reading in it that 
 
PREFACE. ¥11 
 
 may seem over-heavy for some tastes, and reading that 
 may seem too light for the tastes of others. 
 
 As a sample of solid ingredients there is the 
 chapter on the great Warrior King of Portugal, and 
 this perhaps is very heavy reading ; but then, not to 
 know about him is to be ignorant of all that concerns 
 the rise of Portugal into the category of nations. 
 Before Affonso Henriquez there was no Portugal at 
 all. Since he lived and died, and because he lived, 
 there has been in this corner of Europe an enduring 
 kingdom which, in spite of its size, is in the true sense 
 of the word a great kingdom. 
 
 Again, no account of Portugal can approach com- 
 pleteness which omits mention of the rise and pro- 
 gress of its literature, and tells nothing of its agricul- 
 ture ; for the nation is an essentially literary nation, 
 and its agriculture has at all times been the source of 
 its strength and its greatness. On both subjects I 
 have only written after long and close study at first 
 hand. 
 
 I suppose that when an educated foreigner comes 
 to a country which is strange to him and with which 
 he wishes to acquaint himself, he would first set to 
 work by learning something of its early history, of its 
 literature, of its chief industries, of the manners and 
 habits of the people, of their government, of the physi- 
 
Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 cal aspects of the land and its antiquities; then, if 
 he had the opportunity, he would travel a little over 
 the country and see what he could with his own eyes. 
 I have myself done something of all this, and in the 
 following pages I have tried as well as I could to put 
 before others the result of what I have learned. 
 
 OSWALD CRAWFUBD. 
 Opokto: Christmas, 1879. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 HAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. The Rise of Portugal ..... 1 
 
 II. The First King of Portugal . . . . 31 
 
 III. The Poetry of the Portuguese Renaissance . 61 
 
 IV. Modern Portugal : Country Life and Sport . 107 
 V. Farming and Farm People . . . .146 
 
 VI. Port Wine .218 
 
 VII. A Portuguese Troy . . . . . . 268 
 
 VIII. The Lost City of Citania 307 
 
 IX. A Portuguese Colony . . . . . 340 
 
 X. Customs of the Portuguese People . . . 360 
 
 XI. Conclusion . 382 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Queen's Stairs at OroRTO . . . . Frontispiece 
 
 A Sketch Map showing Northern Spain and Portugal 
 with the asturian mountains and their klver 
 System . 5 
 
 Old House in Oporto. Period op King Affonso Henriquez 30 
 
 Chapel near Guimaraens, where Affonso Henriquez is said 
 
 to hate been christened . . 60 
 
 Cloisters of Belem Content: Renaissance Period . .106 
 
 Country House, Portugal 145 
 
 A Sketch Map of Setubal and Ruins of Troia . . 281 
 
 Church Plate in Braga Cathedral 339 
 
 A Madeira Fisherman 359 
 
 Map of Portugal . . .--■'■.. . . at end of volume 
 

PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW, 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 THE RISE OF PORTUGAL. 
 
 There is in human nature a craving for something 
 beyond the mere chronicling of great deeds. In rude 
 times, amid the selfish struggle of the more masterful 
 passions of men, heroic or generous actions possess 
 an impressiveness which strongly affects the sympa- 
 thies of contemporaries ; but such deeds do not 
 always succeed in reaching down to the knowledge 
 of succeeding generations, for it is unfortunate that a 
 rare coincidence of poet and hero should be indis- 
 pensable for any effectual tradition of renown, and 
 that either without the other's help runs no small 
 peril of oblivion. In primitive ages, the imagination 
 of poets seems to be finite. There is no instance of a 
 ballad-monger or early poet having evolved a hero. 
 To most thoughtful men, Homer's poems are evidence 
 enough that great deeds were done before Troy ; and 
 if we had no better voucher for the heroism of 
 Ruy Dias, El Campeador, the hero of Spanish mediaeval 
 
 / B 
 
2 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 romance, we might be content to find one in the 
 great epic of ' The Cid.' 
 
 King Alfonso Henriquez, who carved out with his 
 sword a kingdom which his descendants still rule, 
 was perhaps as great a hero as the Cid himself, but 
 only a vague rumour of his exploits has come down 
 to us. Vate sacro caret ; he has lacked the meed of 
 poet's song. The two warriors, the Cid and Affonso 
 Henriquez, lived within a generation of each other ; 
 both fought chiefly against the same powerful enemy, 
 in the same age of chivalry ; but while Buy Dias 
 missed the purpose of his life, Alfonso Henriquez 
 attained the great end he had set to himself. While 
 the mark made upon the age by the Spanish cham- 
 pion was obliterated even in his own lifetime, the 
 achievements of the Portuguese conqueror have 
 changed the whole course of Peninsular history, and 
 established a dynasty which survives to this day ; — 
 an impressive monument, among the shifting elements 
 of Peninsular history, of the daring and wisdom of its 
 founder. Yet what avails it to a man to have done 
 great deeds, to live a great life, and to win a wide 
 renown, if the chief part of his fame is to die with the 
 death of the witnesses of his exploits, and only to find 
 a short record in the stupid annals of monkish and 
 Moorish chroniclers ? A noble life is rare enough in 
 the world to make us regret that the story of one 
 should be so nearly extinguished. 
 
 I shall endeavour in the following pages to revive 
 so much of the life and doings of King Alfonso Henri- 
 quez as can be extracted from the scanty annals of 
 
THE EISE OF PORTUGAL. 3 
 
 the chroniclers, Spanish, Portuguese, and Moorish, 
 that have survived the seven hundred years which 
 have elapsed since his death. 
 
 The two schools of modern history at present 
 most in vogue might find a very promising battle-field 
 in the fife of this great Portuguese King and Con- 
 queror. A writer of the one school might argue that 
 King Affonso was forced by the tendencies of his age 
 to the course he followed ; while a historian of the 
 opposite type might contend that the King's will and 
 strong individuality had impressed themselves on the 
 minds of his contemporaries, and had warped their 
 wills to compliance with his own. Profounder in- 
 quirers will reject both theories as being thoroughly 
 insufficient, and, discerning a clear expression of the 
 great law of historical progression even in the scanty 
 records of the early. annalists, they will perceive that 
 the changes in the community, both moral and politi- 
 cal, were surely and irresistibly evolved from modifi- 
 cations of the opinions and habits and sentiments of 
 the people. Nevertheless, had this warrior prince, 
 the founder of an enduring nationality, been less of a 
 true leader of men, Portugal would probably have 
 shared the evanescent fate of the contemporary Pen- 
 insular kingdoms ; and so also would King Affonso 
 Henri quez have lost the labour of his life, had he not 
 had to deal with a people singularly apt alike for the 
 arts of war and peace, and had he not lived in an age 
 when all the components of society were ready to be 
 forced into fresh combinations by a strong will and a 
 strong hand, 
 
 b 2 
 
4 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 It is hardly necessary at this day to repeat at any 
 length the history of the recovery of the Peninsula 
 from the Moslem invaders. Nevertheless, to remind 
 the reader of the state of the north-west part of 
 the Peninsula during the eleventh century, and to 
 give a slight sketch of the nature of the country 
 itself, may serve to make what is to follow more 
 clear and more interesting. 
 
 If we look at any fairly good map of Spain, we 
 shall see that in the extreme north of the Peninsula 
 the province of Asturias is almost wholly occupied, as 
 well as the art of the map-maker can represent such 
 features, by frequent, and lofty, and precipitous 
 mountains. If the map be correctly drawn, the hills 
 will appear with a gradual rise from the sea cliffs 
 washed by the waters of the Bay of Biscay, till they 
 tower, at the extreme south of the province, into a 
 mountain range whose highest peaks are snow-capped 
 for almost the whole year, and whose southern wall- 
 like declivities face the modern province of Leon. If 
 we look closer, we shall perceive — sure sign that 
 these mountain ranges overtop those in the surround- 
 ing country — that the numerous streams and rivers 
 taking their rise in the Asturian mountain system 
 flow, some of them towards the west, some to the 
 east, and some to the south ; forming in each case 
 great water arteries, which, both geographically and 
 politically, have at all times exercised an extreme 
 importance upon the history of Northern Spain and 
 Portugal. 
 
 The Ebro, rising in or near the eastern spurs of 
 
THE RISE OF PORTUGAL. 5 
 
 the Asturian ranges, flows south-eastward to the 
 Mediterranean, and divided, in early times, the 
 Navarrese mountaineers from those of the Asturias 
 and from the people of the plain country to the 
 south ; just as it has formed, more than once within 
 the present century, a natural boundary between 
 liberal Spain and absolutist Carlism. 
 
 M" Santiago UV AS . tU ^. aS - . „. 
 
 GalicjaJ <# ^on I ■ lL ^ 
 
 ==^ GuimaraeM ^^■•-'-^Av'aiiadoltf 
 
 The streams of the western Asturian watershed, 
 meeting in the river Minho, flow due west to the 
 Atlantic, separating modern Galicia from Portugal, 
 and formed in mediaeval times the boundary line 
 which sometimes restrained Saracen invasion of the 
 northern region, and sometimes Galician aggression 
 towards the south. 
 
 The waters that flow to the south from the Astu- 
 rian mountains are more numerous, and the streams 
 fuller, than those running east and west. They meet, 
 in time, to form the great river Douro, whose tribu- 
 taries, sweeping in broad semicircles through what 
 was the ancient kingdom of Leon, wash the walls of 
 many cities famous in Moorish and Spanish history 
 
6 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 — of Leon and Zamora, of Carrion, Burgos, and 
 Vallaclolid — and in time join their waters and enter 
 Portuguese territory through the defiles and moun- 
 tain valleys which lie along the frontier of Spain 
 and Portugal. Flowing due west always, through a 
 hilly and difficult coun'ry, the Douro is the chief 
 water-way of northern Portugal — a deep and rapid 
 river — and, entering the Atlantic, forms a harbour 
 which possessed commercial importance before the 
 invasion of the Eomans, and which, during the long 
 period before the Moors had retreated from the 
 southern portion of the kingdom, was the principal 
 seat of Christian trade, as well as the key of the 
 Christian position. It retained during these early 
 times the designation Portus, first given to it by the 
 Eomans, which is preserved in its modern name of 
 Oporto. The hill fort of Cale * stood on the southern 
 bank of the river, within two miles of the sea, and 
 Portus Cale, or Portugal e, came to be the designa- 
 tion of the adjacent district, and, in process of time, 
 of the whole kingdom. 
 
 The broad tract of mountainous country drained 
 by these several rivers was the first battle-field of 
 Christians and Mahometans, and here the great issue 
 between the rival creeds and races was finally decided. 
 
 1 Sir Charles Murray, recently our Minister at the Court of 
 Lisbon, a gentleman intimately acquainted with the East, informs 
 me that Cale is a pure Arabic relic, Calah signifying a ' castle ' or' 
 'fort' — the last vowel of the word being the guttural a unpro- 
 nounceable by European organs of speech. I do not think that 
 any writer has noticed that Portugal is a word in part of Latin 
 and in part of Arabic origin. 
 
THE RISE OF PORTUGAL. 7 
 
 The tide of Moslem invasion, which had swept 
 over every other part of the Peninsula with a resist- 
 lessness and a rapidity characteristic of Arabian con- 
 quest, broke when it reached the precipitous ranges 
 of the Asturian mountains ; and a remnant of the 
 Christian Visigoths, retreating among their recesses, 
 preserved a perfect independence throughout the 
 long Moslem domination over the rest of the Pen- 
 insula. 
 
 Asturias became a kingdom in 718, only ten 
 years after the Mahometan subjugation of the re- 
 mainder of the Peninsula ; and in the course of con- 
 tention with the Saracens, the little kingdom enlarged 
 its boundaries to the south and west, took in the 
 richer territory of Leon on its southern frontier, and 
 its monarch in time assumed the title of King of 
 Leon. 
 
 A little later, other Christian kingdoms began to 
 emerge, as the wave of Moorish dominion retreated 
 from the unprofitable regions of northern Spain. 
 On the southern slopes of the Pyrenees , a Christian 
 nation was forming itself under circumstances some- 
 what similar to those in Asturias. Confined at first 
 to the difficult country north of the Ebro, the Kings 
 of Navarre and Aragon in process of time won the 
 land to the south of that river ; and on the table- 
 land of central Spain, Castile had also come into exist- 
 ence as a kingdom. 
 
 These Christian kingdoms by no means contented 
 themselves with fighting against the common enemy, 
 and warfare against each other was as frequent and as 
 
8 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 fierce as with the Saracens. Into the vicissitudes of 
 these petty wars it is not necessary to enter here. 
 Suffice it to say that Sancho, King of Navarre, at 
 his death in 1035, had, by the fortune of war, come 
 to reign over the principal portion of free Christian 
 Spain. His sway included what is now French and 
 Spanish Navarre, a part of modern Aragon, the 
 great corn-growing upland plain which now is more 
 or less included in the province of Old Castile, and 
 some portion of the kingdom of Leon. 
 
 This extensive realm was divided among three 
 sons, the most notable of whom was Fernando, whose 
 capacity for war and the kingly arts of intrigue and 
 annexation elevates him somewhat conspicuously 
 above the many warlike captains and rapacious 
 sovereigns of that age and country, and has earned 
 him the title of The Great. For Fernando the vice- 
 royalty of Castile was, by the terms of his father's 
 will, elevated into a kingdom ; and the new King 
 almost immediately engaged in hostilities with the 
 sovereign of Leon and Asturias, and won over him 
 the bloodiest battle that had yet been fought in 
 Christian Spain. The Leonese King fell, and Fernando 
 forced himself upon the people of Leon, and assumed 
 thereafter the title of King of Leon and Castile. 
 Shortly afterwards, war broke out between Fernando 
 and his brother the King of Navarre. Again was 
 Fernando the victor. The King of Navarre died oh 
 the field, his troops and his Saracen allies were com- 
 pletely routed, and King Fernando's moderation, or 
 his policy, was shown by his refusing the crown of 
 
THE RISE OF PORTUGAL. 9 
 
 Navarre, thus easily within his grasp. He allowed 
 his brother's son to succeed to the throne. 
 
 The rest of King Fernando's life was occupied 
 with raids, more or less successful, into Saracen 
 Portugal in the east, and as far to the west as 
 Valencia ; but these expeditions, depending for their 
 success upon temporary dissensions among the Ma- 
 hometans, were of no more lasting importance than 
 the many other and similar marauding expeditions 
 made by both Christian and Moslem in these ages 
 into the heart of each other's possessions. With one 
 exception : the Portuguese expedition yielded fruit 
 in the conquest and occupation, in the year 1064, 1 of 
 the city of Coimbra, in Portugal, an important strong- 
 hold set in the midst of the rich and beautiful valley 
 of the Mondego. In the following year King Fer- 
 nando died, and, like his own father, divided his 
 dominions among his children. 
 
 I shall be forced to a somewhat fuller narrative 
 of the events which followed upon this second parti- 
 tion of the country, for in the vicissitudes and in the 
 fortunes of the rough soldier-kings who divided King 
 Fernando's dominions among them, are to be found 
 the more immediate causes of the rise of the Portu- 
 guese monarchy in the succeeding generation. 
 
 The King left three sons and two daughters. 
 Sancho, the eldest son, became King of Castile ; 
 Alonso inherited the throne of Leon and of the 
 Asturias ; for Garcia the north-western province of 
 
 1 The date of this, the earliest important event in the history 
 of Portugal, is much disputed. 
 
10 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 Galicia, which had hitherto been a viceroyalty, was 
 made into a kingdom ; and the two daughters became 
 titular Queens — the eldest, Urraca, of Zamora, and 
 Elvira, of Touro. 
 
 History is never so apt to the proverbial repetition 
 of itself as in such rude times as these, where the 
 passions of mankind are not complicated with the 
 tastes and the repulsions, the convictions and the 
 ideas, which a course of civilization and culture en- 
 genders. The new partition of the country led, as it 
 had done before, to dissension and to war. A bloody 
 battle shortly took place between Alonso of Leon and 
 his brother of Castile, and the battle went against the 
 King of Leon ; but he retired to his capital unpursued 
 by his brother. King Alonso, destined to high 
 fortunes, was destined also to reach them through a 
 series of strange reverses. A year or two afterwards 
 hostilities again broke out ; and this time Alonso, 
 assisted by a great body of Galician troops, probably 
 furnished by his brother Garcia, won the day, but 
 again the advantage was not decisive. 
 
 It is on this occasion that the annalist corro- 
 borates the romantic legend of the poets. Buy Dias, 
 the Cid, was among the officers and counsellors of 
 the defeated King Sancho. It is related that, after 
 the battle, he advised his master to make a renewed 
 attack by night upon the victorious Leonese. The 
 stratagem was successful, and the Castilians in their 
 turn gained the victory. King Alonso himself fell a 
 prisoner, was carried in triumph to Burgos, the Cas- 
 tilian capital, and was subsequently thrust into the 
 
THE RISE OF PORTUGAL. II 
 
 Convent of Sahagun, and forced to assume the cowl. 
 From this confinement the King of Leon escaped by 
 the help of his sister Urraca, Queen of Zamora, and, 
 flying to Toledo, he obtained the protection of 
 the powerful Emir, Al-Mamon, the ancient ally of 
 his father. 
 
 The immediate result to Urraca of her favouring 
 of the weaker brother was the siege of her capital 
 Zamora by the offended San oho — a leaguer as famous 
 in song as it was important in history ; for while the 
 ballads recount the romantic prowess of the Cid, 
 the chroniclers join with them in recording an event 
 which led to a complete revolution in the affairs of 
 northern Spain. A Zamoran knight, watching the 
 hostile lines from the battlements of the city, saw 
 King Sancho passing incautiously near to the walls, 
 mounted his horse, set his spear in rest, and charged 
 furiously upon the Castilian King. Sancho received 
 a mortal wound, and the Zamoran knight returned 
 unhurt into the city. The death of their leader dis- 
 concerted the besiegers. The siege was raised, and 
 Queen Urraca lost no time in communicating with her 
 favourite brother, and advising him to claim the 
 vacant throne. Alonso, hurrying from the Court of 
 his Saracen host, received at Zamora the renewed 
 allegiance of his former Leonese subjects. 
 
 Alonso thus became, by his elder brother's death, 
 King of Leon, of Castile, and — by the seizure of 
 Garcia's kingdom — of Galicia, including, as this latter 
 kingdom did, a large portion of northern Portugal. 
 Almost the whole of his long reign was occupied with 
 
12 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW, 
 
 war against the Saracens. Dissensions among the 
 Moslem rulers of Spain, quite as much perhaps as 
 their own warlike capacity, befriended the Christian 
 soldiers and their chief. Toledo, the ancient seat of 
 Visigoth rule, and now a centre of Moslem learning 
 and government, fell into the King's hands, and 
 became the capital of Leon and Castile. But that 
 this ascendency of the Christians was not entirely 
 due to the superiority of their arms, is proved clearly 
 enough by the issue of the great battle of Zalaca, near 
 Badajos. Here Alonso found himself opposed by the 
 famous Almoravidian Emir Yusuf. Contemporary 
 chroniclers, Moorish and Christian, have, no doubt, 
 as usual, immensely exaggerated the numbers engaged 
 on each side, but it is certain that the whole fighting 
 power of the Peninsula, Christian and Moslem, met 
 on the field of Zalaca ; and, what is significant of 
 the curious state of the country, and is evidence that 
 religion went for little in these early contests between 
 men of the rival faiths, it is related that while bands 
 of Christian knights had engaged themselves on the 
 Emir's side, no less than thirty thousand Moslem 
 troops fought under the banners of the Christian King. 
 The battle raged all day, and by nightfall the 
 Leonese and Castilian lines had been broken, the 
 rout became complete, and, by the admission even 
 of Christian chroniclers, the slaughter was enor- 
 mous. Fortune, however, which had befriended 
 King Alonso before, did not wholly desert him now. 
 Tidings from his African home, requiring the imme- 
 diate presence of Yusuf in Africa, reached the Almora- 
 
THE RISE OF PORTUGAL. 13 
 
 vidian chief in the very hour of his victory. The 
 prosecution of the campaign was left to a lieutenant, 
 and the opportunity of curbing and perhaps of com- 
 pletely crushing the power of the Christians in Spain 
 was for the time lost to the Saracens. 
 
 The latter part of King Alonso's reign and life 
 was passed without any further great change of 
 fortune. With the internal affairs of the Leonese 
 monarchy we have now to concern ourselves. 
 
 During the long wars of the eleventh century, 
 the Christian Courts and camps of Spain had been at- 
 tracting all that was adventurous in the chivalry of 
 Europe. At the Court of King Alonso two French 
 knights of the princely house of Burgundy had made 
 their appearance. Count Eaymond and Count Henry 
 were first cousins, and both princes quickly obtained 
 the favour of the Leonese King. To Eaymond, the 
 eldest, he gave in marriage Urraca, his daughter by 
 Queen Constance ; on Count Henry he bestowed 
 another and illegitimate daughter, Tareja, the child 
 of Ximena Nunes, a Spanish lady of noble birth. To 
 Count Eaymond he confided the important govern- 
 ment of Galicia and Portugal, but the hands of the 
 young Burgundian Count were by no means strong 
 enough to retain a firm grasp on this outlying depen- 
 dency. 
 
 In the spring of 1095 Count Eaymond marched 
 southward towards the Saracen frontier, gathering to 
 his standard a large army, the flower of the Galician 
 and Portuguese chivalry. He reached the Tagus, 
 and entrenched himself in the peninsula formed by 
 
14 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 the Atlantic on one side and the broad estuary of the 
 Tagus on the other — a spot which has since become 
 memorable in military annals, as being that Avhereon 
 Wellington formed the famous defensive lines of 
 Torres Yedras. 
 
 The troops of Count Eaymond, however, found no 
 protection in the triple lines of hills which cross the 
 neck of the peninsula. His troops were suddenly 
 surrounded, says the Compostellan chronicler, by 
 an immense multitude of Saracen fighting men, Eay- 
 mond 's army was overthrown, and slaughter and 
 captivity were the lot of the Christian warriors. 
 
 It was no doubt in consequence of this reverse 
 that Count Henry, the husband of the bastard Tarej a, 
 was deemed fitter to hold the outlying province than 
 his cousin ; and while Eaymond's viceroyalty was, 
 shortly after his defeat, limited to the Galician 
 province, Henry was made governor of the whole of 
 Portugal between the Minho and the Tagus. 
 
 During the first years of Count Henry's reign the 
 storms of Saracen conflict were sweeping over 
 southern and eastern Spain ; but the new ruler was 
 probably engaged, to judge from the scanty mention 
 of him by the chroniclers, rather in strengthening his 
 own government than in any offensive action against 
 the Moors. 
 
 Count Eaymond died in 1107, and two years 
 afterwards King Alonso also died, leaving his 
 daughter Urraca, Eaymond's widow, then about 
 nineteen years of age, the successor to the crown. 
 She had one son, Alonso Eaimundes, a child of three, 
 
THE EISE OF PORTUGAL. 15 
 
 and with the common testamentary fatuity of absolute 
 sovereigns, the succession to the crown was to 
 devolve upon this infant in case of the re-marriage 
 of Urraca. The young widow lost little time in 
 effecting this contingent reversion in her child's 
 favour, by contracting a marriage with the neigh- 
 bouring sovereign, Alonso of Aragon, a young prince 
 whose activity in war had already obtained for him 
 the title of El Lidador— The Warrior. With the full 
 consent of the nobles, who expected to find in so war- 
 like a prince a successful leader in their constant 
 warfare with the Moors, Alonso El Lidador at once 
 assumed the crown of Leon and Castile ; but the 
 clergy opposed the marriage on the ground of con- 
 sanguinity, and the distant province of Galicia, 
 whither Urraca had sent her child, broke into a 
 rebellion, instigated by the hidalgos who composed 
 the household of the infant prince. The revolt con- 
 tinued, notwithstanding the violence and cruelty of 
 the Aragonese King, who is related to have killed 
 with his hunting-spear a noble Galician while Urraca 
 was in the act of interceding for his life. Baffled in 
 his attempts to subdue the rebellion, the King retired 
 to his own dominions. 
 
 The period of five years that followed is occupied 
 by the dissensions and intrigues of the principal 
 characters of the age. The brutality of the Arago- 
 nese King lost him almost immediately the love and 
 the fidelity of Urraca, and the loyalty of his new sub- 
 jects. Queen Urraca, possessing the inconstancy and 
 capriciousness of her sex and her age, possessed also 
 
16 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 the ambition and disloyalty which were characteris- 
 tic of most of the energetic sovereigns of the time. 
 Her patent amours with a Castilian nobleman were 
 probably the cause of the King's insulting her with a 
 blow before the assembled Court, and imprisoning 
 her at Castellar. The quarrel was appeased for the 
 time by the nobles, but the Queen's treacherous 
 nature, and her desire for further vengeance upon 
 her husband, led her to send a message to the 
 guardians of her child, still in Galicia, and to stir up 
 a fresh revolt in that province. 
 
 Count Henry of Portugal had long before entered 
 into a secret alliance with the King of Aragon against 
 Urraca ; but at the invitation of the infuriated Queen 
 he readily abandoned the husband, to ally himself to 
 the wife's interest, in the prospect of better furthering 
 his own ; but the shrewd and cautious Count of 
 Portugal had forgotten to allow for the caprice and 
 for the envy of a woman. The growing strength of 
 Count Henry's position in Portugal began probably 
 to alarm her ambition, and the chronicler tells us 
 that Urraca's jealousy was aroused by hearing her 
 sister Tareja, Henry's wife, spoken of by her own 
 subjects as Queen. 1 She reconciled herself suddenly 
 with her husband, to the discomfiture of her new 
 ally ; but by this time friends and foes had probably 
 got to perceive the unstableness of her character. 
 She was dangerous to plot with or against ; and this 
 is, no doubt, one cause of the uneventfulness of her 
 
 1 ' La mujer del conde era ya llamada de las suyas reyna lo 
 qnal oyendo la reyna mal le sabia.' — Chronicle of Saliagun. 
 
THE RISE OF PORTUGAL. 17 
 
 reign and the unfruitfulness of her long series of 
 perfidies and intrigues. 
 
 These various plots and counterplots were inter- 
 rupted by the death of Count Henry of Portugal in 
 1114. Tareja was left a widow with an infant and 
 only son. This child was Alfonso Henriquez, des- 
 tined to become the first and most famous of a line 
 of famous sovereigns and conquerors. 
 
 Tareja, the bastard daughter of the Castilian King, 
 was probably at the time of her husband's death not 
 much more than thirty years of age. The chroniclers, 
 one and all, describe her as possessed of singular beauty 
 and attractiveness, and as having a character marked 
 by astuteness and energy. As a ruler she was am- 
 bitious but over-cautious, and, like her half-sister 
 Urraca, more inclined to win her way by intrigue 
 than by boldness ; and she never, during her long 
 reign, willingly committed her fortunes to the chances 
 of war. 
 
 I pass over briefly the years occupied by the reign 
 of Urraca, Queen or Eegent of Leon and Castile. The 
 King of Aragon was engaged during all this time 
 with Saracenic warfare to the east and south, and 
 only occasionally thought fit to invade his now 
 divorced wife's kingdom. Tareja had promoted her 
 lover, Fernando Peres, to a position in the state 
 almost as high as that which had been occupied by 
 her husband, the Count of Portugal. She slightly 
 extended her possessions to the north, into Galicia, 
 and thereby gave her sister and suzerain a pretext 
 for invading her territory. 
 
 c 
 
18 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 In the short campaign which ensued, in the cir- 
 cumstances which led to it, and the events which 
 followed, a new actor, Gelmires, Bishop of Santiago de 
 Compostella in Galicia> played a most important part. 
 This wily> ambitious, and turbulent churchman, the 
 prime mover in the affairs of Leon and Portugal 
 during several years, whose vanity seems to have been 
 as conspicuous as his other ill qualities, has left, in 
 the well-known ' Historia Compostellana,' drawn up 
 at his command and for his own glorification, almost 
 the only, and far the best, contemporary record of 
 this period which we possess. In this chronicle the 
 naive immorality of the times is curiously evidenced 
 by the manner in which the unscrupulous disloyalty 
 and double-dealing of its hero are set down by the 
 annalist as proofs of his patron's dexterity and 
 policy. 
 
 Gelmires procured war - galleys from Genoa, 
 manned them with hardy Galician boatmen, and 
 harassed the Saracens of the south coast with a kind 
 of naval raid from which the Christians had them- 
 selves long been sufferers at the hands of the Moslems. 
 He made his influence strongly felt throughout the 
 whole north-west of Spain. The shrine of St. James 
 of Compostella, then, and perhaps still, the most 
 famous in Christendom, annually attracted crowds of 
 pilgrims of every degree, and was the source of a 
 large revenue to the Compostellan See. Their protec- 
 tion against Moorish attack led, fifty years afterwards, 
 to the institution of the famous Militant Order of 
 Compost ell an Knights, and the service was at this 
 
THE RISE OF PORTUGAL, 19 
 
 time performed by a body of armed men under the 
 orders of the Bishop. Gelmires increased the number 
 and improved the discipline of these troops till they 
 attained to the numbers and organisation of an army. 
 Many of the noblest Galician knights enrolled them- 
 selves under his banners ; and when Urraca proposed 
 to invade her sister's territories, she invoked, rather 
 than commanded, the aid of this powerful prelate, 
 her nominal subject. 
 
 The chronicle tells us that iie was divided in his 
 mind on the subject. He had already fomented civil 
 war in Urraca's Galician provinces, favouring the now 
 strong party which rallied round her son, the Infante 
 Alonso Baimundes, and siding with Tareja. Urraca, 
 however, was now in Galicia with an army. He 
 feared to provoke her too far. Urraca had craftily 
 encouraged the citizens of Compostella in their re- 
 sistance to the Bishop ; they had already formed 
 themselves into a guild or Hermandacl, one of those 
 burghers' leagues which afterwards spread through 
 Spain, and whose influence has lasted to this clay. 
 Gelmires was forced to side with Queen Urraca. He 
 encouraged her to invade Portugal, not sorry pro- 
 bably to see the Leonese arms and the ambition of 
 Urraca's adventurous barons diverted from Galicia 
 and from his see. 
 
 Urraca invaded Portugal, and Gelmires — this 
 6 episcopal Mephistopheles,' as he is angrily called 
 by a sedate Portuguese historian — joined, with little 
 pressing from the Queen, an expedition against his 
 former ally. The armies of the rival sister Queens 
 
 c 2 
 
20 POKTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 met on the banks of the Minlio, near Tuy: Tareja 
 was worsted ; her troops were routed, and she her- 
 self, flying for her life, took refuge in the Castle of Lan- 
 hoso. Urraca besieged the castle, and took her sister 
 prisoner ; but this capricious, and— if we may judge 
 her to be so from one or two incidental allusions 
 by the chroniclers— this somewhat tender-hearted 
 sovereign, did not choose to push her advantage as 
 far as the scant humanity of the times might have 
 allowed. Tareja and Urraca negotiated a treaty of 
 peace, by which Tareja was left in little worse a 
 position than before the campaign ; and Urraca, 
 thinking the moment propitious for an attempt to 
 check the ambition of Grelmires, her secret enemy 
 and professed ally, suddenly threw the Bishop into 
 prison. But she had not calculated upon all the 
 power of the ecclesiastic. Her own son, the Infante, 
 had come strongly under the Bishop's influence, and 
 he shrewdly guessed that his interests had more in 
 common with those of Gelmires than with those of 
 an ambitious Queen-mother. The Infante drew off 
 his troops ; the principal nobles joined him ; and in 
 less than a week Galicia was in revolt, and Urraca 
 was compelled to release the prelate. 
 
 In the year 1126 died Queen Urraca, and the 
 immediate consequence was that the whole of the 
 powerful chivalry of Leon and Castile, divided till 
 now in their allegiance between mother and son, went 
 over in a body to the party of the young King. 
 From this time forward lie was the most powerful 
 Christian monarch of Spain. In Portugal, affairs 
 
THE RISE OF PORTUGAL. 21 
 
 were unsettled. The Infanta Tareja had aroused the 
 jealousy of the Portuguese by the favour shown to 
 her lover, Fernando Peres, 1 and his Galician relations 
 and friends. The country was ill governed, and the 
 weakness of a ruler in statesmanship and war meant, 
 in those times, danger of disastrous invasion from 
 every powerful neighbour. Tareja was imprudent 
 enough to refuse her allegiance to the new King of 
 Leon. A destructive invasion of her territories was 
 the immediate consequence, and she was compelled 
 to admit his rightful suzerainty over the Province of 
 Portugal. She had jealously kept her son apart 
 from any share in the government, but the heir to 
 the throne began to attract the attention of the 
 dissatisfied nobles. 
 
 The time has now arrived to say something of 
 Prince AfFonso Henriquez. It is, unfortunately, the 
 common way of early annalists and chroniclers to 
 touch very lightly on the personal traits of the 
 characters in their narrative, which to inquirers of a 
 later age are of paramount interest and importance ; 
 and the young Prince of Portugal fares little better 
 
 1 Some Portuguese writers have contended warmly for the 
 legitimacy of the connection between Fernando and Tareja. He 
 was certainly, however, not her husband. There is no contem- 
 porary mention of a marriage. She indeed calls herself in one 
 charter-grant, a Galician one, ' Comitis Henrici quondam uxor 
 nunc vero comitis Fernandi,' but this proves nothing but her 
 wish for good fame. In no contemporary Portuguese charter 
 does she so designate herself. The Historia C ompostellana 
 distinctly says : — * Ego qui relicta sua legitima uxore cum matre 
 ipsius infantis Regina Tarasia tunc adulterabatur.' This would 
 seem to be quite conclusive. 
 
22 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 than the many figures of sovereigns, warriors, and 
 churchmen which fill their scanty historical can- 
 vases ; but AfTonso Henriquez made too deep a 
 mark not to have left some trace of his individuality 
 even in the dry narratives of the chroniclers, and we 
 can gather a trait here and there wherewith to make 
 up a piecework portrait which shall even now possess 
 some lifelike features. 
 
 At the time of his aunt Urraca's death, the prince 
 was seventeen years old. Even at this early age he 
 had taken part in the annual border fighting with 
 Spaniards on the north and east, and with Saracens in 
 the south. The perilous state of the country, and 
 perhaps his own ambition, had led to his receiving 
 the order of knighthood at the unusually early age 
 of fourteen. Three years of incessant adventure 
 and peril had developed the character and shown the 
 high qualities of the Infante. He was already a 
 captain whom his men could follow into action with 
 enthusiasm, and in whose good judgment, and in the 
 very graces of his manner and person, they could 
 discern the rare qualities of a leader of men. Writ- 
 ing of him at this period, a nearly contemporary chro- 
 nicler tells us that the prince was a skilful and valiant 
 knight, accomplished and persuasive in speech, most 
 politic in his enterprises, of a high genius, noble in 
 bodily proportions, and of a very comely presence. 
 At a somewhat later date, when he had already 
 redeemed the high promise of his youth, another 
 monkish writer of the period somewhat reproaches 
 him with his ardent temperament and love of adven- 
 
THE KISE OF PORTUGAL. 23 
 
 hire. The youth, he tells us, though already well 
 skilled in the art of ruling, is yet over-fond of fame, 
 and is used to be carried away, like an over-light 
 arrow, by every breath of heaven. 1 This mobile and 
 ambitious temperament and this restless energy, little 
 as they might recommend themselves in the eyes of a 
 monk, were yet the very qualities to save a country 
 in such a critical emergency as Portugal was now 
 undergoing. Never till now had the province been 
 so threatened with danger from without and within. 
 
 The differences between Tareja and the nobles 
 under the Infante quickly resolved themselves into 
 war, and a battle was fought on the field of San 
 Mamede, near Guimaraens, the then capital of Portu- 
 gal. Tareja and her lover were routed and expelled 
 from the kingdom, and a single day's battle placed 
 the rule in the hands of Affonso Henriquez. Two 
 years after this, Tareja died in exile. 
 
 Affonso Henriquez owed an inherited allegiance 
 to his cousin, the King of Leon, and it has been 
 supposed to have been his desire to shake off this tie 
 which induced him to invade his cousin's Galician 
 provinces in the following spring; but it was pro- 
 bably nothing but the fire and imprudence of youth 
 which led him to this rash enterprise. The King of 
 Leon, elsewhere engaged in warfare, deputed to 
 Archbishop Gelmires the opposing of the Portuguese 
 raid, but the cautious churchman held back. He was, 
 
 1 ' Qui juvenis etsi regendi imperii bene sciolus tamen aniore 
 laudis ardenter plenus ad quoscunque aurse flatus ut arundo fragilis 
 ferebatur.' Ancient document quoted by Branda. 
 
24 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 or more probably he feigned to be, ill, and disobeyed 
 the order ; and Affonso Henriquez carried fire and 
 sword through Galicia unresisted. In the following 
 year he again invaded Galicia, was repulsed by his 
 old enemy, Count Fernando Peres, on the frontier, 
 renewed the attack, and defeated the Galicians. On 
 this occasion Affonso Henriquez built a castle at 
 Celmes, in that province, provisioned and garrisoned 
 it. From this Galician raid, or from a similar and 
 previous one, he was recalled into Portugal by the 
 growing power of Bermudo, a brother of Count 
 Fernando. This nobleman, rising to influence during 
 his brother's ascendency, had fortified himself in the 
 Castle of Seia, near the Spanish frontier, among the 
 fastnesses of the great Estrella range of mountains, 
 the wildest and most inaccessible in the whole west- 
 ern Peninsula. Here, surrounded by a race of 
 hardy and warlike mountaineers, he thought it safe 
 to defy the power of the Portuguese prince. Affonso 
 Henriquez sought him out in the recesses of the 
 mountains, besieged and took Seia by a coup de main 
 and expelled Bermudo from Portugal. In the mean- 
 time the young prince had himself roused the appre- 
 hensions or the indignation of the King of Leon, who, 
 with a numerous army, marched rapidly towards 
 Galicia, and laid siege to Celmes in the absence of 
 the Portuguese prince. In a few days, and after serious 
 loss to its garrison, Celmes fell into the hands of the 
 Leonese King. 
 
 It will be well to pause here for an instant, to 
 consider the precarious position of the young prince 
 
THE EISE OF PORTUGAL. 25 
 
 and of his people. At this time the Leonese and 
 Castilian nation was growing yearly in extent and 
 power. Under a warlike leader they had carried 
 their victories beyond the Ebro in the west, and the 
 supremacy of the King of Leon had been acknow- 
 ledged by the Navarrese and by the Court of Barce- 
 lona, and even in the lands beyond the Pyrenees. 
 His great rival the King of Aragon, El Lidador, was 
 now dead ; his successor had hastened to give in his 
 submission to King Alonso Eaimnndes, and with the 
 exception of the one small quasi-independent province 
 of Portugal, there was in all Christian Spain no one to 
 dispute the ascendency of the Leonese. Their King's 
 dominion was as wide as that of Fernando the Great, 
 and he now assumed without opposition the title of 
 Emperor. 
 
 With such powerful and aggressive neighbours 
 on the eastern and northern frontier of Portugal, an 
 enemy lay over the southern border, more terrible to 
 the Portuguese even than the Christian chivalry of 
 Spain, for they were more implacable, as being enemies 
 of their faith as well as of their race ; more numerous, 
 for they had increased and multiplied exceedingly in 
 the great plain of southern Portugal, rich in corn- 
 lands and olive-groves ; and they could draw to their 
 standards, on the emergency of battle, huge armies 
 of disciplined men from the adjacent Andalusian 
 provinces, and even from Morocco itself. Hemmed 
 in, between Spaniards on the one side and Saracens 
 on the other, the country ruled over by AfFonso 
 Henriquez was in extent a mere province, a large 
 
26 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 part of whose surface was occupied by heath and 
 wood and mountain. The Portugal of AfFonso Hen- 
 riquez comprised only the three northern provinces 
 out of the six into which modern Portugal is divided. 
 A broad frontier band of hill and forest, untenanted 
 by man and wasted by the annual passage of Moorish 
 and Christian raiding parties, separated the two races. 
 This desolated band of country occupied the northern 
 portion of what is now the province of Portuguese 
 Estremadura, and it stretched from the shores of the 
 Atlantic to where the impassable highlands of the 
 Estrella continued the border wilderness in a north- 
 easterly direction till it reached the Spanish mountain 
 ranges. 
 
 At Soure, in this desert, a few miles south of 
 Coimbra, the Knights Templars had adventurously 
 built themselves a fortress ; but this outpost of the 
 Christians was not enough to check the Saracen 
 invasions. A broad path lay open to them in the 
 easier plain country between Soure and the sea- 
 board ; and while the Christian border was thus ill 
 defended, the Saracens held fortified positions of 
 great strength on their side of the frontier desert. 
 One strong fortress lay secure from attack in 
 the steep granite range of Cintra, close to the sea. 
 Lisbon, already a populous city, and surrounded with 
 fortifications built with all the artifice of Moorish 
 architecture, was another defensive position ; and 
 the city of Santarem, a few leagues to the north of 
 Lisbon, was a third stronghold, the nearest and most 
 tli reatei ling to Christian territory. 
 
THE RISE OF PORTUGAL. 27 
 
 To guard the easy approacli to his dominions, the 
 Portuguese ruler chose as the site of a new fortress 
 the tall hill of Leiria (due south of Soure), which 
 rises from what is comparatively a plain country, 
 lying between Soure and the sea. Here he built a 
 castle, garrisoned it with a picked garrison, and left it 
 in charge of the most renowned among his captains, 
 Paio Gutteres. 
 
 While the Governor of Leiria was employed in 
 harrying the unbelievers with raids from this fortress, 
 the Prince himself had again invaded Galicia, and 
 in the well-contested battle of Cerneja had utterly 
 routed the troops of Leon ; but in the very moment 
 of victory he was recalled by the news of disaster on 
 the southern frontier. The Saracens, harassed and 
 irritated by the vexatious incursions of the governor 
 of Leiria, had besieged that fortress ; and the news 
 that now reached the Portuguese ruler was that of 
 the fall of Leiria and the slaughter of its garrison. 
 Intelligence also came to him that the Emperor was 
 advancing by forced marches from Zamora, in Leon, 
 gathering together an overwhelmingly numerous army, 
 and bent on revenging the defeat of his people at 
 Cerneja. 
 
 It was a critical moment, and the course of affairs 
 seemed to be inevitably hastening to a catastrophe 
 fatal to the hopes of Portuguese independence ; but 
 this was not to be, and events in a distant and foreign 
 country had long been preparing the way for a sud- 
 den and unlooked-for turn in the affairs of Portugal. 
 
 It is quite necessary to glance at these events. In 
 
28 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 Mahometan Spain, the warlike sect of the Almoravides, 
 invited into Spain some fifty years before to stem 
 the tide of Christian conquest, had done so most 
 effectually (as we have already seen) at the great 
 battle of Zalaca, fatal to the chivalry of Leon. After 
 this, the Almoravides, turning their arms against 
 their own allies, had overcome the Moorish rulers of 
 Spain one after another, and established their supre- 
 macy over the whole Moslem Peninsula ; but now 
 the state of affairs was again changed. Half a cen- 
 tury of power had lessened the first austerity of the 
 Almoravides, and weakened their influence, both 
 in Morocco and in the Peninsular provinces. There 
 was abundant room for social, and for political, and 
 for religious reform ; and such reform came about in 
 the sudden and subversive manner which is character- 
 istic of Oriental life. 
 
 The son of a servant in a mosque, a Berber of 
 the Atlas mountains, travelling to ^Cordova and after- 
 wards to Bagdad, had acquired at these famous 
 seats of Arabian letters the consideration which was 
 in those days always conceded to superior learning. 
 Eeturning to Morocco, he denounced fiercely the 
 prevalent religious laxity, and the vices of people 
 and rulers. Plying from the persecution which he 
 met with, to the mountains, he preached a reformed 
 Unitarianism, attracted a huge following of armed 
 men, became a political power, and the Almohades', 
 or Unitarian soldiers, formidable with a puritan 
 sternness of religious zeal, threatened the security of 
 the Almoravidian power in Morocco. 
 
THE RISE OF PORTUGAL. 29 
 
 An emergency so sudden forced the Moors of Spain 
 to prompt action. A large army was drained from all 
 the provinces of the Peninsula, even those touching 
 on the unquiet frontiers of the Christians. Such 
 an opportunity for the Christian powers had never 
 before occurred. The impending campaign between 
 Affonso Henriquez and his suzerain was suspended 
 by mutual consent. A peace was hastily arranged at 
 Tuy, in the year 1137, and both rulers prepared to 
 betake themselves to the Saracen frontiers of their 
 dominions. Thus was the storm which threatened 
 to overwhelm Portugal for the time averted. 
 
 By the summer of the year 1139 the Prince of 
 Portugal had begun his inarch southward, gathering 
 to his standards, at every farm and homestead within 
 reach of his line of march, the horse and foot soldiers 
 whose tenure of crown land obliged them to render 
 warlike service to their prince. Instead of passing 
 through the frontier wilderness of Estremadura, the 
 usual path of raiders from either side, the Prince, 
 turning to the east, struck the Tagus in its upper 
 waters, and found himself at once in a land where 
 no Christian foot had stood for centuries 1 — the 
 alluvial plain of Alemtejo, the richest land in 
 Portugal — then the garden of the Moorish territories. 
 The rough Portuguese spoiled the land and advanced 
 
 1 Excapt, of course, the Mosarabes. Portuguese by race and 
 Christian by religion, the Mosarabes conformed in dress, in 
 manners, and in culture to the dominant race, lived among them, 
 and contributed to the wealth and prosperity of the Moorish 
 colonies of the Peninsula. 
 
30 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW, 
 
 rapidly into the very heart of the Saracen territory, 
 On the plain of Ourique, to the north of the populous 
 city of Silves, a large Saracen army, drawn from all 
 parts, prepared to give battle to the invaders. 
 
 OLD HOUSE IN OPORTO. PERTOD OF KINO AFEONRO HENRIQUEZ. 
 
31 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE FIRST KING OF PORTUGAL. 
 
 The warfare between Portuguese and Saracen had 
 hitherto been a warfare of sieges, of forays, of sur- 
 prises and ambuscades^ of skirmishes at river-fords, 
 or irregular fighting in the defiles of mountains or in 
 the fastnesses of forests. The Christian Portuguese 
 had never yet dared to meet their enemies in the 
 open field. It must be remembered that the Christian 
 remnant who had preserved their independence in 
 the hills of the north were, in almost every respect, 
 a people inferior to their enemies in all the arts of 
 peace and war ; inferior in numbers, inferior in 
 organization, vastly inferior in civilization and social 
 culture, and — what in such times was of chief im- 
 portance to their very existence — in discipline, in 
 strategy, and the mere practice of warfare. Against 
 the Gothic pike and the short sword of the Christians, 
 hardly improved from Eoman times, the slender lance 
 of the Saracens in the hands of their practised cavalry 
 was what the rifle of the European soldier is when 
 opposed to the assegai of the African savage or the 
 rude matchlock of the Asiatic. Not till the Christian 
 had borrowed the Arabian peaked saddle and the 
 
32 TORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 powerful curb-bit used by his enemies, not till he 
 had learnt something of the skilful horsemanship of 
 the Saracen, could lie acquire an efficient use of the 
 lance — that best of all cavalry weapons — and make 
 any stand at all in the open field against his Moslem 
 enemy. 
 
 In the long period before the faith feud between 
 the two races had turned to the religious enthusiasm 
 and animosity which made the Crusades a possibility, 
 many adventurous Christian knights took service, as 
 we have already seen, with the Saracens, and fought 
 without compunction against men of their own faith 
 and country. It was through such men that the arts 
 of war, and some social culture, and some of the re- 
 finements of military intercourse were borrowed by 
 the Christians from a high-couraged and a courteous 
 people, and grew at once into that spirit of Christian 
 chivalry, whose influence for good, if it has been 
 somewhat overrated, was certainly in no country and 
 at no time so conspicuous as in the Peninsula and in 
 this very generation. 
 
 Now, for the first time in the history of the great 
 racial struggle on Portuguese soil, the ascendency of 
 the two peoples was to be set on the issue of a 
 pitched battle on a field where, if tradition is to be 
 trusted for the exact site, neither side could derive 
 any material advantage from superiority of position. 
 
 Alfonso Henriquez was completely victorious. 
 With this short sentence we have exhausted almost 
 all that the contemporary chroniclers have told us. 
 One curious circumstance, indeed, they relate ; 
 
THE FIRST KING OF PORTUGAL, 33 
 
 namely, that a large number of women fought on the 
 side of the Almoravides, and though such a practice 
 was in accordance with the occasional usages of this 
 warlike sect, it testifies plainly enough to the fact that 
 the exodus of fighting men had been great enough to 
 cause them to resort to an expedient which can never 
 fail to be repugnant to human nature. 1 
 
 A number of legends, some religious, some 
 patriotic, have clustered round the bare fact of the 
 victory of Ourique ; but the majority of these myths 
 can be traced to their origin in the fourteenth 
 century, a period in the middle ages the most fruit- 
 ful of legend and pseudo-tradition. The least in- 
 credible of these legends, one to the effect that on 
 the victorious field of Ourique AfFonso Henriquez 
 assumed for the first time the crown of Portugal, is 
 almost certainly mythical. It is not corroborated by 
 charters granted at a later date, and it is not alluded 
 to by any chronicler of the period. 
 
 Notwithstanding the importance attached by the 
 Portuguese themselves to the battle of Ourique, it 
 was not a decisive battle in the accepted sense of that 
 word, and it led to no immediate occupation of hostile 
 territory. It was nothing but one of the annual 
 raiding expeditions carried out on a larger scale, and 
 
 1 ' Era m.clxxvii. (that is, the so-called Spanish era = a.d. 
 1139). Julio mense die D. Jacobi apostoli fuit victoria Alfonsi 
 regis de Esmar rege Saracenorum et innumerabili prope exercitu 
 in loco qui dicitur Aulic tunc cor terrae Saracenorum quo per- 
 rexit rex Alfonsus. Fceminse Saracense in hoc prselio amazoneo ritu 
 ac modo pugnarunt et occisse tales deprehensse.' — Brevis Hist. 
 Gothorum. 
 
34 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW, 
 
 brought, by a combination of fortune, and of conduct 
 and courage in its leader, to a larger* and more suc- 
 cessful issue than usual. It was, indeed, a victory 
 important in this respect, that it immediately con- 
 ferred a wide military prestige on the numerically 
 very insignificant people who were now struggling 
 for independence, and of this they were to reap the 
 benefit before the year was ended. 
 
 In the same year Affonso Henrique^, for reasons 
 which are not very clear, broke the peace of Tuy, 
 and began a new Galician invasion. The campaign 
 was in the beginning indecisive, and in a skirmish the 
 prince himself was severely wounded, and for a time 
 disabled, by a lance-thrust inflicted by a Galician foot 
 soldier. The Emperor, though he was at the moment 
 engaged in war with Navarre, hurried with a Leonese 
 army to the defence of his Galician province, and came 
 up with the invading Portuguese in the wild hill- 
 country in the extreme north of Portugal ; and here 
 occurred one of those picturesque scenes charac- 
 teristic of the age, and of the softening effect of the 
 spirit of chivalry and- the influence of the Church. 
 
 The two armies were encamped on acclivities 
 rising on either side from the valley of the little river 
 Vez. A preliminary skirmish had already taken 
 place, and one of the Emperor's commanders, push- 
 ing forward from the main army, had been en- 
 countered and worsted by the Infante himself. The 
 shock of a great battle was imminent, whose issue 
 could not but have been decisive of events in 
 Christian Spain. In relating what follows, it is fair 
 
THE FIRST KING OF PORTUGAL. 35 
 
 to suppose, taking the accounts of Spanish and 
 Portuguese chroniclers as our guide, that the 
 Emperor hesitated before engaging in an encounter, 
 whose results might be so serious, with an enemy 
 numerically, certainly, greatly inferior, but of proved 
 valour, fresh from the field of great exploits, and 
 doubly strong in being commanded by so redoubt- 
 able a leader as the young Prince of Portugal. It 
 is related that the Emperor of Leon, on the very 
 eve of this battle, sent heralds into the camp of the 
 enemy, and, through the intervention of the Portu- 
 guese Archbishop of Braga, obtained the consent of 
 the Infante to an armistice. Thus again was an 
 honourable termination put to what promised to be 
 a most bloody campaign ; but such a concourse 
 of gallant knights could not part, according to the 
 laws of chivalry, without the performance of some 
 courteous and knightly feats of arms. 
 
 The long and narrow valley, known as Yaldevez, 
 which lay between the Portuguese and Spanish 
 armies, broadens at one place into a level space, from 
 which the surrounding hills, occupied by the rival 
 armies, rise like the sides of an ancient amphitheatre. 
 Into this natural arena, when peace was declared, rode 
 the champion knights from either side, and fought 
 for the honour of their native lands. The victory in 
 this tournay, say the Portuguese chroniclers, was 
 with their side, and several Leonese cavaliers were 
 worsted and taken prisoners, in accordance with the 
 usages of public duels, and one knight lost his life. 
 The Spanish annalists state, on the other hand, that 
 
 D 2 
 
36 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 prisoners were taken on both sides. The spot was 
 long afterwards known as Jogo do Bufurdio, the place 
 of the tournament ; and it is worth observing that the 
 almost bloodless tournay of Yaldevez came in time to 
 be magnified into a great Portuguese victory, and the 
 very name of its site to be transformed, with curious 
 exaggeration, into Veiga da Mata?iqa, the field of 
 slaughter. 1 
 
 So little really decisive had been the famous battle 
 of Ourique, that the Saracens, taking advantage of 
 the presence of the Portuguese army in the north, 
 entered the kingdom, and marched northward as far 
 as the important town of Trancoso, which lies within 
 a few leagues to the south of the I)ouro. News of 
 the capture of Trancoso reached the Infante at 
 Valdevez, and he hastened to its rescue. In two 
 serious engagements the Saracens Were overborne, 
 and retreated to the south. 
 
 The constant good fortune of the King in his 
 military enterprises had, by this time, attracted the 
 attention of Europe to the small country over which 
 lie ruled. He was recognised at Eome as a valiant 
 and faithful soldier of the Church. In the great 
 strife between Cross and Crescent, service as useful 
 to the cause of Christianity could be rendered in the 
 Peninsula as in the Holy Land or Iconium; and Spanish 
 and Portuguese knights were expressly dispensed from 
 
 1 ' The scene of the engagement was the country between 
 Arcos and Santo Andre de Guilhadeges. The King of Leon was 
 defeated with great slaughter, and the place in consequence re- 
 ceived the name of Veiga da Matanca.' — Murray's Handbook : 
 third edition, carefully revised. 
 
THE FIRST KING OF POETUGAL. 37 
 
 any obligation of crossing the seas in order to seek 
 for Moslem enemies. Affonso Henriquez now began 
 to use bis best efforts to free himself from any re- 
 maining allegiance to the Emperor. He perceived 
 the importance of obtaining from the Pope some re- 
 cognition of his independence, and he corresponded 
 with the Holy See with this object. The Pope did 
 not hesitate to contribute to the independence of so 
 approved a champion of Christianity, and in the year 
 1144, Pope Lucius II. addressed him a letter in which 
 his claims to sovereign powers are recognised, and 
 even the title of King is almost actually conferred. 
 Prom this period, and, to take the evidence of charters, 
 shortly before it, Affonso Henriquez had assumed the 
 title of an absolute sovereign, and we may, in future, 
 style him King of Portugal. 
 
 Thus painfully, and by slow degrees, was this 
 small semi-Gothic people- — a mere handful of men 
 among the surrounding hostile Christian and Moslem 
 populations — educating itself to the knowledge of 
 liberty and independence. In the veins of prince 
 and people ran, with their half-northern blood, some 
 germs of freedom, some conception of a solidarity 
 between ruled and rulers, of respect for law and 
 authority mingled with jealousy of encroachment 
 upon public rights, something of antagonism to 
 personal government and tyranny ; and the germs of 
 these noble ideas were now acquiring a goodly growth 
 amid the successes of the nation under a great and 
 congenial leader. 
 
 It is far more interesting to the student of a 
 
38 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 people's progress to extract the story of the gradual 
 emerging of the Portuguese into national life from 
 the dry and scanty records of the time, than to read 
 of the marvels of military prowess and the numerous 
 instances of direct Divine intervention with which the 
 patriotism and the piety of later historians have sur- 
 rounded the rise of their country into the rank of 
 nations. Nevertheless, even these exaggerations and 
 foolish legends and allegations of the supernatural 
 are interesting enough in themselves as an indirect 
 testimony to the greatness of the work then done by 
 prince and people. 
 
 In the meantime, the struggle between the 
 Almoravides and the new sect of Almohades had ex- 
 tended to the Peninsula. Ibn Kasi, an Almoravidian 
 renegade, an energetic, unscrupulous and ambitious 
 man, had placed himself at the head of an Almo- 
 hadian insurrection in the great Saracen province of 
 Gharb ; and he was appointed Almohadian Wali or 
 governor of the important fortress of Mertola in that 
 province. The contest between Almoravidians and 
 Almohades in Gharb was long, bloody, and for a time 
 indecisive, and Ibn Kasi bethought him of obtaining 
 the alliance of the now formidable Affonso Henri quez. 
 The Almoravides, the ancient enemies of the Portu- 
 guese ruler, issuing from their stronghold at San- 
 tarem, had recently again defeated the Portuguese 
 Templars of Soure, and King Alfonso Henri quez 
 gladly availed himself of this opportunity to make 
 reprisals. 
 
THE FIRST KING OF PORTUGAL. 39 
 
 He joined his forces to those of Ibn Kasi, but the 
 Saracen and his Christian ally were ill mated. It is 
 clear that Affonso Henriquez did not desire, and 
 would not consent to lend his help to any operations 
 likely to establish, the permanent ascendency of either 
 party among the enemies of his faith and country. 
 He wanted warlike occupation for his troops, and 
 the rich plunder of the populous territory of the 
 Saracens. The astute Ibn Kasi found in the King a 
 sagacity greater and a will far stronger than his 
 own. In the presence of Affonso Henriquez, to use 
 the picturesque phrase of an Arab chronicler, Ibn 
 Kasi was like a slave before his lord, hardly daring 
 to lift his eyes from the ground. With so intractable 
 and so dangerous an ally, the Saracen hastened to 
 make any terms, and Affonso Henriquez and his army 
 in time took their way back into Portugal, laden with 
 valuable spoil in slaves, in arms, in armour, and in 
 war-horses of the Arab and African races. 
 
 The continued possession by his enemies of the 
 great stronghold of Santarem, a point d'appui for 
 yearly aggression, was, we are told, an unceasing 
 vexation to the soul of the Portuguese king. This 
 city and citadel lay, and still he, on the north bank 
 of the Tagus, in the centre of a rich plain, which 
 extended wedge-like into the heart of the desert 
 border-land of Estremadura. It therefore was the 
 Saracen position which lay nearest and was most 
 threatening to the Christians. Santarem was believed 
 to be impregnable ; an opinion justified to this day in 
 the eyes of those who have traced out the ruins of 
 
40 POKTUGAL : OLD AJMD NEW. 
 
 its Moorish citadel on an eminence overlooking the 
 Tagus, and surveyed the natural and artificial scarps 
 "and counterscarps of the hill-sides along which it is 
 built. 
 
 Warfare in that age and country was, as we have 
 already seen, to a great extent, an affair of sieges ; 
 and, in so far as it was so, the advantage was 
 altogether with the Saracens. In the art of building 
 strong places, of taking them, and of resisting cap- 
 ture, the Christian nations of Europe had inherited, 
 and had not improved upon, the clumsy artillery (if 
 we may use the word in its first sense) of the Romans ; 
 and the Crusaders, in Asia Minor and Syria, found 
 themselves as much inferior to the Saracens in this 
 branch of the military art as did the Christians of 
 Spain and Portugal. The defenders of Santarem, 
 therefore, felt perfectly secure in a strong, watchful 
 garrison ; in their lofty turrets, garnished with all the 
 artifice of Arabian war science ; and securer still in 
 the proved ignorance of their enemies. 
 
 To take Santarem openly and in the light of day 
 was clearly impossible ; but it was an age in which 
 stratagem made an essential and honourable branch 
 of the art of war, and in which branch of it the 
 keener and more subtle wits of the Orientals were 
 also greatly at an advantage. 
 
 In the spring of the year 1147, King Alfonso 
 Henriquez lay at Coimbra, his capital, when he 
 schemed an attempt upon Santarem. He is said to 
 have obtained exact information of the height and 
 position of the walls and towers of Santarem, to have 
 
THE FIRST KING OF PORTUGAL. 41 
 
 prepared scaling-ladders, and to have sketched out a 
 plan of assault. In three night marches, his small 
 army had passed the fifty or sixty miles of wild and 
 deserted country that lay between Coimbra and 
 Santarem, successfully eluding the observation of the 
 Saracen outposts and watchers by the way : on the 
 third, some hours before daylight, he was under the 
 walls of the city. The ladders were set, the walls 
 scaled, and the troops, following their King with the 
 war-cry of Sanctiago e Rei Affonso ! overpowered 
 the garrison, and the redoubtable stronghold of San- 
 tarem was in the hands of the Christians. 1 
 
 The capture of Santarem was of more importance 
 to the Christian cause in Portugal than any event 
 within the previous fifty years. Ii: extended Christian 
 territory to the Tagus, made Moorish aggression 
 more difficult, and the Christian invasion of Gharb 
 easier than before. 
 
 The King, however, now meditated an exploit far 
 greater than this, and which, if accomplished, would 
 carry the fame of the Portuguese nation to every 
 Christian Court and camp in Europe. This was the 
 capture of Lisbon itself. But although to take an 
 
 1 The narrative in the text is probably very near the facts. 
 The usually cautious Herculano tells the story in detail, closely 
 following the account of this episode given in the Life of St. 
 Theotomio, Prior of Santa Cruz, a contemporary and, according to 
 the Cistercian monk, his biographer, an adviser of King Affonso 
 Henriquez. The date of the Life is uncertain ; its queer latimty, its 
 half-romantic style, and the narration of many very improbable 
 circumstances, do not appear to the present writer, after a very pain- 
 ful perusal of it, to be like the truth, or even like the pious fraud 
 of a contemporary. 
 
42 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 outpost like Santarem by a sudden and unexpected v 
 assault had been proved to be possible, there were 
 circumstances connected with the defences of Lisbon 
 which rendered its capture, with the resources of the 
 King of Portugal, quite beyond the bounds of pos- 
 sibility. 
 
 Lisbon was at this time the richest and the most 
 populous city of the Peninsula. Moorish accounts 
 compute the number of its inhabitants at between 
 four and five hundred thousand. Its magnificent sea 
 approach had long made it the chief emporium of 
 trade between Europe and northern Africa. The city 
 lies on the northern bank of the Tagus, where the river 
 broadens into a lake-like estuary : from the edge of 
 the water rose the city, as it still rises, amphitheatre- 
 wise upon hilly ground. On the northern slopes of 
 these hills was situated the Kassba, or Moorish citadel, 
 with its round turrets, its ditches, and its battlemented 
 curtains. Strong lines of fortification extended from 
 either side of the fortress to the river, and enclosed the 
 whole city, except on the river side, where it was suffi- 
 ciently protected by the Moorish fleets. The efforts of 
 the Portuguese against so formidable an enceinte would 
 certainly have proved futile, and it is not likely that 
 even the enterprising King Affonso Henriquez would 
 have made any attempt, but for a wholly unlooked- 
 for occurrence. 
 
 Two years before the capture of Santarem, the, 
 first Crusade had ended in complete disaster to the 
 Christian arms in Asia Minor, and levies were already 
 gathering in France and in Germany for a fresh ex- 
 
THE FIRST KING OF PORTUGAL. 43 
 
 pedition to the East. A large force of Frenchmen 
 and Germans were at this time travelling overland to 
 Palestine, along the route which had already been 
 followed by a previous generation of Crusaders ; but 
 the levies from England, North Germany, and the Low 
 Countries, not unaccustomed to the sea, preferred, to 
 the fatigues of a tedious journey afoot through 
 Hungary and modern European Turkey, the long and 
 dangerous voyage from the mouths of the Ehine, down 
 the British Channel, across the Bay of Biscay and 
 through the Pillars of Hercules into the Mediterranean. 
 News of these sea-travelling Crusaders had probably 
 reached the King of Portugal, through France, long 
 before its slow and timid navigation had brought the 
 fleet within sight of his shores ; and it is almost cer- 
 tain that he had foreseen and planned the combina- 
 tion which he subsequently put into practice. 
 
 The German Crusaders under Arnulph of Areschot, 
 and the Flemings under Christian of Gistell, had put 
 in at Dartmouth, there to join the English contingent. 
 These latter were commanded by four Constables, 
 and the whole force assembled in the port of Dart- 
 mouth numbered about 13,000 fighting men, of whom 
 the greater number probably were Englishmen. 1 
 
 It happened that among the English Crusaders 
 was a scholar, no doubt a churchman of inferior 
 rank, who subsequently drew up a lengthy account, 
 in the form of a letter, of the voyage and of its 
 various incidents, in a manner so graphic that it fur- 
 
 1 ' Pars eorum maxima venerat ex Anglia.' — Henry of Hunt- 
 ingdon. 
 
44 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 rushes us with by far the best and fullest description 
 that has come down to the present time of the 
 curious episode of the siege of Lisbon. 1 
 
 The English portion of the fleet first made land 
 on the coast of northern Spain, then, creeping round 
 westward, they put in at Oporto to await the arrival 
 of the Flemish and German contingent, from whom 
 they had parted company in a gale. 
 
 At Oporto, the Crusaders were met by the Bishop 
 of that city, who had the King's commands to receive 
 them courteously, and to invite them to proceed to 
 Lisbon and to join the Portuguese troops in an attack 
 upon that stronghold. After some discussion, and 
 upon the arrival of the rest of the Crusaders, it was 
 agreed by them to join their forces to those of the 
 King, in a work kindred to that for which they had 
 left their own country. The fleet accordingly set sail 
 for the Tagus, while the King's troops marched thither 
 by land. Much of the letter is taken up with ac- 
 counts of the dissensions between the members of the 
 various nationalities which composed the crusading 
 armies, and the mode in which peace was kept 
 among these unruly warriors by the King of the 
 Portuguese. 
 
 The powerful fleet of the Crusaders cut off the 
 
 1 Under the title of Cruce Signati anglici Epist. de expugna- 
 tione Ulisiponis, this document is well known to students of 
 history. It is mentioned by Cooper (vol. i. page 166) with the 
 title Expeditio /rancor um anglorum, etc., per Osbernum. The MS. 
 exists, I believe, in the library of Corpus, Cambridge. It was 
 printed in 1861 in the Monumenta Ilistorica of the Lisbon 
 Academy, from which co£>y I quote. 
 
THE FIRST KING OF PORTUGAL. 45 
 
 communications of the Lisbon garrison by water, and 
 the troops, disembarking and joining with the Por- 
 tuguese, were sufficient to encompass the whole city; 
 but the Moorish garrison was a strong one, and the 
 defences in good order. Continual sorties were made 
 from the city, and in the fighting which took place, 
 the advantage was as often on the side of the Saracens 
 as of the besiegers. Finally the English troops suc- 
 ceeded, after heavy loss, in penetrating the suburbs 
 of the city, which, though lying outside the city wall, 
 were tenanted by a large population. Here also 
 were the grain stores of the inhabitants, and from 
 this time the garrison suffered severely from famine. 
 
 In the various arts of siege warfare, the Saracens 
 had always the advantage. They were the more 
 ingenious, and the more watchful, and the more 
 active. A tower on wheels built by the English 
 Crusaders was burnt ; another, constructed at great 
 expense of time and trouble by the Germans, met the 
 same fate ; mining works, prepared by the Flemings 
 on a large scale, were countermined by the garrison 
 and destroyed. The war engines of the Saracens 
 were superior in size and power to those of the 
 Christians, and the besiegers were assailed by over- 
 powering showers of stones and darts whenever they 
 advanced to the assault. 
 
 Finally, however, a Pisan engineer devised a 
 wooden tower on wheels, of unexampled proportions. 
 Englishmen and Portuguese worked in company at 
 its construction, and fifty English and fifty Portu- 
 guese soldiers having manned this moving castle, and 
 
46 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 each man of the hundred having been supplied with 
 a piece of the True Cross, it was rolled up to the city 
 walls amid the breathless expectation of the besieging 
 hosts. The Saracens, seeing the imminence of their 
 danger, sallied forth in great numbers and attacked 
 the approaching tower. The Pisan engineer, who 
 directed the operation, was wounded and disabled by 
 a stone hurled from a Moorish catapult. The tide, 
 flowing unusually high, covered the sands on which 
 the tower was moving, and cut off support from the 
 besiegers ; but it came nearer and nearer, and finally 
 reached to within a yard of the parapets, whose 
 height it equalled. Then a drawbridge was thrown 
 across, and the English and the Portuguese were pre- 
 paring to enter the city, when the Saracens, seeing 
 further resistance to be useless, surrendered. 1 The 
 city capitulated, and was mercilessly sacked. The 
 King lost no time in devising for the captured city a 
 form of municipal government, which strongly testi- 
 fies to his liberality, toleration, and wisdom, in an age 
 when the narrow bigotry and ferocity of kings and 
 rulers were usually as conspicuous as these qualities 
 in their subjects. The Moslem population were 
 treated by the Portuguese in a manner which was in 
 
 1 This is a slight modification of the account of the English 
 Crusader. According to his statement, his countrymen had the 
 chief share in the capture of Lisbon. A Flemish relation, on the 
 other hand, makes less of the English prowess, and takes credit for 
 a successful assault by Flemings and Lorrainers. Herculano 
 shrewdly remarks that had a detailed Portuguese narrative of the 
 siege existed, his own countrymen would, no doubt, have received 
 their full share of credit. 
 
THE FIRST KING OF rORTUGAL. 47 
 
 singular contrast to the contemporary atrocities of 
 the Crusaders in the East, for the Moors of Lisbon 
 were neither put to the sword, nor compelled 
 to change their religion, nor enslaved, nor even 
 banished. They continued to reside in the city, and 
 they enjoyed, under a charter granted by the King, 
 considerable liberties and privileges. They retained 
 in their own hands the election of a judge, and the 
 taxation to which they were subjected does not appear 
 to have been excessive. The King's administration of 
 church affairs was equally liberal and judicious. He 
 appointed many foreign ecclesiastics to the newly- 
 created chief offices of the church ; among whom 
 Gilbert, an Englishman, was the first Bishop of Lisbon. 
 
 The King likewise turned his attention to the 
 establishment of a navy, which his countrymen had 
 never yet possessed. He favoured naval enterprise 
 by conferring knightly rank and the privilege of 
 citizenship on native and on foreign sailors, and he 
 drew thereby Flemings, Englishmen, and Forth Ger- 
 mans into the new commercial marine of Portugal. 
 Thus encouraged by a wise protection and by impar- 
 tial justice, soon after the capture of Lisbon and what 
 might have been its commercial ruin, its trade 
 acquired a sudden, and a great, and a permanent 
 development. 
 
 King AfTonso, however, could give but little of 
 his time to the peaceful arts of government. The 
 Moors still occupied the country and the strong 
 places to the south of Lisbon. The trans-Talari 
 province, most of which is now known as Alemtejo, 
 
48 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 is a vast plain, containing only in its extreme east a 
 hilly region with valleys of great fertility. At the 
 two most commanding points of this eastern upland 
 district lay labor ah, now Evora, and Bajah, now called 
 Beja, Moorish cities and strongholds, and both of them 
 important places at all periods of Portuguese history. 
 At the western extremity of the province, towards 
 the Atlantic, the trans-Tagan district juts out into a 
 broad promontory, terminating in Cape Espichel, 
 and here again the country ceases to be a plain : the 
 land rises into hills, and each one is crowned, as the 
 Moorish custom was, with fortified places. Of these, 
 Palmella, which dominates the entrance of the river 
 Sado, had already surrendered to the Christians 
 during the siege ; and Almada, a stronghold on the 
 south bank of the Tagus, where sea and river meet, 
 fell almost immediately afterwards into the hands of 
 the King. Alcacer do Sal, a rich city, and an impor- 
 tant place of arms, in the centre of this plain country, 
 resisted the sudden attack made by the King in person, 
 at the head of a handful of Chiistian knights, and the 
 King received a severe wound ; but within a year it 
 had again been attacked, and had fallen. There now 
 only remained Evora and Beja in the east, and when 
 these strongholds were captured by the Christians, 
 the whole trans-Tagan plain country was at the mercy 
 of King AfFonso Henri quez. 
 
 In the meantime, he had been careful to apportion 
 out the conquered land among the more worthy of 
 his captains, and to endow the powerful Orders of 
 militant and other monks, who had at all times either 
 
TH^ FIRST KING OF PORTUGAL. 49 
 
 fought with him in the van of the Peninsular Crusade, 
 or, in the case of the non-militant Orders, assisted in 
 the colonisation of the land. One such endowment has 
 survived almost to our own days — a monument of 
 these rude times and the wisdom of the King's dis- 
 positions. The broad strip of deserted frontier which 
 has already been described as lying between Christian 
 and Moorish territory, was now available for occupa- 
 tion ; but the tenure of Portuguese power was still 
 insecure, as was presently to be proved, and the dis- 
 trict which had so long been a waste was not readily 
 to be repeopled. In its centre, not far from the great 
 Christian stronghold qf Leiria, the King now settled a 
 monastery of Bernardine monks, at Alcobaca, which 
 soon became the largest, and perhaps the richest and 
 most important, of the many Cistercian monasteries 
 which the zeal of St, Bernard was helping to spread 
 over the face of western Europe ; and the industry 
 and the example of the brothers of this austere Order 
 soon converted the wilderness of western Estrema- 
 dura into a well-tilled district, whose exceptionally 
 high cultivation, conspicuous to this day in agri- 
 cultural Portugal, may, I think, be traced to the 
 early lessons of the monks of St. Bernard. 
 
 Changes in Spanish and in Moorish affairs began, 
 ten years after the capture of Lisbon, to threaten 
 danger to Portugal. Alonso, the Emperor of Leon 
 and Castile, dying in 1157, Leon passed into the 
 hands of his son Fernando, and Castile into those of 
 Sancho, the first-born, and the two brothers seem to 
 have cast envious eyes upon the territories of King 
 
 E 
 
50 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 Affonso Henriquez, and to have meditated some 
 attempt upon Portugal ; but Sancho of Castile died 
 before these plans could be carried out. He was 
 succeeded by an infant son. Fernando, the new 
 King of Leon, lost little time in invading his nephew's 
 territories, and civil war began to rage over northern 
 Spain. It was then that King Fernando sought and 
 obtained in marriage Urraca of Portugal, the eldest 
 daughter of King Affonso Henriquez, by Mafalda, his 
 queen. The King of Leon and the Infanta Urraca, 
 then a girl of eleven, were married in 1165, but this 
 alliance did not prevent subsequent rivalry and 
 disunion between Leon and Portugal. 
 
 By this time a very powerful enemy was turning 
 his attention in the direction of Portugal. The 
 famous Moorish Emir, Abdu-1-mumen, successor to 
 the founder of the reforming sect of the Almohades, 
 had now conquered the whole of eastern Morocco, 
 and prepared an expedition across the Straits of 
 Gibraltar. The fame of Ibn Errik— the son of Henry 
 — as the Saracens were accustomed to term their 
 great Portuguese adversary, had reached his ears, and 
 alarmed him for the future security of Saracen power 
 in the Peninsula. 
 
 He landed, in 1161, with a large army of veteran 
 soldiers, disciplined men, used to victory, full of 
 religious zeal, and in every way of far superior war- 
 like aptitude to any Moorish troops whom the 
 Portuguese had yet encountered. The Emir des- 
 patched 18,000 picked horsemen of this army to 
 Gharb, under a leader who offered battle to the King. 
 
THE FIRST KING OF PORTUGAL. 51 
 
 The Portuguese were routed with a cruel loss to their 
 armies, already reduced by a long series of campaigns. 
 Thus was the long career of Portuguese victory 
 checked in the moment of its culminating triumph : 
 but the victory of the Moors, though complete, was 
 by no means decisive. They retired with a rich 
 booty, and the indefatigable King of the Portuguese 
 recommenced his incursions into Moorish territory. 
 He retook and permanently occupied Evora anclBeja, 
 the Moorish strongholds of eastern Alemtejo, which 
 in a previous campaign had been taken and aban- 
 doned ; and probably it was at this time that he made 
 his memorable expedition towards and across the 
 river Guadiana — ,a river never yet forded by a 
 Portuguese host — and captured Moura, Serpa, and 
 Alconchel, hill forts on the natural frontier between 
 modern Spain and Portugal, and penetrating into the 
 very heart of the Moslem territory, took the important 
 city of Truxillo by storm. 
 
 It was this never-ending activity in daring exploits, 
 and this reiteration of success against great odds, 
 that filled his subjects with admiration and his 
 enemies with terror and respect. Of the King's 
 personal prowess, and of his sagacity in those sudden 
 emergencies where sagacity is most apt to disappear, 
 we have an impartial testimony in the record of a 
 Moorish chronicler. 1 
 
 ; This enemy of God,' says the exasperated anna- 
 list, ' would set about the taking of strong places in 
 this fashion. Choosing a dark and stormy night, he 
 1 Ibn-Sahibi-s-salat : quoted by Herculano. 
 e 2 
 
52 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 would. sally forth with only a handful of picked men. 
 Arrived before the castle he intended to attack, the 
 King it was in person who would be the first to scale 
 the walls. When he had reached the parapet, he 
 would throw himself upon the first sentinel, and 
 holding a dagger to his breast, compel him to answer 
 the usual challenge of his fellows without arousing 
 their suspicions. After this he would wait in the em- 
 brasure of the battlements till his men had followed ; 
 then suddenly the King would raise his war-cry of 
 Sanctiago ! and the whole party would fall furiously, 
 sword in hand, upon the garrison.' 
 
 It was about the year 1165 that dissension, from 
 some unrecorded cause, broke out between Alfonso 
 Henri quez and his son-in-law, the King of Leon. 
 Without inquiring into the circumstances or the his- 
 tory of this quarrel, it is characteristic of the promp- 
 titude of the King of Portugal, that on the breaking 
 out of war he lost no time in sending an expedition 
 into Castile, where the Leonese King had already 
 provoked the hostility of the inhabitants, and he con- 
 centrated his attack upon Ciudad Rodrigo, the very 
 point which was looked upon by Wellington as the 
 key of Avestern Spain, and of which King Alfonso 
 clearly perceived the military importance. 
 
 On this occasion the King, occupied on the Moorish 
 borderland, did not accompany the army of the 
 north ; and the Leonese troops, commanded by the 
 warlike Fernando in person — one of the most able of 
 the early Spanish princes — broke the Portuguese lines 
 and completely routed them. The bad news was 
 
THE FIRST KING OF TORTUGAL. 53 
 
 carried back, and Affonso Henriquez hastened from 
 his southern frontier with a small body of veteran 
 troops, rallied his people, and, with more than his ac- 
 customed audacity and success, carried the war into 
 the very midst of the territories of the victorious 
 Spaniards. Having forced a great part of the impor- 
 tant province of Galicia to submit to him, he came 
 south, and laid siege to Badajos on the Guadiana — a 
 Moorish city, owing some undefined vassalage to the 
 King of Leon — desirous, no doubt, to add this strong 
 city to the line of frontier posts he had already won. 
 The Portuguese took the city, but the Moorish gar- 
 rison escaped into the citadel, and before the King could 
 reduce it, he found himself besieged and hard pressed 
 by a large army of Leonese under King Fernando. 
 The garrison made a sally, while the Leonese forced 
 the walls, and the Portuguese were assailed in the 
 streets of Badajos by their Moorish and their Leonese 
 enemies. They were overborne. The streets of 
 Moorish cities are narrow and tortuous, and, as is 
 always the case in street fighting, the slaughter was 
 great. The Portuguese were outnumbered, and were 
 probably already beginning to give way, when the 
 King, in the melee, was dashed by his horse against 
 the jamb of a gateway. His thigh was broken, and he 
 fell senseless to the ground. His followers, losing 
 their leader, were wholly overmastered, and Affonso 
 Henriquez found himself a prisoner in the hands of 
 the Leonese King. 
 
 Those who find an interest in tracing the conca- 
 tenation of historical events from physical rather than 
 
54: PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 from moral causes, may entertain themselves with 
 conjectures as to the possible alteration of all Penin- 
 sular history had King Fernando chosen to exercise 
 to the full his rights of victor over his royal captive. 
 Fortunately, the King of Leon was a generous as well 
 as an enlightened prince — generous and enlightened, 
 according to contemporary record, beyond precedent 
 or example in those times. 
 
 It is not unlikely that in an age of chivalry the 
 young Spanish King may have been moved to some 
 sentiment of actual enthusiasm towards the man 
 whose heroic exploits were already the theme of the 
 wandering troubadour in every Christian Court in 
 weste'rn Europe. It is even more probable that he 
 feared also to hinder of his freedom the Christian 
 champion who was in himself the strongest bulwark 
 of the Church and of the independence of the Hispano- 
 Gothic races, and this, too, at a juncture the most 
 critical, when the Moslem power was day by day re- 
 newing its ancient strength in the Peninsula. Be the 
 reason what it may, King Fernando released his 
 prisoner, requiring of him only the restitution of his 
 recent Galieian conquests. 
 
 A fresh cloud was now gathering on the 
 Portuguese horizon. Yusuf had succeeded to Abdu- 
 1-mumen as Emir of Morocco, and the new prince, 
 after consolidating his own government, sent an army 
 into the Peninsula to check the growing power o'f 
 Alfonso Henriquez ; but the general, on reaching the 
 Peninsula, learnt the news of the defeat of the greatest 
 enemy of his race at Badajos. He withdrew his 
 
THE FIRST KING OF PORTUGAL. 55 
 
 troops, contenting himself, for a time, with watching 
 the Portuguese frontier, and with a desultory warfare 
 of raids and forays. The reverse which King Affonso 
 Henriquez had met with at Badajos, his tedious re- 
 covery from his wound, his increasing age, and the 
 presence of strong and disciplined forces of African 
 Moors, were circumstances which were beginning to 
 diminish the terror he had hitherto inspired in the 
 eyes of the Moslems ; and it was these reasons, 
 probably, which induced the Emir to order, and 
 perhaps to accompany, a fresh expedition into the 
 heart of Portugal. The danger was imminent, not to 
 Portugal only but to Christian Spain, and King 
 Fernando of Leon, unasked, marched his troops to the 
 defence of the common cause of Christianity. Yusuf 
 retreated from the combined Leonese and Portuguese 
 armies, and the peril for the time passed away. 
 
 The few following years- passed more quietly. 
 The King, fatigued by the unceasing toils of a 
 soldier's life, his energy diminished by age, his body 
 enfeebled by many grievous wounds, felt himself to be 
 no longer fit for war. He deputed to his son Sancho, 
 who inherited no small portion of his father's warlike 
 aptitude, the task of carrying on the usual yearly war 
 of raids and forays across the Saracen frontier, while 
 he devoted himself to the task of reforming the wild 
 society which had grown up during a period of in- 
 cessant warfare. He granted charters to cities and 
 to communes, rectified boundaries, dispensed justice, 
 and did all that a ruler can do to settle his country 
 and to strengthen the reign of law and order. 
 
56 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 It was in 1179, in the sixty-ninth year of the 
 King's life, that the storm, which had long been 
 threatening, burst on the Christians of Portugal. 
 The power of the Almohades was now at its zenith, 
 under the great Emir Yusuf, and that prince deter- 
 mined to make an effort with the whole of his dis- 
 posable forces to restore the integrity of his Portu- 
 guese province, to retake the many castles fallen into 
 Christian hands, and more especially to reoccupy the 
 great frontier fortress of Santarem, and Lisbon, the 
 ancient centre of Moorish commerce and government. 
 Yacub, his son, was accordingly despatched to 
 Portugal, and Avar with the Christians was carried on 
 with varying success for three years. 
 
 In 1184, Yusuf himself invaded the Peninsula 
 with an army more numerous, probably, and 
 certainly better disciplined > than had crossed the 
 Straits of Gibraltar since his namesake, the famous 
 Almoravidian Emir, had brought over the troops 
 which had routed the Christians in the decisive battle 
 of Zalaca. Yusuf marched from Gibraltar, making 
 towards Santarem, and was joined on the way 
 through Andalusia by strong battalions of Almo- 
 hadian soldiery. The Emir's troops crossed the 
 Tagus, and settling down in countless multitudes in 
 the rich plain which surrounds Santarem, encom- 
 passed and beleaguered that place. 
 
 Sancho, the Infante, commanded a powerful 
 garrison within the enceinte of Santarem, and fought 
 with at first some success against his numerous 
 enemies; but lie was overwhelmed by numbers, and 
 
THE FIRST KING OF PORTUGAL. 57 
 
 the disciplined Almohadian troops left none of the 
 arts of siege untried to hasten the surrender • of the 
 fortress. The besieged already counted the duration 
 of their further resistance by hours. 
 
 The newly acquired independence of the Portu- 
 guese nation seemed to be at last hanging in the 
 very balance, when, from the towers of Santarem, 
 the hard-pressed garrison perceived a numerous 
 troop of rapidly approaching cavalry. Presently 
 they distinguished the pennons and banners of 
 Christian knights, and as the troop came nearer, 
 they recognised the well-known form of the old King 
 himself, riding at the head of his knights. He had 
 come by forced marches to the succour of his son 
 from the extreme north of Portugal. The gates of 
 the city were thrown open, the garrison sallied forth, 
 and joining the King's men, they fell together upon 
 the vast host of the Saracens. The besiegers, panic- 
 struck at the sudden apparition of the terrible King 
 of Portugal, the triumphant shouting of the garrison, 
 and the sudden combined assault, were put to flight ; 
 the Emir himself was slain, and his armies driven 
 over the Tagus, and forced to a disastrous rout 
 across the Moorish frontier ; and thus, by what 
 seemed a real miracle in contemporary eyes, was 
 Portugal freed in a day from the greatest peril 
 with which it had ever been threatened. 1 
 
 1 Herculano, with, as it seems to me, an excess of his habitual 
 caution, inclines to follow the scanty Arabic Chronicles in his 
 account of the King's victory at Santarem. It is perhaps hardly 
 necessary to mention a fact which forces itself painfully upon the 
 attention of all students of these early periods of Peninsular 
 
58 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 This was the last and crowning victory of Affonso 
 Henriquez. In the same year he died, worn out by 
 age, and his death perhaps hastened by this last great 
 exploit. ' This prince,' says the Chronicle of the 
 Goths, ' was a great lover of his people and a devout 
 Christian ; he defended all Portugal with his sword ; 
 he acquired a kingdom, and he extended the confines 
 of Christendom from the river Mondego on one side 
 as far as to the Guadalquivir, which flows by the 
 walls of Seville, and on the other side to the Mediter- 
 ranean Sea and the shores of the great ocean.' 
 
 These are the words, rising to a pitch of unac- 
 customed enthusiasm, of an almost contemporary 
 annalist ; but we, of a later age, who know the long 
 vicissitudes of Portuguese history, can perceive that 
 
 history : namely, the frequent difficulty of reconciling the state- 
 ments of Christian and of Moslem chroniclers. That the Emir 
 Yusuf invaded Portugal in 1184, that he laid siege to Santarem, 
 that the siege was raised by the Portuguese, that the Moors were 
 driven across the Tagus and the Emir was killed, are all incon- 
 testable facts. The Arab chroniclers speak of the previous de- 
 spatch of a portion of the invading host southward, of a surprise 
 arid a panic in the Moorish camp. It appears to me that their 
 account of these events is an attempt to make as little as possible of 
 the great Christian triumph at Santarem. I give the narrative in 
 my text with as much assurance as a man can feel who draws 
 from the scanty and contradictory records of such distant times, 
 and I consider that my version has sufficient voucher, for reasons 
 which I have not space to enter into. I take this opportunity of 
 saying that although I have consulted all accessible original 
 authorities, and written no descriptive line of city, battlefield, 
 river, or mountain-range, but after actual presence on the spot, I 
 owe no light obligation to Senhor Herculano, whose enlightened 
 and learned labours, and whose fine sequacious narrative of the 
 reigns of the early Portuguese monarchs, place him in the very 
 first rank of modern historians. 
 
THE FIRST KING OF PORTUGAL. 59 
 
 lie accomplished for his country far more than this. 
 He did what it is better to do for a people than to 
 bestow upon them any extension of territory, He 
 taught them the strength of the coherent loyalty of a 
 whole nation ; he showed them how their indepen- 
 dence was possible, in despite of the smallness of their 
 numbers, of their poverty, and of their ignorance of 
 the arts of war-. He showed them the value of constitu- 
 tional freedom ; he taught them how the hardest of all 
 political problems may be solved, how independence 
 can be preserved, and freedom not compromised ; and 
 he kindled a fire of patriotism and of loyalty in the 
 nation which has never been extinguished through 
 long periods of national reverses and depression. 
 
 These lessons have not been wasted on the Portu- 
 guese. If the nation lost its liberties during one 
 short period, it has never lost the sense of what those 
 liberties were worth ; and Portugal presents at this 
 day the unique spectacle of a nation of Southern race 
 which can safely be trusted with a political liberty, 
 free from the tyranny of rulers on the one hand, and 
 from the dictation of the populace on the other. 
 
 The King died at Coimbra, which, once on the 
 Moorish frontier, had become by his conquests the 
 central city of the kingdom. They carried his body 
 for burial to the conventual church of Santa Cruz, in 
 that city. More than three centuries afterwards, the 
 prosperous and peaceful King Emmanuel thought to 
 honour his remains by building a gorgeous church in 
 the flamboyant style of architecture on the site of the 
 ancient building. 
 
60 
 
 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 The body of the great founder of the Portuguese 
 monarchy was disinterred, clad in the crimson mantle 
 of the Military Order of A viz, which he had instituted. 
 The corpse was enthroned, crowned, and done 
 homage to as a living sovereign and saint by King 
 Emmanuel and all his nobility. Then was he re- 
 interred under a splendid mausoleum in the newly 
 finished building. The body of Alfonso Henriquez 
 lies there to this day. Other tombs of kings, prelates, 
 and nobles, adorn the chapels and chancels of this 
 magnificent church. It is a desecration. No tawdry 
 architecture should surround the grave, and no 
 meaner dust should mingle with that of this mighty 
 Warrior King. 
 
 CHAPEL NEAR GUIMARAENS, WHERE APFONSO HENRIQUEZ IS SAID TO 
 HAVE BEEN CHRISTENED. 
 
61 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE POETRY OF THE PORTUGUESE RENAISSANCE. 
 
 The Portuguese subjects of King Affonso Henri quez 
 spoke a language which may be termed pure Portu- 
 guese in the same sense that the language into which 
 our King iElfred translated the works of Basel a and 
 of Orosius is sometimes called pure English. The 
 Portuguese written in the reign of King Affonso 
 Henriquez is nevertheless hardly more intelligible to 
 a modern Portuguese than the king's English of 
 iElfred's time is to Englishmen of the present day. 
 
 As our own language is the direct outcome of the 
 historical events which made us Englishmen, so also 
 the Portuguese kingdom and language both had their 
 birth in the same era. In other words, the dialect 
 of the Portuguese portion of the Peninsula began to 
 detach itself more entirely from the other Teuton o- 
 Latin forms of speech around it, at the period when, 
 as I have already mentioned, the King of Leon and 
 Castile conferred upon Count Henry of Burgundy the 
 governorship of Northern Portugal. The language 
 spoken in the dominions of Count Henry was, it is 
 nearly certain, identical with, or at least similar to, 
 
62 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 that spoken in Galicia. Whether the Galician tongue 
 crossed the Minho with the invading arms of Count 
 Henry's suzerain, or whether it already prevailed in 
 the district south of that river, is not now very easy 
 to determine. Certain it is that, at this period, the 
 Galician was, of all the dialects which the corrupted 
 forms of the Latin was assuming in the Peninsula, 
 the most cultivated and the most perfect. As the 
 Portuguese nation became more isolated from its 
 neighbours, the language would acquire a character 
 of its own in its progress towards full development ; 
 and the influence of a Burgundian ruler and his 
 Burgundian courtiers, soldiers, and adherents, would, 
 no doubt, add certain elements of refinement and 
 variety to the language of his subjects. The province 
 of the Minho, the most northern of Portugal, was, at 
 the outset of the kingdom, at once the seat of govern- 
 ment and the cradle of the language; and we may 
 presume that, as the districts to the south were 
 successively wrested from the Moors, the original 
 Galician or quasi-Galician dialect of the Minhotes, 
 would advance southwards with the arms of the 
 Christians, and finally become the language of the 
 whole of Portugal. 
 
 At this stage of Portuguese history men's minds 
 would seem to have been too much engrossed with 
 the great continuous war which the nation was 
 waging with the Moors, and with the Leonese and 
 Castilians, to be able to give much attention to any 
 sort of poetry, except short lyrical pieces touching 
 upon war or love. Hardly any others have come 
 
THE PORTUGUESE RENAISSANCE. 63 
 
 down to us. There is no great early Portuguese 
 epic, like the 4 Cicl ' ; l though the struggle with the 
 infidels was as fierce, and the triumph of the Chris- 
 tians as great, in Portugal as in Spain. In all pro- 
 bability the poetry of the country was in the hands 
 of the wandering troubadours from Provence, and 
 the native bards would not have cared to be heard 
 in the presence of such masters of song as these. It 
 is noticeable that the earlier remains we have of 
 native verse are mostly sacred poetry — precisely 
 such a class of effusion as the professional minstrels 
 would be the least apt to produce. It is quite certain, 
 however, that neither poets nor poetry were despised 
 at this early period, either in Portugal or the neigh- 
 bouring kingdom ; and if no other record of their 
 good repute existed, proof might be found in the fact 
 that, of all the Portuguese poets whose name or fame 
 has come down to us, in the thirteenth and fourteenth 
 centuries all were courtiers, knights of high birth, 
 princes of the blood, or kings, 
 
 Among a warlike people like the Portuguese, 
 called upon at this period continually to maintain 
 their existence by arms, we may imagine that the 
 Court and the camp were the centres of such literary 
 
 1 Some fragments of a rhymed chronicle relating to the Moor- 
 ish wars have indeed come down to us. It is doubtfully ascribed 
 to the earliest period of Portuguese history. It has no poetical 
 merit whatever, nor any claim to notice beyond its antiquity. The 
 Portuguese fragment — we have only a few stanzas left — is certainly 
 of much earlier date than the Cid ballads, as to which magnificent 
 epic nothing is more certain than that it is the work of a writer 
 who lived long after the events he celebrates. 
 
64 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 activity as existed. The earliest remains we have of 
 the language are fragments of the poets Herminguez 
 and Egaz Moniz, who are generally held to have 
 written in the reign of King Alfonso Henriquez. 
 These verses are, it is true, scarcely recognisable as 
 Portuguese : they are uncouth and rugged to a most 
 singular degree, and yet they are ascribed to two 
 courtiers, who presumably wrote and spoke the lan- 
 guage in its fullest purity. 
 
 During the generations which intervene between 
 this period and the birth of Sa cle Miranda, the great 
 poet who takes the place that Chaucer holds with us, 
 all such Portuguese poetry as existed was thoroughly 
 imbued with the spirit of Provencal verse. The trou- 
 badours and the jongleurs, the composers and the 
 singers of Provencal song, found, as we know, con- 
 genial audiences at the northern Courts of the 
 Peninsula. The Catalan, the Castilian, and the 
 Galician, or Portuguese, were so like their own 
 tongue that these minstrels would be understood 
 almost as well where these languages were current as 
 at Avignon or Toulouse. As the Portuguese gradually 
 extended their kingdom, and thus isolated themselves 
 more and more from their neighbours, as the nation 
 grew in strength and importance, and, perhaps, as the 
 native taste began to rise superior to the monotonous 
 frivolity of Provencal minstrelsy, so the language 
 began to assume the characteristics of modern Portu- 
 guese. Cristovao Falcao, and the more famous 
 Bernardim Ribeyro, are the first native poets who 
 attained any kind of lasting celebrity in Portugal. 
 
THE PORTUGUESE RENAISSANCE. 65 
 
 Both poets wrote in the generation preceding that 
 in which the Sa cle Miranda lived and nourished. The 
 language was now true modern Portuguese ; but while 
 their eclogues and lyrics have some national charac- 
 teristics of earnestness and truth of feeling, the verses 
 of these writers are still redolent of the tedious con- 
 ceits and affectations of Provencal poetry, and yet 
 have little of the flow, melody, and artistic finish of 
 the best troubadour lyrics. 
 
 In noting the changes which, throughout the 
 Peninsula, were transforming the narrow spirit of 
 Provencal verse into the higher and better poetry 
 which prevailed during the sixteenth century, the 
 unquestionably great influence of the Moors must not 
 be overlooked. It has been over hastily concluded 
 by some native chroniclers and historians that the 
 relations between the conquered and the conquerors 
 — who were, during so many centuries, masters of 
 nearly the whole Peninsula — were entirely hostile and 
 antagonistic. The rule of the Saracens was, however, 
 as is now well established, on the whole tolerant ; 
 and an immense Christian population, the Mozarabs, 
 came strongly under their influence, and adopted not 
 only the Arab dress, the Arab language, the domestic 
 habits,the arts and intellectual culture of their masters, 
 but in some cases carried imitation so far as to practise 
 the most characteristic rite of the Moslems. 
 
 It was impossible but that the high literary cul- 
 ture of the Saracens, so intimately brought to bear 
 on a less cultivated people, should have a strong 
 influence on their poetry. It most certainly did have 
 
 F 
 
66 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 its effect ; but, on the other hand, it must be recol- 
 lected that the ultimate deliverers of Peninsular soil 
 from Moorish occupation were men who, in the 
 retreats and fastnesses of the northern parts of their 
 country — from whence they issued for its re-conquest 
 — had been, least of any of their countrymen, subject to 
 Saracenic influences ; and that it was chiefly, as I have 
 already shown, among the camps and in the various 
 Courts of the Portuguese and Spanish conquerors that 
 the national poetry was produced and fostered. 
 
 The Castilians had, in the fifteenth century, 
 while preserving much of the Provencal spirit in 
 their poetry, incorporated with it a certain national 
 strength and gravity ; and their compositions are far in 
 advance of those of their Portuguese contemporaries. 
 Though Portugal began her literary career earlier 
 than Castile, and her poets undoubtedly wrote much 
 more, I have found absolutely nothing in the poetry 
 of the smaller kingdom during the whole of this cen- 
 tury to compare with the beautiful coplas of Jose 
 Manrique, or even the verses of Juan de Mena or 
 the Marquis de Santillana. 
 
 In the change that came over Peninsular litera- 
 ture in the early part of the sixteenth century, Por- 
 tugal took as great a part as even Castile. The final 
 expulsion of the Moors in the reign of Ferdinand and 
 Isabella gave leisure for the cultivation of new forms 
 of poetry ; and the subsequent accession of a German 
 prince to the throne, and the greater intercourse, 
 during the reign of Charles V., between the Peninsula 
 and the various nations of Europe, led, among other 
 
THE PORTUGUESE RENAISSANCE. 67 
 
 reforms and innovations, to the introduction of the 
 more artistic taste and handling of the Italians in 
 literature. Boscan and Garcilaso de la Vega, the 
 chief originators and assertors of the new style, 
 wrote sonnets in the manner of Petrarch and eclogues 
 in that of Sannazaro, in which Italian elegance and 
 Castilian vigour are blended with a success which has 
 never been surpassed. These men were the con- 
 temporaries of the Portuguese Sa de Miranda ; and 
 this great genius, besides being the father of all that 
 was good in the poetry of his native land, influenced 
 and reformed the literature of the Spaniards hardly 
 less than the two Castilian poets I have just named. 
 
 It is generally the first few steps from the rude 
 popular ballad or doggrel satire towards the refine- 
 ments of cultivated or, so to say, literary poetry, that 
 decide the poetic future of a young nation. Then 
 only is the language thoroughly plastic, and it is well 
 for that nation if it be moulded by the hand of a man 
 of genius. Poets later on may have greater skill 
 with the instrument, but it is the first great poet alone 
 who has made it what it is and shaped the very stops 
 which he touches. I think I am right in saying that 
 the transition from barbarism to refinement is always 
 more or less sudden and more or less complete. It 
 was remarkably so in the case of Portugal. 
 
 The poet Miranda seems to have been born at an 
 hour propitious to Portuguese literature. Towards 
 the end of the fifteenth century the Portuguese 
 language had grown into some degree of maturity 
 and copiousness. The fame, power, and wealth of 
 
 v 2 
 
68 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 the nation were at their zenith, and men's desire had 
 been awakened for something beyond the rhymed 
 chronicles and the simple lyrics of their fathers. Sa 
 de Miranda was, by training and native power, the 
 very man to stamp his own genius on the poetry of 
 his country. The son of a country gentleman of 
 good family, he became a student and professor of 
 jurisprudence, and attained to high legal learning. 
 He visited most of the Courts and cities of southern 
 Europe, and, returning to his native country, became 
 a courtier ; but after some trial of this existence he 
 retired into the country, where he passed the re- 
 mainder of his life. 
 
 Almost all that is known of the history of Miranda 
 is contained in an anonymous memoir, prefixed to an 
 edition of his works published in 1614, and which 
 there is reason to believe was written, thirty or forty 
 years after the poet's death, by a nobleman who 
 married Miranda's granddaughter. This quaintly 
 written memoir gives interesting particulars of 
 Miranda's habits and way of life, and affords a curious 
 insight into the life of an educated Portuguese 
 country gentleman of the sixteenth century. 
 
 ' Francisco de Sa de Miranda,' says the memoir, 
 which I translate freely ard slightly abridge, ' was 
 born in Coimbra, in the year of our Lord 1495, the 
 year in which the King, Don Manuel' (that is, 
 Emmanuel, the Fortunate, of Portugal), ' took his seat 
 on the throne. After his first study of the human- 
 ities, in which he acquired distinction, he applied 
 himself to the law, less from inclination than to 
 
THE PORTUGUESE RENAISSANCE. 69 
 
 please King John III., who had then re-established the 
 University ; and at his father's wish he continued this 
 study, and arrived at great learning, took the degree 
 of Doctor of Law, and more than once filled the 
 Professor's chair. Nevertheless, because he knew 
 the danger that the use of this study may occasion 
 to the judgment, no sooner was his father dead than 
 he abandoned the schools and refused the office of 
 Desembargador (Judge of Appeal), remaining only in 
 the University that he might apply himself to the 
 study of philosophy, chiefly that of the Stoics, to 
 which his character inclined ; and because this study 
 caused him to despise the things of this life, he 
 desired to travel through the world, in order that 
 the repose to which he resolved to betake himself 
 thereafter should never be broken in upon by the 
 hearing of new things of which he had had no 
 experience. He therefore went to Italy, after first 
 seeing all the principal cities of Spain, and after 
 visiting at his leisure Borne, Venice, Naples, Milan, 
 and Florence, and the best part of Sicily, he returned 
 to Portugal, and spent some time in the Court of 
 King John III., and there, solely by his personal 
 qualities and by his parts, without any such 
 advantages as some men — often unworthy ones- 
 possess, he made himself such a standing that he 
 became one of the foremost courtiers if not the very 
 first of the day ; and this estimation he was held in by 
 the King as well as by his own companions, and what 
 is more to the purpose, by those worthy men who 
 choose their friends among such as are " more easily 
 
70 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 broken than bent " (to quote the poet's own verse), 
 and who despise the esteem of ordinary men, holding 
 it a direct hurt to them only if they are blamed and 
 set at nought by those who detest vice in general. 
 
 ' However, this good standing of Miranda at Court 
 did not last long. If it had, our poet might in some 
 sort be said to be greater than envy itself, as Quin- 
 tus Curtius said of Alexander ; but envy could not 
 pardon him, which stirred up to his injury a person 
 very powerful at that period, who chose to apply to 
 himself the character of Alexis in Miranda's eclogue ; 
 and the poet, not caring to suffer the effects of this 
 wrath, accepted the office of Master or Bailiff of a 
 Commandery of Knights of the Order of Christ, es- 
 tablished near Ponte de Lima, retired to a country 
 house in the neighbourhood belonging to him, named 
 Tapada, abandoning the Court and the society of his 
 friends and all his hopes of advancement, and here 
 he remained, enjoying in peace the fruit of his 
 studies and travel. Here also he married Donna 
 Brialonja d'Azevedo, daughter of Francisco Machado, 
 Lord of Lousaa de Crasto d'Arega and of the lands 
 lying between the rivers Homem and Cavado ; with 
 which lady he lived many years in great conformity, 
 she nevertheless being of little beauty (exterior beauty) 
 and of so advanced an age, that when he asked her in 
 marriage of her brothers (for her father was dead) they 
 put him off until, they said, he should first have a good 
 sight of the bride ; and when she was brought in by 
 her brothers, he said to her, — "Eeproach me, dear lady, 
 for this, that I have been so long of asking for you." 
 
THE PORTUGUESE RENAISSANCE. 71 
 
 4 It would appear that as Sa de Miranda lived in 
 a way so abstracted from the world lie was quite 
 equal to his scheme of life in this matter, and be sure 
 he did not lack the example of some ancient philoso- 
 pher to guide him. He esteemed above everything 
 the qualities of this lady, which indeed were incom- 
 parable, according to the testimony of men of that 
 place, who even to this day speak of her zeal in the 
 honour of God, in the ease of her husband, in the 
 training up of her children, and in the good and profit- 
 able ordering of her household. Insomuch that her 
 husband loved her so dearly that when she died he 
 lost all joy of his life, and shortly afterwards died 
 too, in grief of mind, which if not worthy of a man 
 who professed the Stoic philosophy, yet testifies how 
 greatly he esteemed and loved her whom he had 
 lost. 
 
 4 Sa de Miranda,' says the biographer, * was a man 
 of middle height, thick-set in make, of a pale but not 
 sallow complexion, with remarkably white hands ; 
 his eyes rather large, of a greyish-blue and with a 
 kindly expression in them, the nose long and aquiline. 
 He was grave in character, of a melancholic humour, 
 but easy and affable in conversation : a man more 
 sparing of laughter than of speech. He was fond of 
 wolf hunting, and likewise of using the knightly 
 exercises of the tilting-yard. He played upon the 
 violin, and though not over rich he had in his service 
 several professors of music' 
 
 Such was the man who, at a time when the general 
 corruption which pervaded Portuguese society was pre- 
 
72 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 paring the country for the great national catastrophe 
 which was soon to overtake it, was at once a patriot 
 and a poet. He used his great gifts for the noblest 
 purposes, to warn and to teach. He warned his 
 countrymen against the bigotry of priests, the grasp- 
 ing dishonesty of statesmen, and their own heedless- 
 ness of the future. His denunciations were too 
 eloquent to be unheard, but they were unheeded. 
 Miranda laid the foundations of a noble national 
 literature — but for him Camoens could not have 
 written his great epic ; yet his greatest praise is that 
 he preserved his good faith among the faithless, and 
 that he had the courage to speak the truth when not 
 to be silent was a danger. . 
 
 In applying, as I have done, the term 'renaiss- 
 ance ' to the revolution which Sa de Miranda was 
 chiefly instrumental in bringing about in Portuguese 
 literature, I wish to guard against the acceptance of 
 that somewhat abused word in any narrow sense. 
 The renaissance which took place was not a simple 
 revival of the purer classic forms of antiquity, but a 
 strengthening and enlarging of the whole scope and 
 purposes of poetry. It was a moral as well as a 
 poetical Aufkldrung^ or enlightenment. Under the 
 new influences, the aims of poetry grew higher, its 
 sympathies wider, its morality purer ; but the actual 
 form in which poetic thought was cast was by no 
 means, at least for the time, improved. Indeed, the 
 verse of the earlier reformers of it will bear no com- 
 parison in fluency and sweetness with the poetry 
 which it displaced. The renaissance was a reaction 
 
THE PORTUGUESE RENAISSANCE. 73 
 
 against the narrowness of the models which had pre- 
 vailed since the beginning of Provencal song, an out- 
 growth of its bonds rather than a continuation of the 
 same modes of thought recast into better form. 
 
 Miranda wrote much in the Castilian tongue. Of 
 his eight eclogues, six, and those the best, are in that 
 language. The Castilian was an instrument ready to 
 his hand, far more polished than the Portuguese ; and 
 Miranda, a man of refined tastes, a scholar, a traveller, 
 and a courtier, may, in spite of his love of country, 
 have a little despised his native tongue as a vehicle 
 for poetic thought. The eclogues, sonnets, and 
 quintilhas, which he wrote in the language of Castile, 
 are ranked as highly by Spaniards as any similar 
 works of Spanish poets. Yet it may almost be 
 doubted if Miranda did well to neglect the Portuguese 
 language, which in some respects is admirably fitted 
 for lyrical expression. In comparison with Spanish, 
 it may be said of Portuguese that, while it lacks some 
 of the sonorous vigour of that magnificent language, 
 it has greatly the advantage over it in modulation, 
 smoothness, and fluency, from the absence of the 
 guttural sounds of the Castilian. Compared with 
 Italian — which neither Portuguese nor any other 
 language can approach in grace and delicacy — the 
 Portuguese is certainly less effeminate in sound, and 
 is also entirely free from those most unpleasing com- 
 binations of two or three consonants which it would 
 seem to be the constant task of Italian poets to weed 
 from their poems. 
 
 Before I proceed to give some specimens of 
 
74 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 Miranda's Portuguese poetry, I would premise that, 
 in so far as style and expression are concerned, they 
 are, with some exceptions, signally inferior to his 
 Spanish writings, upon which his fame chiefly rests. 
 Miranda's Portuguese and his Spanish poetry might, 
 indeed, easily be ascribed to two different writers ; so 
 clear, fluent, and melodious is the one, and so austere, 
 inharmonious, and often obscure is the other. 
 
 Now, it may perhaps be asserted that the qualities 
 of lucidity and harmony are, beyond all others, the 
 very soul of great poetry — that other qualities are 
 subordinate to these — that those subtle, untranslatable 
 harmonies of utterance constitute, when they clothe 
 great ideas, poetry of the highest class ; and if it 
 should fail of attaining a high degree of such harmony, 
 by so much does it stop short of being the highest 
 kind of poetry. The best poetry is, it must be 
 admitted, untranslatable in any true sense, and it 
 may perhaps some day come to be asked how far the 
 valuable time and labour of so many of the ablest men 
 among us are profitably expended upon the great and 
 growing number of rhymed translations of the poets 
 of antiquity. I am inclined to think that something 
 far short of perfect acquaintance with a foreign or 
 dead language will enable a reader to appreciate many 
 of the beauties of its literature. There is even, as I 
 believe, in these word-harmonies of which I have 
 spoken, much which forms a language common to all' 
 those persons, foreigners or not, who are capable of 
 their perception, just as a symphony of Beethoven is 
 as intelligible to an Englishman as to a German. 
 
THE PORTUGUESE RENAISSANCE. 75 
 
 These views have led me to give literal and un- 
 rhymecl translations of the specimens of Portuguese 
 poetry which I am about to lay before the reader- — 
 preserving only such an approximation to the rhythm 
 and metre as could be got without much deviation 
 from literalness, and leaving to the reader the task of 
 gathering, with this slight assistance, the form and 
 spirit of the original from the original itself. 
 
 Miranda's Portuguese writings consist of epistles, 
 sonnets, eclogues, and two comedies. Of these, the 
 epistles are perhaps the most important works. They 
 are addressed, some to the King, some to different 
 friends, and one to the poet Ferreira. These epistles 
 are quite original in style and handling, and are, I 
 think, what the Portuguese themselves chiefly admire 
 in the poet's works. Composed in short-versed stanzas 
 of three, four, or five lines each, their form suits and 
 excuses their direct style and their frequent and abrupt 
 transitions. The epistle addressed to the King is the 
 most characteristic, if not the most elegant. It con- 
 sists of eighty-one stanzas of five lines each ; and is^ 
 therefore, longer than I can afford space to quote in 
 its entirety. Written in easy, flowing verse, the 
 rhyming of so many lines within so short a stanza 
 gives a considerable swing and vigour to the measure 
 used by the poet. The stanza employed is the 
 quintilha of five short lines, of which as a rule the 
 first, third, and last rhyme, as also do the second 
 and fourth. The versification is generally metrical, 
 but here and there it has to be read by accent or 
 cadence, without regard to the number of feet. 
 
76 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 The epistle begins by a somewhat obsequious 
 address to the King, which contrasts with the exceed- 
 ing plain speaking of the remainder. Addressing 
 him as King of many Kings, in allusion to the extended 
 conquests of the Portuguese of that time, he hardly 
 dares to ask for the royal attention, since it must be 
 occupied with affairs of state. 
 
 Que em outras partes da Esphera. 
 Em outros ceos differentes, 
 Que Deus tegora escondera, 
 Cada huma de tantas gentes 
 Vossos despachos espera. 
 
 Since in so many different regions, 
 Under so many other skies, 
 Hidden till now by Providence, 
 Such a multitude of nations 
 Your high commands are waiting for. 
 
 To administer justice, if necessary in the most 
 
 summary manner, is, says the poet, the first duty of a 
 
 king. Then follows a long argument in favour of 
 
 monarchy. The poet is careful to exclude tyrants 
 
 and usurpers, and confines himself to reys ungidos 
 
 — anointed kings — who are to redress the people's 
 
 grievances, succour the poor, and forcibly put down 
 
 the wrong. He goes on to say : — 
 
 As vossas vellas que vao 
 Dando quasi ao mundo volta 
 Raramente encontrarao 
 Gente de algum rey solta. 
 Sem cabe9a, o corpo he vao. 
 
 The royal ships which sail around 
 Almost the circuit of the globe, 
 Will seldom anywhere encounter 
 Society without a king. 
 Without a head, a nation dies. 
 
THE PORTUGUESE RENAISSANCE. 77 
 
 Having established the necessity of some sort of 
 mild paternal despotism, by a series of arguments and 
 illustrations drawn from nature and from history, and 
 of a sort which bear a striking resemblance to the 
 reasoning in Lord Brookes' poetical ' Treatise of 
 Monarchic,' written some fifty years afterwards, he 
 proceeds to the chief object of his epistle — to warn 
 the King and his countrymen against the intrigues of 
 courtiers. The experience of a former courtier is 
 obvious in the force and bitterness with which he 
 inveighs on this topic. 
 
 Yelem-se com tudo os reys 
 Dos rostos falsos, e manhas, 
 Com que lhes fazem das leys 
 Fracas teas das aranhas. 
 
 Let kings be ever on their guard 
 Of false men and of their false wiles, 
 With which their wont is our just laws 
 To sweep aside, like spiders' webs. 
 
 Such men, he says, only value virtue or justice 
 by what it will fetch in the market. 
 
 Quern graga ante el rey alcanga 
 E hi falla o que nao deve 
 (Mai grande de ma privanga) 
 Pegonha na fonte langa, 
 De que toda a terra bebe. 
 
 The men who win the royal favour 
 By flattery and unworthy arts 
 (111 consequence of friendship base) 
 Throw poison in the fountain head, 
 Envenom what the people drink. 
 
78 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 Then comes a stanza which has been quoted 
 
 perhaps as often as any passage in Portuguese 
 
 poetry : — 
 
 Homem d'um so parecer, 
 D'um so rosto, d'unia so fe, 
 D 'antes quebrar que torcer, 
 Elle tudo pode ser, 
 Mas de Corte homem nao he. 
 
 The man of single countenance, 
 Of frank address and simple faith, 
 Readier to be broke than bended, 
 May be anything he chooses, 
 But the Court he should eschew. 
 
 These lines and those in the succeeding stanza 
 have been applied, and probably with reason, to the 
 character of Miranda himself: — 
 
 Gracejar ouco de ca 
 De quern vae inteiro, e sao, 
 Nem se contrafaz mais la, 
 ' Como este vem aldeao, 
 Que cortezao tornara ! ' 
 
 Estas publicas santidades, 
 Estes rostos transport-ados, 
 Nao em ermos, mas cidades. 
 Para Deos sao vaydades, 
 Para nos vao rebugados. 
 
 I seem to hear the sneering speech 
 At one who will not counterfeit, 
 But shows himself as God has made, 
 ' Here is a rustic speech and manner, 
 See what a courtier he will make ! ' 
 
 This sanctity assumed in public, 
 This sadness of feigned piety, 
 Is found in Courts, not hermitages. 
 God can assess such counterfeits ; 
 We must respect the pious mask. 
 
THE PORTUGUESE RENAISSANCE. 79 
 
 He wishes to put the King on his guard against 
 these intriguers, their cunning, and their greed. 
 
 Por minas trazem suas azes, 
 Encubertos sens assanhos, 
 Falsas guerras, falsas pazes, 
 De fora sao mansos anhos, 
 De dentro, lobos robazes. 
 
 Covered ways hide their attacks, 
 Hid is their malice and their rage. 
 False enemies and falser friends, 
 Lambs are they in outward bearing, 
 Ravening wolves they are within. 
 
 He shows how difficult the duplicity of such 
 villains makes it to trace malicious actions to their 
 actual perpetrators. 
 
 He cites the law of trial by battle, prevailing 
 among the Lombards, as a wholesome resource ; and 
 recounts the history of the struggle between the 
 great King Denis of Portugal and his rebellious son, 
 in proof of the necessity of strong measures in such 
 times as those in which he was writing, which he 
 describes as — 
 
 N'este tempo, quern mal cae 
 Mai jaz, e dizem que a luz 
 Por tempo a verdade sae ! 
 Entretanto poem na cruz 
 justo ; o ladrao se vae. 
 
 A time when, if a man once falls, 
 He falls for good ; and yet they say 
 That truth in time shall see the light ! 
 But in our day they crucify 
 The good man, while the thief escapes. 
 
80 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 A patriotic Portuguese of those times (indeed, of 
 any times) must ever have had before his eyes the 
 peril to his country of ambitious designs on the part 
 of Spain. The bloody wars with that country, of the 
 earlier years of the monarchy, had ended long enough 
 before to incline the Portuguese to forget the danger 
 of neighbourhood to so powerful a kingdom. The 
 growing conformity in manners, and the identity of 
 religion between the two peoples, might further 
 serve to lull any latent suspicion of aggressive 
 designs on the part of Spain. At this time Spanish 
 nobles frequented the Court of Portugal, and probably 
 shared more of the royal favour than was generally 
 thought desirable. The bold denunciation of Spain 
 by the poet must have come with peculiar force from 
 a man who had travelled much, and who had enjoyed 
 opportunities of closely observing the workings of his 
 own, as well as of foreign governments. The following 
 is sufficiently outspoken of a nation then ruled over by 
 so warlike and aggressive a prince as Charles V. : — 
 
 Geralmente he presumptuosa 
 Espanha, e d'isso se preza, 
 Gente ousada e bellicosa 
 Culpaona de cubiyosa. 
 Tudo sabe vossa Alteza. 
 
 Spain is the land of arrogance, 
 
 Whose sons are proud, and vaunt their pride. 
 
 A daring nation, prone to war, 
 
 And blamed for their cupidity. 
 
 Your Majesty best knows their fame. 
 
 He accuses them of a grasping covetousness which 
 
THE PORTUGUESE RENAISSANCE. 81 
 
 leads them to live at the expense of weaker men, and 
 dos snores alheos, by others' toil. 
 
 Que eu vejo nos povoados 
 Muitos dos salteadores, 
 Com nome, e rosto d'honrados. 
 Vao quentes, vao forrados 
 De pelles de lavradores ! 
 
 How many in our towns I see 
 Of these brigands bear about 
 The name and look of honest men. 
 Brigands ! who go warmly clad 
 In the skins of simple men ! 
 
 After some stanzas directed against profligate and 
 mercenary priests, the poet bids the King remember 
 the vital necessity of perfect impartiality in one who, 
 like himself, is, but for the adjustments of the consti- 
 tution, almost a despot ; and the more so, that he rests 
 his poAver on the love and the loyalty of his subjects, 
 unlike the King of France, who has his Scotch body- 
 guard, or the Pope, who trusts to Swiss defenders. 
 
 Aqui nam vemos soldados, 
 Aqui nam soa atambor. 
 Outros reys os seus estados 
 Guardao de armas rodeados, 
 Yos rodeado de amor. 
 
 Here we have no mercenaries, 
 
 No loyalty by sound of drum. 
 
 Other kings may guard their kingdoms, 
 
 With sword and spear surround the throne ; 
 
 Your sole defence, your people's love. 
 
 He brings the epistle to a conclusion by remind- 
 ing the King of his great ancestor, who expressed his 
 ideas of government by the noble motto, Polla ley e 
 polla grey — ' By law and by my people's will.' 
 
82 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 Such compositions as this, in spite of their 
 wonderful vigour of expression and general elo- 
 quence, may seem dull enough to us of a modern 
 age ; and it is, indeed, difficult to bring ourselves, at 
 the present day, to appreciate their importance and 
 their influence on the bygone generations for whom 
 they were written. Popular interest in, and sympathy 
 with, current political movements, have with ourselves 
 for so long a time found such early and constant ex- 
 pression in journals, in reviews, and in the multiplied 
 reports of all kinds of public speeches and debates, that 
 we do not at present require such isolated utterances 
 as this. But when there was no newspaper to relate, 
 to report, or to criticise ; when news came tardily and 
 scantily; when the most eloquent address must have 
 died in the memory of its few hearers almost as soon 
 as the speaker's voice was silent, the effect of such 
 written eloquence as this of Miranda's must have been 
 extraordinarily great. 
 
 To Miranda's sonnets I am inclined to attach con- 
 siderable importance. True it is that they are formed 
 on the model left by Petrarch, that they signally lack 
 many of the merits of the Italian sonneteer, and that 
 they too frequently reflect the fine-drawn, scholastic 
 subtlety with which it was then the fashion for a poet 
 to address his friend, his mistress, or his patron. Yet, 
 notwithstanding this, and obscure and tortuous as is 
 the style of most of them, they bear upon them that 
 peculiar exquisiteness of thought and expression for 
 which we have no exact name, but which the Greeks 
 would have called irony. The melancholy of unre- 
 
THE PORTUGUESE RENAISSANCE. 83 
 
 quited love is the theme of the greater number of 
 Miranda's sonnets ; yet the cruelty of the ladies of 
 those days is, perhaps, hardly established by the fact 
 that they were not won by pleadings which have in 
 them a great deal more of the pedantic affectation 
 of a schoolman than the genuine ardour of a lover, 
 
 I select for quotation the following two from 
 among Miranda's Portuguese sonnets, as much from 
 their comparative simplicity as their excellence, and 
 from the difficulty of rendering into intelligible 
 English the subtle turns of thought in the more 
 characteristic sonnets. I do not profess to translate 
 literally. 
 
 O sol he grande, caem com a calma as aves, 
 Do tempo em tal sazao que soe ser fria : 
 Esta agua que d'alto cae accordarmehia 
 Do sono nao mas de cuidados graves. 
 O cousas todas vas, todas mudaveis, 
 Qual lie o coracao que em vos confia ? 
 Passando hum dia vae, passa outro dia, 
 Incertos todos mais que ao vento as naves. 
 Eu vi yk por aqui sombras e flores,, 
 Yi aguas e vi fontes, vi verdura, 
 As aves vi cantar todas d'amores : 
 Mudo e seco he ja tudo e de mistura 
 Tambem fazendomi eu fuy d'outras cores 
 E tudo o mais renova, isto he sem cura, 
 
 The sun beats fiercely, and the panting birds, 
 Exhausted with unwonted heat, fall down ; 
 Rain from the parched skies above would break 
 Not on my sleep, but on my heavy cares. 
 O vanity of earthly things which change, 
 Where is the soul who dares to trust to you % 
 One day the thing we love is here, the next 
 'Tis gone, like wind leaving the idle sail. 
 
 g 2 
 
84 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 Here, in this spot, lately was pleasant shade, 
 Flowers springing through green turf, the cooling gush 
 Of waters and the cheerful song of birds : 
 Now all is changed, withered and dry and bare. 
 Most changed of all am I, for while all this 
 Renewal has, I must endure, thus changed. 
 
 A morte de sua mulher. 
 
 Aquelle espirito ja tambem pagado 
 Como elle merecia, claro e puro 
 Deixou de boa vontade o valle escuro 
 De tudo o que ca vio como anojado. 
 Aquelle sprito que do mar irado 
 D'esta vida mortal posto em seguro 
 Da gloria que la tern de herdade e juro, 
 Ca nos deixou o caminho abalisado, 
 Alma aqui vinda nesta nossa idade 
 De ferro, que tornaste a antiga d'ouro. 
 Em quanto ca regeste e humanidade 
 Em chegando ajuntaste tal thesouro 
 Que para sempre dura, ah vaydade ! 
 Ricas areas d'este Tejo e Douro. 
 
 The death of his wife. 
 
 Her spirit now has found its true reward, 
 That spirit bright and pure, impatient 
 To leave the shadowy vale and reach its home — 
 Its home congenial in the realms above. 
 
 And now, at last arrived in harbour safe, 
 
 Passing the restless, stormy sea of life, 
 
 Has marked the course on which we, too, should sail. 
 
 Departed soul ! Thy sweetest influence 
 
 Did change this age of ours — an age of iron — 
 
 To one of gold, and in our memories leave 
 
 A treasure to all time. Alas ! how drear, 
 
 Tagus ! thy sands, and golden Douro 's banks. 
 
 The Portuguese eclogues of Miranda are but two 
 
THE PORTUGUESE RENAISSANCE. 85 
 
 in number, while of his Spanish pastorals there are 
 four, every one of which is incomparably superior in 
 all the characteristic excellences of this kind of poetry 
 to those written in Portuguese. 
 
 Of all the writings of Miranda, his eclogues will, 
 probably, seem the least interesting to a modern 
 reader. The interest which such poems once aroused 
 must have been, to a great extent, owing to their 
 more or less successful reproduction of classical 
 models. It seems, indeed, extraordinary enough that 
 such artificial productions could have afforded 
 pleasure even in the lack of other literature. They 
 have neither incident, nor dramatic dialogue, nor 
 plot. The interminable conversations between shep- 
 herds and shepherdesses have little of the true flavour 
 of pastoral life about them, and either fatigue us by 
 their platitude or offend us by their affectation. The 
 allusions to the Court life and intrigues of the day 
 are, no doubt, more frequent than we can now 
 detect, and this source of interest is, therefore, want- 
 ing for modern readers. The model followed by 
 Portuguese bucolic writers is rather the artificial 
 and courtly pastoral of Virgil than the more natural 
 one of Theocritus ; but so far as a foreigner may 
 presume to judge, the renaissance eclogue, whether 
 it be Portuguese, Spanish, or Italian, is signally want- 
 ing in the Virgilian ease and beauty of versification. 
 The bucolic verse of Miranda, however, if its general 
 tenor do not rise much above the level of the pastoral 
 writing of his age, possesses a vast superiority to it in 
 the poet's descriptions and love of natural scenes and 
 
86 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 rustic life. The mountains, the streams, the fields, 
 and, above all, the animals, are introduced with a 
 singular naturalness and obvious knowledge of 
 country ways which are very delightful ; and it is in 
 this chiefly, I suspect, that reside such vitality and 
 value as eclogue writing possesses ; not in the tedious 
 commonplaces about peace and virtue put in the 
 mouths of impossible shepherds, nor in frigid second- 
 hand classicisms, but in the pleasant associations 
 which such poems call up of the fresh forest breeze, 
 the cool fountains, green turf and leafage, and the 
 peaceful country teams and flocks. 
 
 To an ordinary educated Englishman, whose 
 literature is less rich in, and whose taste is less 
 inclined to the artificial pastoral poem of the 
 classical types than those of almost any other Euro- 
 pean nation, the eclogue may well seem to be the 
 most dreary of all forms of human composition. 
 Whether it be owing to the early bent of the Portu- 
 guese towards this form of literature, or that it is 
 congenial to the national taste, it has happened that 
 Portuguese poetry has developed itself strongly in the 
 direction of the pastoral idyl. Far as the Spaniards 
 have carried excellence in this species of writing, 
 they are inferior to the Portuguese, who deserve to 
 rank with the Italians. Many circumstances probably 
 have concurred to foster this love of pastoral poetry 
 in Portugal, and chief among them the extreme 
 beauty of its country scenery, the serenity of its cli- 
 mate, the temperament of its people, the national 
 love of home and homely scenes, and, perhaps as 
 
THE PORTUGUESE RENAISSANCE. 87 
 
 much as anything, the variety and richness of the 
 language and its great resemblance to the classic 
 tongue in which some of the best models of bucolic 
 poetry are to be found. The farm life of Portugal 
 is also infinitely more susceptible of poetic treatment 
 than that of northern countries, whose soil and cli- 
 mate are less kindly, and whose agriculture is more 
 advanced. 
 
 The world has come to regard, and not altogether 
 without reason, the pastoral existence as depicted by 
 Virgil and Theocritus as the most ideal form of rustic 
 life ; and this life is, in truth, not very different from 
 that followed by husbandmen in Portugal at the pre- 
 sent day. It is, indeed, almost inconceivable that 
 fourteen centuries should have done so little to 
 modify, among an ingenious people, the lessons 
 taught them by their first masters in agriculture. 
 The farm husbandry practised in Portugal to this 
 day is virtually that which the Eoman colonists left 
 in the country, and such as is described in the rules 
 and precepts of Columella. The Portuguese plough- 
 man still works his fields with a plough which is 
 identical in shape with the instrument of which Yirgil 
 has left a precise description in his eclogues. The 
 farmer carries his produce in exactly such an ox-cart 
 as we find drawn on Eoman bas-reliefs and vases. 
 The Portuguese shepherd in the mountains still lives 
 among his flock by day, and lies down to sleep in 
 their midst at night. The pastoral pipe of antiquity 
 has been replaced by the guitar, but the shepherds 
 still challenge each other to compete in alternate ex- 
 
88 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 tempore verse ao desafio, in rivalry one with the 
 other. 
 
 A native of Portugal enjoys, in consequence of 
 his familiarity with the actual practice of the old 
 classic husbandry, a signal advantage over natives of 
 northern countries, in reading the pastorals of the 
 ancient authors. Many allusions and illustrations 
 will seem clear and natural to the one, which to the 
 other are strained and obscure. The amcebcean song 
 of shepherds and ploughboys — the very groundwork 
 of the bucolic poem— and which a Portuguese hears 
 daily on every hill-side, is to a foreigner at first sound 
 an almost absurd stretch of conventionality. To give 
 a particular instance of such necessary familiarity, 
 many an English schoolboy has no doubt been puzzled 
 to render the full meaning of Virgil's line, ' Aspice^ 
 aratra jugo referunt suspensa juvenci ; ' which the 
 dullest Portuguese lad can translate at once, in the 
 secondary or poetical sense, to mean that it was 
 nightfall., when the ploughmen sling the plough be- 
 tween the oxen and carry it home. Such instances 
 could easily be multiplied. 
 
 I have not space to quote at any length from 
 Miranda's eclogues, and short extracts would neither 
 serve to illustrate my opinions nor enable the reader 
 to form any of his own. 
 
 Miranda's remaining works are his two comedies. 
 Of these it may at once be said that, while they are 
 excellent imitations of, or rather adaptations from, the 
 Eoman comic drama, they show clearly enough that 
 Miranda was not eminently possessed of a strong, 
 
THE PORTUGUESE RENAISSANCE. 89 
 
 original dramatic genius. Yet, short of this praise, 
 they are admirable productions. The range of the 
 poet's powers was so great that it easily compre- 
 hended what was not exactly in the direct line of his 
 genius. His plays were probably tasks, rather than 
 labours of love ; but, as literary efforts, they are full of 
 evidences of an accomplished, many-sided mind, and 
 show as wide an acquaintance with men as with 
 books. 
 
 The dialogue of both comedies is spirited, con- 
 cise, not devoid of finesse, and, above all, natural and 
 racy of common colloquial sayings and proverbs ; 
 seldom witty, never overwrought in the direction of 
 farce, but often charged with a fine, extravagant 
 humour, which has more resemblance to the learned 
 pleasantry of Jonson than anything to be found in 
 the works of other Peninsular dramatists, though 
 Miranda falls far short of the dignity and erudition of 
 the English playwright. 
 
 In the comedies of Miranda the curtain is raised 
 upon a purely conventional life. It is a stage where- 
 on appear nearly all the established characters of the 
 old Eoman comic drama : the boastful soldier, the 
 edacious parasite, the scheming and faithful servant, 
 the tyrannical father, and the windy and purposeless 
 lover. The plot, the incidents, and the action, all 
 run along the ancient classical groove, It is the 
 drama of ancient Rome revived with wonderful skill, 
 but with as little as possible of the modern spirit. It 
 is a renaissance drama, entirely lacking the infusion 
 of the deeper purpose and imaginative wealth of 
 
90 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 modern times, which have given force and vitality to 
 the so-called renaissance movement in painting and 
 the sister arts. Such a form of drama, capable of 
 affording mere amusement as it was in its own day, 
 was obviously neither earnest enough, nor varied 
 enough, nor true enough, to reach the sympathies of 
 audiences of a later age, with enlarged interests, a 
 more trained morality, and a stricter social and civil 
 polity. This resuscitation of the purely classic 
 comic drama in modern times was destined to last 
 but a short time. Men were born, even in Miranda's 
 lifetime, who were to create the splendid Spanish 
 comic drama of the seventeenth century, the truest 
 expression of the social life of the age and country of 
 its birth ; and when that drama arose, the old classic 
 style disappeared at once and for ever. 
 
 Quotations from either of the poet's plays would 
 serve little useful purpose. The comedies themselves 
 are, it must be admitted, rather dull reading ; and 
 any true perception of their excellences is only to be 
 got by a comparison with similar imitations of the 
 comedies of Plautus and Terence, and by clothing the 
 bare ideas of the author with the speech and gesture 
 of the actor. Such « reading between the lines ' is 
 especially necessary in the conventionally framed 
 plays of Miranda, abounding as they do in passages 
 which only the manner and skill of a good actor could 
 make endurable, and, above all, in soliloquies of -a 
 length which might seem intolerable to the mere 
 reader, if he did not remember that such monologues 
 afford extraordinary scope for either tragic or comic 
 
THE PORTUGUESE RENAISSANCE. 91 
 
 power, and that some of the best acting French and 
 Spanish plays extant are full of them. 
 
 The influence of Miranda over his contemporaries 
 was not confined to his writings. A man of easy and 
 accessible conversation, who had seen much of the 
 world as an observer, rather than as an actor in it ; a 
 professor at a university which was the centre of the 
 intellectual activity of the kingdom ; the most famous 
 author in Portugal, and amongst the foremost poets 
 of the neighbouring nation ; he became the leader, 
 and, indeed, the oracle of his contemporaries. He 
 had rescued the national literature almost from bar- 
 barism. He had discerned, or, rather, created wealth 
 and beauty of expression in a language the most 
 neglected and despised of all the romance tongues of 
 southern and eastern Europe, He was reverenced 
 and he was imitated by a host of men, some of whom 
 rose at once into prominence. 
 
 Of his immediate contemporaries, far the most 
 eminent was Antonio Ferreira, a poet who, himself 
 the friend and imitator of Miranda, has left his mark 
 on the poetic literature of his country almost as 
 plainly as his master. 
 
 Ferreira's style is more classical, more correct, 
 more polished, and, to a foreigner, infinitely more easy 
 and intelligible than that of Miranda. Though Ferre- 
 ira was but a generation the younger, more than a 
 century separates their styles : that of the one, crabbed 
 and antiquated ; that of the other, as near to modern 
 Portuguese as the English of Queen Anne's reign is 
 to the English written by Wordsworth or Tennyson. 
 
92 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 Of Ferreira's life we know little but that it was 
 respectable and uneventful. Born in 1528, lie was 
 thirty- three years younger than Miranda, and, like 
 him, he studied law, and became a professor in the 
 University of Coimbra. Before he had attained his 
 twenty-ninth year he had written eclogues, sonnets, 
 epistles, and a comedy. From Coimbra he migrated 
 to the Court of King John III., where he was well 
 received. He obtained a high judicial appointment 
 at Lisbon, and shortly afterwards he died of the plague 
 at the untimely age of forty-one, in the midst of fame 
 and growing honours. 
 
 The great distinction between the two poets re- 
 sides in this, that while Miranda was half-hearted 
 in the use of his native language, and wrote better 
 and more freely in a more cultivated foreign tongue, 
 Ferreira — vestigia Groeca ausus deserere — resolved 
 from the first to write no single line except in Portu- 
 guese. 
 
 He did not court any fame that was not won in 
 the Portuguese field of literature, or that was bestowed 
 by other than Portuguese voices. Prefixed to the first 
 collection of his works is a sonnet in which he says 
 that all the renown he desires is that of being thought 
 a patriotic Portuguese, who loved his native land and 
 his own people :— 
 
 Eu desta gloria so fico contente, 
 
 <^ue a minha terra amei, e a minha gente. 
 
 This emphatic and amiable patriotism has particu- 
 larly endeared the memory, and probably not a little 
 
THE PORTUGUESE RENAISSANCE. 93 
 
 enhanced the influence, of Ferreira with his fellow- 
 countrymen, among whom love of country has always 
 possessed the intensity of a passion. 
 
 Ferreira, like Miranda, wrote epistles, but their 
 elegant classicism has nothing in common with the 
 forcible manner of Miranda. They are grave and 
 didactic in their style, the utterances of a scholar 
 who had always shunned the business of the world, 
 rather than of a man who, like Miranda, had lived in 
 it and knew it ; of a man more taken up with the 
 elegances of literature than interested in the schemes 
 and passions of his fellow -men. The epistles and the 
 odes of Ferreira are greatly praised and appreciated 
 by his countrymen, and have, I believe, more than all 
 his other writings, earned for him the title of the 
 Portuguese Horace. Both in his odes and in his 
 epistles he is a palpable and avowed imitator of 
 Horace, and it is precisely this departure from 
 originality which makes these productions of compara- 
 tively little interest to a foreign student of the 
 language ; but their influence, on this very account, 
 upon the literature of his country was great. Ferreira's 
 example has unquestionably contributed to the correc- 
 tion in Portuguese poetic diction of a certain bombas- 
 tic fullness and Oriental exaggeration, which were 
 characteristics of Peninsular national literature in his 
 own day, and have not even yet entirely disappeared. 
 Assuming that our Northern taste is correct in the 
 matter, he must, by an Englishman, a German, or a 
 Frenchman, be held to have been the greatest reformer 
 and improver of the taste of his countrymen. 
 
94 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 It may of course be asked, Is our taste in such 
 matters supremely good ? and is it not perhaps as 
 much what it is from the poverty of our imagination as 
 from the soundness of our judgment ? Whether it be 
 good or bad, literary taste in Portugal ranges itself on 
 the French and English side in the controversy, and 
 not with the Spaniards. The Portuguese began to be 
 6 regular ' and ' correct,' before even the French did, 
 and since Ferreira wrote there has never been such a 
 thing possible as a Portuguese Calderon, Eojas, or 
 Lope da Vega, and a Portuguese Cervantes has never 
 been possible either before or since the time of Ferreira. 
 If Shakespeare had written in Portuguese, many of 
 his lines would have shocked Portuguese audiences, 
 and Marlowe's ' mighty line ' and ' fine madness ' would 
 have been an utter abomination to any Portuguese of 
 taste. 
 
 I wish to make a special point of this distinction 
 between the two literatures. That extravagance and 
 wild incongruity of poetic diction which our Elizabe- 
 thans caught from the Spaniards, and in which con- 
 temporary Englishmen delighted, that quality in lite- 
 rature, which gave pleasure to such critics as Lamb 
 and Hazlitt, has never been countenanced by the 
 Portuguese : it has never ceased to find favour in 
 Spain. This it is which differentiates the two peoples 
 as well as their literatures. 
 
 Climas passe, mude constellaciones 
 Golfos innavegables navegando. 
 
 This not very remarkable couplet — the first that 
 comes to my memory as likely to serve — will illustrate 
 
THE PORTUGUESE RENAISSANCE. 95 
 
 as well as any other passage a certain vital difference 
 between the Spanish and Portuguese notions of poetry. 
 The lines come from the ' Araucana ' of the Spanish 
 poet Alonzo de Ercila y Zuniga, an epic of great 
 length, in which Voltaire, who, I would undertake to 
 say, never read it, saw an Iliad, and Sismondi, who 
 probably did get through the poem, not at all more 
 wisely, a newspaper in rhyme. 
 
 Plenty of verses such as these may be found in 
 the ' Araucana,' and many more as good or better are 
 dispersed through Spanish poetry. I will defy any 
 one to match them in Portuguese. There is plenty 
 of sound reasonableness in Spain, and in the poetry 
 of Spain, but Spaniards like sometimes to get out of 
 the groove of reasonableness and sound logic, and 
 they have often the art of doing it without any sort 
 of foolishness. The Portuguese have too much of 
 that moderation of judgment which common-place 
 people like to ascribe to themselves and to call com- 
 mon sense, to do anything of the kind. To be sure 
 they like sometimes to 4 write fine,' but when they do, 
 it is in the penny journal style — stilted stuff There is 
 none of the fine Spanish flavour in the performance. 
 The Spaniard is bombastic enough sometimes, but 
 there is often a magnificence in his very bombast, a 
 splendid extravagance of humour or of rhetoric. 
 
 Even in this rather poor couplet which I have 
 quoted, and quoted because it has no unusual force, 
 there is a certain largeness of conception of a kind 
 which no Portuguese would rise to. Climas passe — 
 I not only changed climates in my voyagings, I passed 
 
96 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 them on my road as a wayfarer might milestones. 
 Mude con c <tellaciones. What a grand astronomical cli- 
 max ! Nothing bnt downright hyperbole can take after 
 that, and we get it in golfos innavegables navegando ! 
 Logic toils after such a poet in vain. The seas were 
 not navigable, you say — then pray, how came you 
 to sail over them ? Of course in the answer to be 
 given to such a query lies the whole gist, point, savour, 
 and excellence of much Spanish writing, with the 
 pomp and prodigality of which let no critic too sternly 
 quarrel until he have learned how the members of 
 this syllogism are to be reconciled. 
 
 Ferreira's eclogues do not conspicuously rise 
 above the standard of the pastoral writing of his day. 
 They lack the stamp of reality which Miranda has 
 left impressed on his pastoral writings, but in elegance 
 and grace of diction Ferreira attains a high degree of 
 excellence. Many passages of exquisite beauty may 
 be found throughout these productions, but it must 
 be admitted that as literary compositions they are 
 seldom anything but tedious. The amazingly rapid 
 progress of the language in the direction of grace and 
 smoothness may be instanced in the following passage 
 from the first eclogue ; — 
 
 Esta f'onte ouvio hoje aqui meu pranto : 
 E como se o sentisse, parecia 
 Qu'ajudava entoar tarn triste canto. 
 Hora fazia pausa, hora coma 
 Com murmurio hora grave, e hora agudo, 
 Disseras qu'algum sprito ali avia. 
 
 This fountain heard me, in my verse, complain, 
 And, as if sentient too, in unison 
 
THE PORTUGUESE RENAISSANCE. 97 
 
 Joined with its harmonies in my refrain ; 
 
 Now it did pause, and now again run on 
 
 With murmurs hoarse at times, now shriller grown, 
 
 As if some spirit there did make its moan. 
 
 Passing over, from lack of space to quote them, 
 the numerous sonnets of Ferreira — many of them 
 masterpieces of this refined and difficult kind of com- 
 position — and the comedies of Bristo and Cioso, in 
 which the poet would seem to have feared to move 
 beyond the narrow classic groove in which his prede- 
 cessor had written his comic dramas, I propose to 
 devote the space at my command to an examination 
 of Ferreira's tragedy of Castro — the best and indeed 
 almost the only high-class tragedy in the Portuguese 
 language, and, in my opinion, by far the greatest 
 work of its author. 
 
 The wonderful history of Inez de Castro, the 
 Spanish mistress, and perhaps, ultimately, the wedded 
 wife of Prince Pedro, son of Affonso IV. of Portu- 
 gal, is too deeply engraved on the memory of all 
 Portuguese to permit of a dramatist's adding to or 
 modifying the story. 
 
 The jealousy excited among the courtiers by the 
 growing influence of Inez and her friends with the 
 heir to the throne, had induced them to procure 
 the King's consent to her assassination ; and King 
 Affonso, counting upon a compliant temper, and 
 a long habit of obedience in the Prince, his son, 
 ordered her death. She was foully murdered in the 
 Convent of Santa Clara, at Coimbra, in the absence 
 of her lover. 
 
 The Prince at once took up arms against his 
 
 H 
 
98 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 father : he ravaged the rich province of the Minho ; 
 he laid siege to Oporto, the second city of the empire. 
 Upon his father's death, two years afterwards, he 
 revenged himself upon those who had compassed the 
 murder of the Lady Inez : he is said to have looked 
 on while the hearts of the actual murderers were 
 torn from their living bodies. His vengeance 
 procured him the title of ' The Cruel.' He declared 
 himself to have been formally married to Inez de 
 Castro. He caused her body to be disinterred, to 
 be clad in royal robes, a crown to be placed upon 
 her head, and homage to be done to her as to a 
 queen. Her bier was carried at night to the mauso- 
 leum which he had prepared for her among the 
 kings and queens of Portugal, in the great Cistercian 
 Abbey of Alcobaca. The funeral train travelled 
 along a road thronged with spectators, each of whom 
 held aloft a torch ; so that, in the words of an old 
 chronicler, the body of Inez passed along an avenue 
 ' lined as with all the stars of heaven.' 
 
 Such is the impressive story with which the poet 
 had to deal. He might have made his drama more 
 picturesque by introducing the whole of the episodes, 
 but he chose to regard the dramatic unities so far as 
 to end the action with the death of Inez, and its effect 
 upon the Infante. The civil war, the solemn declara- 
 tion of Inez's title, and the strange scene of her royal 
 and midnight obsequies, are not employed by Ferreira. 
 
 The play opens with an address, by Inez de 
 Castro, to a chorus or band of Coimbra maidens. 
 She bids them rejoice with her in her good fortune ; 
 
THE PORTUGUESE RENAISSANCE. 99 
 
 and then, in a dialogue with her attendant, she 
 explains the circumstances of her happiness. The 
 Greek form in which Ferreira chose to cast his 
 tragedy is apparent at the outset. The concise, epi- 
 grammatic, sententious utterances of the speakers, in 
 single verses, read almost like a translation from one 
 of the tragedies of Euripides. 
 
 Ama. Novos extremos vejo. 
 Nas palavras prazer, agoa nos olhos. 
 Quern te faz juntamente leda, e triste 1 
 Inez. Triste nao pode estar, quern ves alegre. 
 Ama. Mistura as vezes a fortuna tudo. 
 Inez. Riso, prazer, brandura n'alma tenho. 
 Ama. Lagrimas sinaes sao da ma fortuna. 
 Inez. Tambem da boa fortuna companbeiras. 
 Ama. A dor sao naturaes. 
 Inez. E ao prazer doces. 
 
 Ama. Que forga de prazer t'as traz aos olhos ? 
 Inez. Vejo meu bem seguro, que receava. 
 
 Attendant. Two opposites in thee I see, 
 
 Joy in thy speech, and in thine eyes are tears. 
 
 What makes thee thus at once both sad and gay % 
 
 Inez. Sad I am not — you see that I am glad. 
 
 Att. Eortune, alas ! can dash our cup of joy. 
 
 Inez. Yet in my soul is nought but gaiety. 
 
 Att. Of evil fortune tears give surest sign. 
 
 Inez. Companions too, sometimes, of happiness. 
 
 Att. To grief more kin. 
 
 Inez. And yet in gladness sweet. 
 
 Att. "What great delight is it that makes thee weep % 
 
 Inez. Good fortune safe, which I had feared unsafe. 
 
 Inez then proceeds to recount how Prince Pedro 
 had fallen in love with her ; how, for state reasons, 
 he had been compelled to marry Constanza, the 
 daughter of the Spanish Duke of Yillena ; how the 
 Princess had brought over Inez in her train ; how, 
 
 H 2 
 
100 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 upon the death of his wife, the Prince had now 
 secretly married Inez herself. 
 
 There is usually no part of a play more trying to 
 the attention, either of audience or reader, than that 
 which contains such information as is necessary to 
 the understanding of the plot, and which, by a 
 dramatic device, clumsy at the best, one of the 
 characters has to impart to another, who may well 
 enough be supposed to know it all before. Ferreira 
 has, with much art, relieved the tediousness and awk- 
 wardness of such a narration by making Inez repre- 
 sent dramatically, in a passage of the greatest beauty, 
 the conversation which had passed between herself 
 and the Prince, when she had foreseen the perils which 
 his alliance with her would bring upon them both. 
 6 My Lord, 1 says Inez, thus recalling her words : — 
 
 Soam me as crueis vozas (Teste povo, 
 Vejo del rey a for^a, e imperio grave 
 Armado contra mini, contra a constancia, 
 Que em meu amor tegora tens mostrado. 
 Nao receo, senhor, que a fe tarn firme 
 Queiras quebrar a quern tua alma deste ; 
 Mas receo a fortuna, que mais possa 
 Com seu furor, que tu com teu amor brando. 
 
 The cruel voices of the nation 
 Sound in my ears. I see your father's power 
 Armed against me — against the constant faith 
 With which you hold to my true love for you. 
 It is not that I fear that you should break 
 Your plighted troth to her who has your heart ; 
 But fate I fear — fate which can compass more, 
 Through wrath and hate, than you with love prevent. 
 
 And yet, she gees on to say, if the fates should 
 prove too powerful, she would count it kinder of him 
 
THE PORTUGUESE RENAISSANCE. 101 
 
 to kill lier with liis own hand, than to force her to 
 root out her love from her heart. He assures her 
 that nothing will change his resolve to marry her. 
 Still narrating, Inez thus reproduces his words : — 
 
 Nao podera fortuna, nao os homems 
 Nao estrellas, nao fados, nao planetas 
 Apartar-me de ti por arte, ou forga. 
 Nesta tua mao te ponho firme, e fixa 
 Minh'alma ; por Iffante te nomeo, 
 Do meu amor senhora, e do alto estado, 
 Que me espera, e ten nome me faz doce ! 
 
 For neither fortune, nor the power of men, 
 The starry influence, nor the fates, shall serve 
 By art or force, to tear thee from my arms. 
 Here in thy hand I place my heart, and I 
 Do name thee wife, princess, queen of my love — 
 Queen of the high estate which waits me, which 
 Only thy love makes sweet ! 
 
 I think that no one will deny that these passages 
 have the true dramatic ring. Ferreira seems to me 
 to be speaking, in Castro, with the natural voice of 
 human passion. There is none of. the over-elabora- 
 tion, the over-thoughtfulness, and the over-subtlety 
 with which so many good poets have spoilt their 
 dramas for the stage. Such a play as Castro can 
 require nothing but good actors to stir an audience, 
 and one is not surprised to learn that it has achieved 
 great stage success in its own language and in several 
 literal foreign versions. 
 
 Throughout the tragedy, the Chorus plays a con- 
 siderable part, but has no influence upon the action 
 of the piece. I know not whether it was intended 
 by Ferreira that the chorus songs should be sung, 
 
102 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 as in Greece, or that they should simply be recited. 
 The one beginning ' Quando amor nasceu ' is a pretty 
 lyric, and well adapted for choric singing ; so is the 
 one ' Antes cego tyranno ; ' both recounting, in short 
 rhymed verses, the triumphs of love over gods and 
 kings, with, however, rather commonplace instances 
 and reflections, which would hardly . bear serious 
 recitation. On the other hand, the grave choric piece, 
 cast into the Sapphic metre, in which the dangers 
 and troubles of a high estate are contrasted with the 
 ease and safety of a middle condition of life, must 
 have been intended for recitation alone. The fine 
 swing and cadence of these noble stanzas show the 
 fitness of the Portuguese language for the highest 
 forms of poetry. 
 
 Keys poclerosos, principes, tyrannos ! 
 Sobre nos policies vossos pes, pisay-nos ; 
 Mas sobre vos esta sempre a fort una : 
 Nos livres d'ella. 
 
 Nos altos nmros soam mais os ventos : 
 As mais crescidas arvores derribam : 
 As mais inchadas vellas no mar rompem : 
 Caem mores torres. 
 
 Pompas e ventos, titulos inchados 
 Nao dao descanso, nem mais doce sono : 
 Antes mais cancam, antes em mais medo 
 Poem, e perigo. 
 
 Como se volvem no gra mar as ondas, 
 Assi se volvem estes peitos cheios 
 E nunca fartos, nunca satisfeitos, 
 Nunca seguros. 
 
 Princes and tyrants, absolute and potent ! 
 Place on our subject necks your feet to crush us ; 
 Yet over you the fates have full dominion : 
 
 We can escape them. 
 
THE PORTUGUESE RENAISSANCE. 103 
 
 The strength of the wind-blast tries the lofty palace ; 
 Tall forest trees are overthrown the soonest ; 
 Stateliest sails are soonest torn by tempest ; 
 
 Loftiest towers fall. 
 
 The pomp and the empty vanity of titles 
 
 No ease afford, nor make our slumbers sweeter. 
 
 Rather, fatigue, disquietude, and danger 
 
 Bring on their owner. 
 
 As the unceasing waves in midmost ocean 
 Turn and return, so do these restless spirits, 
 Full, but still hungry, never to be sated : 
 Never in surety. 
 
 Like Shakespeare's Clarence, Inez de Castro is 
 visited, on the night preceding her assassination, by a 
 portentous and terrible vision. She dreams that, in 
 a dark wood, she encounters and is attacked by two 
 savage wolves, and is by them torn to pieces. 
 
 E eu morria 
 Com tanta saudade, 1 que ind'agora 
 Parece que a ca tenho : e est'alma triste 
 Se m'arraneava tarn forgaclainente, 
 Como quern ante tempo assi deixava 
 Seu lugar, e deixava para sempre 
 (Que este na minha morte era o mor mal) 
 A doce vista de quern me ama tanto. 
 
 And I gave up my life 
 With a despair that seems still present now, 
 And thus my soul did flit, against my will, 
 As if untimely snatched, in that I left 
 (This in death's pain was still death's chiefest smart) 
 The sweet aspect of him who loved so well. 
 
 In the scene immediately succeeding, the Chorus 
 
 1 The word saudade, the intense regret and longing for a 
 thing past and gone, has no equivalent that I know of in any 
 European language. 
 
104 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 is again brought upon the stage, to declare to Inez 
 her approaching doom. Nothing can be more im- 
 pressive, and certainly few situations in the less con- 
 ventional drama of later days could surpass in stage 
 effect, the startling force and weight of the words in 
 which, in answer to Inez's questioning as to the 
 tidings they have to give her, the Chorus answers, 
 4 He tua morte ' — 'It is thy death/ A long and 
 highly wrought dialogue occurs, where Inez pleads 
 her cause before the King himself, in the presence of 
 his councillors, and he, in spite of their advice to the 
 contrary, consents to let her live. In her absence, 
 however, he again yields a reluctant and wavering 
 assent to their solicitations. The perpetration of the 
 murder of Inez is announced on the stage, in a solemn 
 dirge, by the Chorus, who use the privilege of ancient 
 choric song to foresee and foretell the calamities 
 which Inez's death will produce. The fifth act is 
 obviously incomplete. It consists entirely of a dia- 
 logue between the Infante and a messenger who 
 brings him the news of his mistress's assassination. 
 With the expression of his great horror and grief, the 
 tragedy ends by his declaration of his resolve to 
 revenge his loss in the most complete and terrible 
 manner. 
 
 It will be seen, from the foregoing sketch and 
 quotations, that Castro is entirely a tragedy of un- 
 mixed and highly wrought passion. Minor incidents, 
 which might easily have been introduced, seem 
 purposely to have been rejected. The intensity of 
 Inez's agony and despair, of the Prince's grief and 
 
THE PORTUGUESE RENAISSANCE. 105 
 
 rage, of the cruelty and selfishness of the courtiers, 
 are unrelieved by any elements of variety or contrast, 
 and modified by no subordinate emotion. 
 
 That human actions are ever guided by such 
 absolute singleness of motive as is imputed to the 
 dramatis personce in tragedies of the classic type, is, 
 we know, not the case ; and for this reason we may 
 presume it was that the Greek playwrights made the 
 impelling influence of the Fates a principal circum- 
 stance in their tragedies — knowing that, otherwise, 
 the acute audiences of ancient Greece would fail to 
 recognise any resemblance whatever between the 
 actions of tragic characters and those of ordinary 
 human beings. Ferreira has not ventured upon any 
 such theory of Fatalism, and the consequence is that, 
 taken as a whole, his tragedy as a reading play utterly 
 fails in satisfying us that it is a true drama — that it is 
 a true representation of the motives and the passions, 
 the deeds and the talk, of actual men and women. 
 As a literary work, however, and for the purposes 
 of the theatre, his tragedy is excellent. Depending 
 upon a continued use of declamatory eloquence, his 
 language is never once exaggerated, and the senti- 
 ments of the various characters, if they are sustained 
 in a somewhat monotonous key, are never either 
 unnatural or ignoble ; but as a work of general human 
 interest for modern readers it fails entirely, from the 
 very nature of its scope and conception. 
 
 The two great poets whose works I have reviewed 
 begin a period which is the most glorious in Portu- 
 guese literature. This Augustan age culminated in 
 
106 
 
 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 the Lusiads of Camoens, whose genius would almost 
 seem to have blinded foreign students of his country's 
 literature to the merits of his precursors and his con- 
 temporaries. Among these, Miranda and Ferreira — - 
 the Chaucer and Dry den of Portugal — hold the 
 highest place ; men of the most original genius, 
 whose great reputations are acknowledged, while 
 their lives and their works are all but forgotten, even 
 in the country of their birth : — 
 
 lis meurent, et le monde n'en connait que les nonis. 
 
 CLOISTERS OF BEL.EM CONVENT : RENAISSANCE TERTOD. 
 
107 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 MODERN PORTUGAL: COUNTRY LIFE AND SPORT. 
 
 Most travellers to Portugal land at Lisbon and dine 
 at the table d'hote of one of the three or four princi- 
 pal hotels of that sunny capital. I appeal to the 
 majority of persons so landing and dining, if they 
 have not heard- at their very first dinner something 
 equivalent to the following remark : ' Portugal is a 
 country a hundred and fifty years behind the rest 
 of the world.' I have myself heard and read this 
 exact chronological comparison very often. I have 
 heard it made when I was a new comer, and too 
 ignorant to dispute it ; and since then I have heard 
 the proposition laid down again and again, when I was 
 too sure of the ignorance of the speaker to pay any 
 attention to him. 
 
 Of course it is a foolish and ignorant error, and 
 deserves to be shown to be so. First, what is the rest 
 of the world that Portugal has not caught up by a 
 century and a half? It is Europe, presumably, for 
 of course no nation in the Eastern world is in the race 
 even now with the little Western kingdom ; and again, 
 we must leave out of comparison those sinks of poli- 
 tical iniquity, the upstart republics of South and 
 
108 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 Central America. The great and respectable parvenu 
 of North America has no past, no real history apart 
 from that of the mother country, and must therefore 
 be excluded from comparison. Then, too, ' the rest 
 of the world ' must exclude the Turkey and Eussia 
 of to-day, for in Portugal at least there is free 
 thought and free speech, equal justice, and neither the 
 bastinado nor the whip, neither impalement, nor 
 pachas, nor sentinel house porters, nor Siberia, nor 
 the Sultan, nor the Czar. The comparison, too, must 
 exclude even modern Italy, where, besides the foul 
 Camorra plague and the religious feud, half the 
 land is still cursed with brigandage ; and Spain, 
 which is to the full as bad with bigots and brig- 
 ands ; and Greece, which is more thief-ridden than 
 either. 
 
 So the charge dwindles down to this, that the 
 Portuguese nation is only behindhand in civilisation 
 to the few nations of Western Europe who, in respect 
 of progress, and civilization, and humanization, are, 
 and long have been, the very salt of the earth ; say 
 Germany, France, and Great Britain, the four small 
 constitutional Governments of the North, and Switzer- 
 land, whose peculiar institutions and circumstances 
 make comparison not possible. 
 
 Now, Portugal is seriously accused of being a 
 hundred and fifty years behind these favoured nations 
 in all that distinguishes a crowd of savages from a 
 coherent nation of thinking men. Let us see how 
 laughably unjust the statement is. 
 
 Let us take France, and even less than a hundred 
 
COUNTRY LIFE AND SPORT. 109 
 
 and fifty years will bring us into the company of 
 Louis XV. and Madame de Pompadour, a demoralised 
 Court and a down-trodden people — poor and misery- 
 stricken, enslaved by superstition, ignorance, and the 
 tyranny of priest and noble. What is there in all 
 this to compare with modern Portugal ? A century 
 and a half ago in Germany, to take no worse a part 
 of it than Prussia, we have that most unmitigated and 
 grotesque of all royal and domestic tyrants, the father 
 of the great Frederick, and a people not unwilling or 
 unworthy to be governed by such a wretch. England 
 at the beginning of the eighteenth century we know 
 all about ; and if anyone will seriously contend that 
 a minister as corrupt as Walpole could govern in 
 modern Portugal for a day, he must know very little 
 of government in that country. If he supposes that 
 a country like our own under the First or Second 
 George, in which one great party was openly treason- 
 able to the Throne and the Constitution, in which 
 armed rebellion was ready to break out at a hint 
 from a neighbouring sovereign, and of which one 
 great division was enslaved and terrorised by political 
 and religious disabilities, and another division so law- 
 less that the writs of the King's Law Courts would not 
 run through it — if any man can draw a parallel 
 between such a country and the Portugal of to-day, 
 he is either too ignorant to be heard at all, or his 
 statement is, as polite psychologists who hesitate over 
 a stronger term, say — ' an act of imperfect cerebra- 
 tion.' 
 
 The amiable poet who moralised to the effect that 
 
110 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 but a small ingredient in the mass of human suffering 
 was that part which 
 
 Laws or kings can cause or cure, 
 
 never perhaps went very deeply into the ethics of 
 tyranny. Let tyrannical kings and laws, he argued, 
 do their worst, they must at the last leave ' our 
 reason, our faith, and our conscience ' to us. I should 
 be very sorry, for my own part, to try the experiment 
 in Poland or in Turkey ; but, be this as it may, Gold- 
 smith overlooked, I think, the suffering caused by 
 those meddlesome laws which the stupidity of our 
 ancestors imposed, and which that of many contem- 
 porary governments still imposes, upon every trans- 
 action in the traffic of man with man. 
 
 These are the things that make life bitter to the 
 common run of mortals. A man may easily, leading 
 the middle course of life, escape ' Luke's iron crown,' 
 as the poet puts it, or ' Damien's bed of steel,' but he 
 cannot escape the legislation of stupid and tyrannous 
 lawgivers. This is a mill designed to grind the weak 
 rather than the strong, to take the darnel before the 
 wheat, and it grinds, as everyone knows, exceedingly 
 small. 
 
 Those who hold to this before-mentioned theory 
 of the non-progress of Portugal,' must expect to find 
 the fruits of such legislation as common in the country 
 as under our First George, when the great majority of 
 citizens found nearly everything they could buy made 
 dearer to them by the law, and all they had to sell 
 made cheaper — daily life turned into one long struggle 
 to the poor and unfriended man, that it might be 
 
COUNTRY LIFE AND SPORT. Ill 
 
 sweeter and easier to the rich and the influential ; the 
 full dreariness and injustice of the world brought 
 home to a poor man at every turn. But this is not so, 
 and these evils have passed away as completely in 
 modern Portugal as they have in modern England. 
 
 In modern Portugal there are neither the cruel 
 criminal laws which disgraced England a far shorter 
 time ago than a hundred and fifty years, nor are there 
 any irrational municipal laws to help Corporations to 
 grow fat at their fellow-burghers' expense, nor any of 
 those monstrously foolish ordinances about regretting 
 and forestalling which our forefathers believed to be 
 wise. No wages are fixed by law in Portugal, and now, 
 except for fiscal reasons and fiscal purposes, no com- 
 modity of daily life, neither bread, nor oil, nor salt, 
 nor meat, nor drink, is to be bought or sold at any 
 other than its natural, that is, its cheapest price. Of 
 all the many monopolies which once existed in 
 Portugal to hinder trade and impoverish the people, 
 only two are extant — the one in soap, the other in 
 tobacco, and they are for fiscal purposes and may be 
 defended. True, protection survives, that easiest 
 borne of all tyrannies of the few over the many ; but 
 then its fallacies are fallacies invisible not in Portugal 
 only, but by a majority of the people and of the 
 statesmen of every nation in the world except our own, 
 and protection is perhaps fated to die sooner in 
 Portugal than elsewhere. Even now, protection in 
 Portugal is nothing to what it was in Great Britain 
 fifty years ago. 
 
 As to many departments of municipal law, of 
 
112 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 primary education, of police, as to the laws relating 
 to land and the transfer of land, and those which 
 affect the succession to property, some reformers 
 may think that modern Portugal is ahead of modern 
 England. 
 
 In regard to Poor Laws, a man need be neither a 
 reformer nor a philosopher to perceive that Portugal 
 has legislated with far more wisdom than we have, 
 The Portuguese system of relief for the poor may be 
 described briefly to be private charity organised and 
 centralised, and only occasionally helped by grants in 
 aid by the State. Belief is wisely and humanely 
 administered, agriculture is not hindered by heavy 
 poor rates, thrift and hard labour are not discouraged 
 among the workers on the land, nor is a cheerless 
 and desolate and melancholy old age prepared for the 
 infirm and the poor. 
 
 Apart from all these possible points of comparison 
 between Great Britain and Portugal, Portugal pos- 
 sesses the inestimable blessing of a codified criminal 
 and civil law. 
 
 Of all possible subjects of comparison in modern 
 free Portugal, soberly governed as it is, with civil 
 and religious peace and tolerance, trade and traffic as 
 free as elsewhere on the European continent, life and 
 liberty secure, and equality before good and intelli- 
 gible laws, I can think of but one point in which Eng- 
 land under the first two Georges is not immeasurably 
 distanced by Portugal under its present enlightened 
 and law-respecting sovereign. That one point is 
 — conscription, the terrible blood- tax of every Con- 
 
COUNTRY LIFE AND SPORT. 113 
 
 tinental country, to whose cruelty and burden no 
 custom nor length of habit can reconcile the people. 
 Often and often have I watched with pity and strong 
 indignation the workings of this most damnable system. 
 To be sure, conscription seems at present to be a ne- 
 cessity to nations of the European continental family. 
 Nevertheless, Homo homini hbpus appears a true say- 
 ing to an impartial outsider at such times. 
 
 The heart-sickness of deferred hope seems to be 
 greatly prolonged by a Portuguese conscription, and 
 the risk of a conscript's lot is run even after the fatal 
 number is drawn ; for if the man who should answer 
 to it is not forthcoming, dies, or falls ill, or escapes, 
 or in any way evades his fate, then the drawer of the 
 next number is called upon, and failing him, the next 
 and the next again, so that hardly any strong and 
 active Portuguese boy past conscript's age can feel 
 comfortably safe. No cottage is secure from the 
 pain of separation. Parents have to meet another 
 evil besides their children's death or desertion of 
 them ; lovers, the pang of another cross besides the 
 old and common one of inconstancy. 
 
 It is good to consider this matter in all iis bear- 
 ings, for we in England may not perhaps always be free 
 from the curse of a conscription: indeed, only a few 
 weeks ago we were told in a leading weekly paper that 
 we must come to it in time. The devil is, we know, 
 not coal-black, nor even conscription quite so abomin- 
 able an institution but that something may be said for 
 it. To be sure, it decimates a country in a fashion, 
 robs industry of many strong arms, and causes infinite 
 
 I 
 
114 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 social and domestic harm and heart-burning. Never- 
 theless, a large conscripted army, passed quickly 
 through the ranks and returned to civil life before it 
 has lost the taste for civilian hard work, is a school 
 of manners. In the United States, manners were 
 said to be noticeably better after the civil war than 
 the very bad ones which prevailed before. Now, 
 good manners and respect for authority are, within 
 proper limits, undoubtedly sources of strength to a 
 man and to a nation, and their existence in Portugal 
 is, I think, partly traceable to military service. 
 
 Most conscriptions spare married men, and a 
 young man consequently has a temptation to marry 
 which never entered into the head of the narrow- 
 minded Malthus. The patriotism, therefore, which, 
 like Parson Primrose's, holds that ' the honest man 
 who marries and brings up a large family does the 
 State more service than he who continues single and 
 only talks of population,' may find something to 
 approve even in a conscription. A family is a good 
 investment for a man who cannot afford to pay forty 
 or fifty pounds for a substitute, and the man who 
 dislikes drill, or hates cold steel and gunpowder, 
 marries a wife to insure himself against what he con- 
 siders a worse fate. 
 
 Perhaps statistics would not bear out the state- 
 ment that these prudential marriages are frequent. 
 I only know that it is a matter of common jest that 
 they happen. I heard it first, I remember, some 
 years ago from a man who was carrying my fishing- 
 basket along a trout stream in the province of Beira. 
 
COUNTRY LIFE AND SPORT. 115 
 
 We had passed a village where the annual drawing 
 was taking place. As my companion told me of this 
 mode of escape from the horrors of war, I thought of 
 the cynical old Scotch proverb — ' Next to nae wife a 
 gude wife is best.' There are few people so quick to 
 take in a joke as the Portuguese. I translated the 
 proverb for his benefit. ' I know the country,' I said, 
 ' where the people have this for a saying.' He 
 laughed. ' Perhaps the proverb is a true enough one,' 
 he said ; ' but is there any balloting for soldiers in 
 that country ? ' x 
 
 Now, the question may occur to the reader — it has 
 often occurred to the writer — how is it that a coun- 
 try where good government has been so backward in 
 coming (for it does not date further back than the 
 establishment of liberal institutions in 1833) should 
 yet be so advanced in all the arts of social and 
 political life ; should not only enjoy a good constitu- 
 tion — which is a small matter (for good constitutions 
 are as common as thistles), but statesmen honest 
 enough and dexterous enough to make good use of 
 it — which is a great matter? How is it that a coun- 
 try too limited in population to have a periodical 
 press of any power, and where, in point of fact, the 
 press is not very powerful for gpod or evil, where the 
 debates in Parliament, the speeches of politicians, and 
 the proceedings of the law courts are seldom or never 
 reported, where the higher culture, literary or scien- 
 
 1 The conscription law in Portugal is at present administered 
 very strictly. Marriage is now no ' set off,' and when the final 
 lot is drawn no substitute is accepted. 
 
 i 2 
 
116 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW, 
 
 tific, does not abound ; where, in short, there seem 
 to be absolutely none of those levers which we at 
 home believe to be the only ones to make the intellect 
 of the masses stir — how is it that among the Portu- 
 guese, a sanguine Southern race, there is so keen an 
 appreciation of the benefits of wise and sober ad- 
 ministration ? There is floating in every class of this 
 country, from the highest to the lowest, a mass of 
 sound and tolerant doctrine, political, social, and 
 religious — sound and tolerant from the point of view 
 of any Frenchman, Englishman, or American of 
 liberal and moderate views. How is this ? Whence 
 does this doctrine come, and how does it find admit- 
 tance with all entrance thus seemingly shut out ? 
 
 I believe the answer to all this to be, first, that 
 the Portuguese race is a blend of nationalities which 
 time has welded almost into homogeneity. There is, 
 therefore, no clash of race with race, and there is no 
 faith feud, nor much opposition of interests between 
 class and class, for the country is still chiefly, and 
 should, perhaps, be entirely agricultural. Then there 
 is a free constitutional government ; there is liberty of 
 meeting, of printing, and, above all, of talking ; ideas 
 are as free in free Portugal as they necessarily are in 
 bondage and subjection in despotic Eussia. This 
 being so, all the new doctrine and all the true 
 doctrine of the whole world percolates as quickly 
 through every stratum of Portuguese society as the 
 drops of rain from heaven sink down to the plant- 
 roots in a well tilled soil. There is, moreover, less 
 need of a great periodical press, such as ours or the 
 
COUNTRY LIFE AND SPORT. 117 
 
 American, because the Portuguese are a talkative and 
 a sociable race. Ideas come to them not so much 
 on a printed page as by word of mouth. 
 
 Lastly, to explain the advancement of political 
 intelligence in Portugal, it must not be forgotten who 
 the Portuguese people are. They are, as I have said, 
 a race with a lineage happily blended of the strength 
 of the North and the more subtle genius of the South. 
 A race possessing great and rare qualities, dormant 
 for a time, indeed, and temporarily debased by the 
 corruption which goes with tyranny, but whose quick 
 revival under the kindly influences of freedom is one 
 of the marvels of modern history. It is a race which 
 has at all times been marked by a rare union of 
 enthusiasm and sobriety, and whose restricted numbers 
 only have stood in the way of its predominant power 
 and influence among nations ; which, in spite of its 
 numerical insignificance, has conquered and settled 
 continents, crossed unknown seas, and carried its faith 
 and language far and wide over the more distant 
 regions of the earth. What wonder is it that men 
 loyal enough to each other, steadfast enough in their 
 principles, and high enough and bold enough to 
 achieve these great things, should, the chance given 
 them, appreciate at once the wisdom and the benefits 
 of free government, and fall into the way and practice 
 of it forthwith ? 
 
 Though, as I have said, agriculture is still the 
 prevailing pursuit of the Portuguese, country life, as 
 we in England understand it, is a thing little known 
 
118 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 in Portugal. The reason, of course, is to be found in 
 the tenure of land, as I shall further on take occasion 
 to explain. Were it chiefly sublet on leases, as with 
 us, the Portuguese country gentleman would doubt- 
 less be dotted over the land, to collect and lower his 
 rents, patronise his tenants, to hunt, shoot, fish, grow 
 his geraniums, turnips, orchids, or conifers, as his 
 taste might dictate, or to cultivate that precarious 
 little crop of politics which is all that the ballot and 
 extended suffrage have left to our country gentleman 
 in this domain. The Portuguese squire, if he existed, 
 would no doubt, like his English representative, play 
 at whist with his parson and at justice with his 
 neighbouring squires, do the equivalent of reading 
 his ' Times ' and his 4 Punch,' of subscribing to 
 Mudie's, and, in short, he would aspire to that 
 cultivated ease and dignity which distinguish the 
 country squire from the country ploughman. 
 
 In Portugal there is either yeoman tenure, where 
 the farmer is his own landlord, or communal, where 
 the lordship is impersonal ; in districts where there 
 are large estates and leased farms, the estates are of 
 huge size, and lie for the most part in districts where 
 the land is poor and mountainous, or in malarious 
 plain country, with no temptation to the owner to 
 settle. The landlord's work is therefore deputed to 
 an agent, and the former lives in one of the great 
 cities. The Portuguese never play at country life as 
 our people are fond of doing — that is, they do not 
 betake themselves to the country and lead a con- 
 tinuous existence there, without having real duties or 
 
COUNTRY LIFE AND SPORT. 119 
 
 interests in the land. I think they are in the right, 
 and that to be secluded in a dull country neighbour- 
 hood, as English families seem to like to doom them- 
 selves to be, without ties or any contact with their 
 fellow-beings, with no occupations but the visits from, 
 or the calls upon, distant neighbours, is the surest of 
 all methods of dulling the social faculties, and of 
 slipping back in the race towards culture and the 
 higher education. 
 
 The Portuguese, as a rale, care not a straw for 
 culture and the higher education, but they hate seclu- 
 sion of this kind. There is absolutely no such thing 
 as the dull continuous vegetation of English country 
 life — bad even for the inertness of advancing age ; 
 but for young people and for girls especially, who 
 cannot escape to school or college like their brothers, 
 simply stupid and abominable. In Portugal there 
 are no 4 Marianas ' in moated granges. 
 
 For all this, there are plenty of country houses, 
 and very good and pleasant ones, only they are not 
 much lived in. A certain well known family in Por- 
 tugal — one with an infinite number of cousins, uncles, 
 and collateral relatives of all degrees — boasts that a 
 member of it can pass on horseback from the extreme 
 north to the extreme south of the kingdom, and sleep 
 every night of his journey in a kinsman's house. I 
 questioned one of the family on this point, and he 
 corroborated the statement, showing me even on a 
 map how one of his parentage might (' though with 
 some small parenthesis between ') travel through the 
 country in this pleasant fashion, and without, as it 
 
120 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 were, once leaving the family circle. I think I 
 recollect that the chain of these convenient lodgings 
 terminated at the frontiers of Algarve, the most 
 southerly province; but then Algarve is, in some 
 sort, a kingdom of itself, over which the Portuguese 
 monarch rules with some separation of jurisdiction — 
 ' Rex Port, et Algarh! is the legend on coins — so that 
 the boast that Portugal can be traversed by a man 
 who should never sleep but under a kinsman's roof is 
 still justified. 
 
 Now, the Portuguese gentleman's ideal of a country 
 house is the old Eoman one of a villa, and his residence 
 in it a villeggiatura, after the modern Italian fashion 
 — a brief holiday time in the hot season, a voluntary 
 rustication by people whose love of country life is 
 shown by the fact of their literature containing more 
 good pastoral poetry than that of any European 
 nation. But as no sane and active-minded man can 
 read more than a very limited amount of pastoral 
 poetry, so no Portuguese cares to play at living a 
 more than very brief pastoral existence. He and his 
 family leave town for a month or two in August, or 
 September, or October, the worst and dullest season 
 in cities, the busiest and most cheerful in the country ; 
 for then is the time of vintage and maize harvest, 
 and most of the fruits of trees are being garnered, 
 and then is the best season to shoot quail and hare 
 and the red-legged partridge. 
 
 There is, of course, every variety of size and pre-' 
 tentiousness in the houses used for the villeggiatura 
 in Portugal ; but almost invariably for grounds the 
 
COUNTRY LIFE AND SPORT. 121 
 
 dwelling has round it the vineyards, orange and olive 
 groves, and the cornfields of a farm. Generally the 
 farm with its farmstead is an appanage of the villa ; 
 the farmer, its owner's tenant or his bailiff. When the 
 landlord and employer runs down, he and his wife 
 and children have plenty to occupy and amuse them- 
 selves with. The landlord has his live stock and 
 buildings, his walls and his vine trellises to examine, 
 his orchards to inspect^ and, above all, the condition 
 of the water-works to see to, that first necessity in 
 Southern farm economy. Mostly it is the Nora, the 
 old fashioned water-wheel, worked by oxen turning 
 in a circular space overshadowed by vines. The 
 power is conveyed to an endless chain, set a foot apart 
 with buckets, which dip into the well and fetch up 
 the water from the depths, spilling half of it by the 
 way, it is true, but still making up a plentiful rill, 
 pleasant to listen to and to see flowing off to the 
 thirsty land. On the threshing-floor are already the 
 huge piles of golden red maize cobs, lying ready for 
 the master's eye to assess, and the lesser heaps of more 
 precious kidney beans, white, brown, or mottled. The 
 great gourds and water melons are still in the fields 
 where they have grown, getting their last mellowing 
 touches of colour from the autumnal sun-rays. 
 
 It is a delightful time for all the family too. The 
 children play at water-works, and swim oranges in 
 the runlets of water flowing from the Nora, look out 
 the sweetest bunches of grapes, or play at hide-and- 
 seek in the rank growth of vegetation which the 
 summer sun has raised. The girls saunter in the 
 
122 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 flower garden, with its old fashioned box-edged paths 
 and beds well shaded by camellias and Tangerine 
 orange trees, and filled full with flowering plants of 
 the older fashion, the asters, the balsam, heliotrope, 
 and scented verbena, cock's-combs, geraniums, blue 
 and scarlet salvias, dahlias and fuchsias of the more 
 primitive kinds, chrysanthemums, and great bushes of 
 the yellow-flowered sedum ; — all deplorable enough 
 in the eyes of any modern gardener, but gay and 
 bright and charming from sheer force of unchecked 
 luxuriance. 
 
 The house is a very plain one ; a square building, 
 generally white-washed inside and out, with broad 
 overhanging eaves painted with vermilion under- 
 neath. Many of these houses have one large central 
 room with a number of little cells for bedrooms, open- 
 ing out on three sides. This central room, uncarpeted 
 and furnished with a dozen or two of rickety chairs 
 and a large deal table, is hung with monstrously bad 
 framed prints — the Battle of the Nile, the ' Saucy 
 Arethusa,' a series showing the life and death of Pope 
 Pius VII., the Heroism of Egaz Moniz, the Loves of 
 Inez de Castro, or the legendary Vision of King 
 AfFonso Henri quez. Here the family meet and take 
 their meals. An ox-cart or two full of extra furniture 
 is sent from the town house, and serves well enough 
 to make the family as comfortable as they care to be 
 on their two months' picnic. 
 
 Such is the villeggiatura of the middle classes not 
 over-burdened with this world's goods. Among the 
 country houses of wealthier people, who have been 
 
COUNTEY LIFE AND SPORT. 123 
 
 fortunate enough to buy or inherit villas of the more 
 luxurious kind, are some magnificent and singularly 
 hideous modern dwellings, with huge earthenware 
 greyhounds, or wild boars, keeping guard over preten- 
 tious gateways, painted glass in the windows, and 
 enormous balls of silvered tin perched on portentous 
 cupolas on the house top, buildings inviting the wrath 
 of Heaven by every enormity of bad taste— a style of 
 architecture defying all recognised canons of art, 
 and gardens which would be as unpleasant as the 
 houses but that in this kindly chmate Nature takes 
 these matters into her own hands, ' invading the 
 quincunx ' with, the luxuriance of her plant growth, 
 violating the ' trim parterre ' most satisfactorily, and 
 making an agreeable tangle and wilderness of the 
 
 DC O 
 
 most correct design. 
 
 There are, however, in Portugal, villa dwellings 
 and gardens of the richer and more luxurious sort, of 
 an older and better fashion than this. One such is 
 in my memory as I write. A stately house of plain, 
 solid architecture, with a walled courtyard in front, 
 wherein old orange trees overshadow the rippling 
 surface of a stone-formed tank, into which descends 
 a plentiful waterfall from a carved dolphin's head. 
 
 Inside, the wood-carved wreaths and trophies on 
 the stairs and the doorways point to the period which 
 connoisseurs know as ' Louis Seize,' and in spite of 
 the great secular trees about the grounds, the house, 
 I know, is no older than the reign of that monarch. 
 This house is always maintained in good residential 
 condition, fully furnished, and with a small staff of 
 
124 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 servants in occupation the whole year round. There 
 are corridors hung with passably good oil pictures ; 
 great china cupboards, crammed full of ware 
 purchased seemingly at all periods within the last 
 hundred years, chiefly the handsome but compara- 
 tively worthless Oriental ware of seventy or eighty 
 years ago ; and, curious to note, next in abundance 
 to this are the wares of our own fabriques — Crown 
 Derby in great quantity and richness, Wedgwood, 
 Worcester, Leeds, and even Bow and Chelsea. 1 
 
 There is a handsome private chapel on the ground 
 floor, dedicated to St. Anthony, large enough to hold 
 the whole parish on the Saint's holiday, and here 
 mass is said every Sunday and Saint's day through- 
 out the year. In this chapel, as in almost every 
 private chapel I ever saw in Spain or Portugal, is 
 that curious arrangement by which the ladies of the 
 house can join in the service without mingling with 
 the crowd of worshippers on the floor. A grated 
 window, like the Ladies' Gallery in the House of 
 Lords, about half way up the wall, opens into one of 
 the rooms of the house, and the ladies and children 
 sitting there can open their windows and see and 
 take part in, themselves unseen, all that goes on in 
 the chapel. It is church -going made very easy. I 
 do not know whether the practice is a remnant of 
 old Moorish notions of women's seclusion, or comes 
 
 1 The long existing commercial relations between Portugal' 
 and Great Britain growing out of the port wine trade are the 
 cause why more last-century English porcelain and earthenware is 
 to be found in Portugal than elsewhere in Europe. 
 
COUNTRY LIFE AND SPORT. 125 - 
 
 merely from fineness and a liking to be exclusive. 
 One may suppose it had its origin in the old notions, 
 and is kept up from habit and from convenience. 
 
 As in the case of the smaller villas, the house is 
 connected with a farm, and the grounds and garden 
 mingle in the same pleasant fashion with the appur- 
 tenances of the farmstead. A long, straight, over- 
 arching avenue of camellia and Seville orange trees 
 terminates in a broad, paved threshing-floor. In a 
 little dell below the house, under a dense shadow of 
 fig and loquat trees, is the huge water-wheel, worked 
 by six oxen, and raising a little river from the depths 
 below. The terraced fields, the orange and olive groves 
 and the orchards, are all surrounded by broad walks 
 overshadowed by a heavy pleached trellis supporting 
 vines, and here in the hottest summer's day is cool 
 walking in the grey half- shadow of the greenery 
 overhead. Runlets of water course along in stone 
 channels by the side of every path and roadway, and 
 the murmur of running water — a sound of which the 
 ear never tires in the South — is heard everywhere 
 and always. 
 
 The well-shaded garden is laid out in the stately 
 Italian fashion ; with carved stone-work in its 
 terraced and balustraded walks, its flights of broad 
 steps, and its fountains and gold-fish ponds ; and here, 
 more than anywhere, the water-threads and jets and 
 cascades fall and rise and splash with most refreshing 
 murmuring. There is nothing the Portuguese so 
 much delight in as this flow of ever-moving water 
 cooling the air, and associated with the very idea of 
 
126 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 fertility and green luxuriance. Camoens, in his great 
 epic, describing the enchanted Venus Island, mentions 
 how there flows on in it for ever, among the hollow 
 stones of the flower-enamelled hillside, 
 
 A sonorosa lympha fugitiva, 
 
 and I rather doubt if the expressive beauty of this 
 
 line would fully come home to anyone but a dweller 
 
 under some such summer sky as that of Portugal. 
 
 Camoens' description of the miraculous island, fine as 
 
 it is, is little more than an accurate picture of many 
 
 a bit of cultivated pastoral scenery in this country, 
 
 and I am in truth strongly reminded of the whole 
 
 passage in recalling the surroundings of the very 
 
 house I am speaking of. Here, behind the house, are 
 
 the green, turf-clothed hills, with the water welling 
 
 everywhere, and keeping the vegetation lush and 
 
 green. Here, too, is the wealth of fruit trees : — 
 
 Mil arvores estao ao ceu subindo 
 
 Com pomos odoriferos e bellos : 
 
 A larangeira tern no fruto lindo 
 
 A cor que tinha Daphne nos cabellos : 
 
 Encosta-se no chao -, que esta cahindo, 
 
 A cidreira co' os pezos amarellos : 
 
 Os formosos limoes alii cheirando. 
 
 Trees manifold here lift their branches tall, 
 Fruit-laden, fragrant, exquisite and rare : 
 T^he orange tree with bright-hued golden ball, 
 Passing the golden hues of Daphne's hair, 
 Citrons with weight of yellow-coated fruit 
 
 And lemons odorous 
 
 It is a far more concrete piece of description than' 
 the Italian poet gives us of Armida's magic garden, 
 but not the less impressive ; the nymphs are very 
 
COUNTRY LIFE AND SPORT. 127 
 
 real personages indeed in the Portuguese epic, and 
 all the sights and sounds of nature have a most bodily 
 presentment : the very scent of the flowers and savour 
 of the fruit are exactly set forth. 
 
 Camoens, however, in truth, had not on his palette 
 all the colours which, had he written in this age, he 
 would have used in making his picture of a Portuguese 
 landscape full and complete. In the three hundred 
 years which have elapsed since the ' Lusiads ' were 
 written, and partly in consequence of the great deeds 
 of prowess on which the poem is founded, Portugal 
 has become the emporium of a wealth of plant form, 
 chiefly in fruit and forest trees, from every quarter 
 of the globe. Camellias from Japan have long been 
 the chief ornament of every garden, growing to the 
 size of apple trees in England. The loquat from 
 China surpasses as a giver of shade the fig itself — 
 the old-world type of shade-giving trees ; in Novem- 
 ber it fills the air with the sweet scent of its blossoms, 
 and ripens its refreshing yellow fruit in early summer. 
 The gum trees of Australia, and especially the blue 
 gum [Eucalyptus globulus^ the fever tree), have 
 positively altered the aspect of the more inhabited 
 parts of the country within the last twenty years ; so 
 that a modern painter, to make a characteristic land- 
 scape, must now needs introduce into his picture this 
 species of gum tree, with its slender, polished trunk, 
 its upright branch-growth against the sky line, and 
 its long drooping leaves, rich in winter time with a 
 mellow splendour of russet red, and yellow. 
 
 Again, there is the Bella Sombra, a huge forest 
 
128 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 tree from Brazil, which lias taken most kindly to 
 Portuguese soil and climate ; bnt finest of the im- 
 ported trees is the great-flowered magnolia from 
 Carolina and Central America — a forest giant in its 
 native lands, and, where it finds a damp and congenial 
 soil, nothing less in size in this country. The age of 
 the very oldest magnolia in Portugal cannot exceed a 
 hundred and twenty years, and yet already some of 
 them tower to a height exceeding that of the tallest 
 English oak tree, rearing aloft huge clouds of shin- 
 ing, laurel-like leafage, starred here and there in 
 spring and summer time with their great white and 
 scented blossoms. 
 
 All these trees, together with many conifers from 
 the highlands of Brazil and the slopes of the 
 Himalayas, and countless shrubs, are going far to 
 make of Portugal a marvel for variety of rapid and 
 luxuriant growth in the eyes of arboriculturists from 
 our own country, who count the years' growth of their 
 exotic conifers by inches and fractions of inches. 
 
 Now, for all these arboreal varieties of foreign ex- 
 traction — these imported Circassian brides — which are 
 embellishing the native stock of trees, and reforming 
 the Portuguese pleasure woods and orchards, to my 
 thinking they are but material beauties at the best ; 
 and the associations connected with some of the older 
 denizens of the garden and orchard, hallowed by time 
 and ancient culture, have in them some deeper and 
 more subtle beauty than the merely sensuous one of 
 stately growth and form, size, fine massing of light 
 and shade, and so forth. To say nothing of the 
 
COUNTRY LIFE AND SPORT. 129 
 
 orange tree and its associations — as to which, indeed, 
 travellers have not too greatly foreborne their rhetoric 
 —there is the olive tree, which travellers have 
 certainly not over-praised, or, for the matter of that, 
 praised at all. In truth, I do not remember ever 
 hearing, from tourist or traveller, a good word for the 
 olive tree, with its stunted growth, its insignificant 
 leaves and flowers and fruit, its ashy, or, rather, lead- 
 coloured foliage. Yet how is it that the old poets of 
 Greece have sung its praises with raptures exceeding, 
 I think, what they have bestowed upon any other gift 
 of nature ? 
 
 I am reminded, as I write, of the famous chorus 
 in the play of Sophocles, in which the poet, recounting 
 in glowing words all the beauties and advantages of 
 the Attic land — its fruits, its flowers, its sacred groves, 
 its full and flowing streams ; and again, its breed of 
 horses and its seas, but, above all, the noble race of 
 inhabitants apt and able tp tame the one and cross 
 the other — culminates his enthusiasm in his praise 
 (which I imagine has often seemed a most ridiculous 
 anti-climax to northern Europeans) of that gift of the 
 protecting Deity, the 'grey-green olive tree.' Is it 
 that with a surer aesthetic perception than we moderns 
 possess, these old poets overlooked the homely aspect of 
 the actual tree, and idealized it ? That they saw in it 
 the oil-producer, the giver of that which — to dwellers 
 in a country like Attica, who drew most of their suste- 
 nance from the orchard and from the forest, and from 
 the waters of the neighbouring seas — was a boon of in- 
 estimable value, a gift with a clear divinity about it ? 
 
 K 
 
130 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 Doubtless there is something of gratitude in the 
 poets' songs of praise ; but they misapprehend greatly 
 who suppose that this tree of great price is not also 
 one of great and peculiar loveliness. To know its 
 true beauty we must see it, not as it is looked upon 
 by winter-sojourning travellers, such as most English- 
 men are who have seen and probably despised the 
 olive — not in the chill and heavy atmosphere of the 
 winter season, or even under the light-blue skies of 
 an Italian or Peninsular late autumn or early spring, 
 but in the full glory of summer tide, when the air is 
 clear and bright as a diamond, the sharply defined 
 shadow of hill and rock rosy in its depth, and the sea 
 and sky purple in the intensity of their blue. Then is 
 the olive tree transformed, illuminated, by the blaze of 
 sun-rays, till it looks to be an ethereal kind of growth, 
 as of something in an enchanted land ; the dull leaden 
 leaves glow now all the day long with a rare silvery 
 hue, and the sunset lights up a golden haze upon 
 them. Then one at last begins to understand the 
 enthusiasm of the old poets ; for an Athenian, at such 
 times as these, looking on a grove of olive trees, 
 might swear by the great Pallas Athene, the giver of 
 them, that nothing more rare and exquisite in beauty 
 grew in all the Southern land. 
 
 Though I trust that no one who knows me at all 
 well, either in private or in public and literary life, 
 will think so ill of me as to imagine that I could 
 venture to put upon paper a full and particular 
 account of so everyday an occurrence as a sunset, yet 
 
COUNTRY LIFE AND SPORT. 131 
 
 I must take leave to say, in justice to the country 
 and to those aspects of it which are chiefly the sub- 
 ject of this chapter, that a Portuguese sunset is a re- 
 markably grand thing. 
 
 I was lately reading an interesting travel-book 
 upon Norway, and was disturbed to find that the very 
 capable author recurs again and again to the beauty 
 of the Norwegian sunsets. This, as cautious moralists 
 say, ' is not as it should be ; ' every sunset everywhere, 
 if there be but a single cloud on the western horizon, 
 is a beautiful spectacle, but the spectacle in Norway 
 is a prolonged, a monotonous, and a not very brilliant 
 affair. We have much better sunsets at home in 
 England ; and, as we travel south, the setting of the 
 lamp of day is attended by more and more of glorious 
 circumstance, till we come toq near the equator, 
 when the sun dives so quickly beneath the usually 
 cloudless horizon that there is no time for a serious 
 sunset, and the ' sudden glory ' of it is come and 
 gone before the aesthetic observer has time to col- 
 lect his admiration into focus. Humboldt, if I 
 recollect rightly, makes the limits of the grandest 
 sunsets in the Northern Hemisphere to extend from 
 lat. 30° to 42°. Portugal is well included in this 
 zone. 
 
 Other conditions, meteorological ones chiefly, 
 besides latitude go to the making of good sunsets ; a 
 mountainous region, a variable chmate, and probably 
 some electric conditions at which we can only guess. 
 One might imagine that the level plains of ocean 
 would supply all the necessary conditions of fine sun- 
 
 K 2 
 
132 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 sets ; but it is not so, — sea sunsets as a rule lack 
 variety. All travellers by sea will agree with me. 
 Only once do I remember an ocean sunset that was 
 so immeasurably grander than any other I ever saw 
 that it is impossible to lose the memory of it ; but 
 even here, land had as much as water to do with it, 
 and it was nearly within the limits of Humboldt's 
 zone. 
 
 We happened to be sailing at evening time in the 
 month of October unusually near the cliffs of the 
 Spanish Finisterre, and a great vivid cloud-picture was 
 suddenly spread all around us — the clouds all purple 
 and saffron in the far east, on a background of pale 
 citron, brightening towards the west through every 
 degree of the prismatic scale, and turning at last to a 
 fiery effulgence as they neared the sun's throne in the 
 western sky. The whole body of clouds moved slowly 
 through the great airy amphitheatre, and all the 
 broad welkin was reflected again on the glassy surface 
 of sea fluctuating in slow and swelling masses ; while 
 away coastward were upreared the tall cliffs of Finis- 
 terre, rosy red in the dying light of day : a spectacle 
 to awe a materialist. It is mortifying to think how 
 difficult it is to maintain one's aesthetic enthusiasm 
 at a high pitch for any time ; for while we looked 
 there came to our ears on the calm evening air the 
 sound of soft music, the instrument a banjo in the 
 forecastle played by our negro cook, the air a ' break- 
 down.' Presently came the steward respectfully to 
 remind us that tea was ready in the saloon. How 
 faithful a servant is memory at times ! I remember 
 
COUNTRY LIFE AND SPOKT. 133 
 
 that, seeing us a little loth to leave the deck, he sought 
 to tempt us down with the observation that there 
 were potted lobster and pickled salmon on the table, 
 and we went below, leaving the glorious firmament 
 of heaven to itself, while the air upon the banjo 
 changed to 'Way down upon the Suwannee River.' 
 
 No one will accuse Portuguese country gentle- 
 men of an over-sentimental admiration of sunsets ; 
 their sentimentality, where it exists, seldom runs in an 
 aesthetic direction ; and for plain, practical men who 
 can fill their heads and hands with thoughts and work 
 of other kinds, they perhaps do well to leave the less 
 concrete aspects of nature alone. They certainly do 
 not come down into the country to dazzle their eyes 
 with the rising and setting sun. Art, literature, 
 science, in Portugal are for the very few alone, and 
 the high culture which undoubtedly pervades almost 
 every class in the community is purely social culture, 
 the not too easy or too common art of maintaining 
 pleasant relations with superiors, with inferiors, and 
 with equals. 
 
 So when the Portuguese gentleman comes for his 
 annual holiday to the country, he looks to his garden, 
 his cellar, his granaries, the warrens, and the woods 
 wherewith to fill his mind. As a rule he brings no 
 new books to beguile his leisure or widen his mental 
 horizon, he never buys pictures, he seldom collects 
 rare prints or art objects ; old china, French enamels, 
 Italian majolica, or German ivories are mysteries to 
 him, and their accumulation a childish extravagance. 
 
134 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 He will keep them, if he has inherited them, as con- 
 venient house furniture, and he may buy now and 
 then an old Indian or Japanese cabinet for the same 
 useful purpose ; but he would greatly prefer a modern 
 one of buhl or ormolu fresh from a Paris workshop, 
 and bright with all the hideous crudity of its newness. 
 Plate he likes to acquire, and the fine old Portuguese 
 silver repousse work of two hundred years ago finds 
 a ready sale in the country ; but he would like it 
 infinitely better if it bore the hall mark of George 
 IY.'s reign, and was of the gorgeous style and massive 
 construction peculiar to the period of that gorgeous 
 and massive sovereign. 
 
 He loves the chase, but never owned an expensive 
 central-fire gun by a good London or Paris maker. 
 Not many years ago, he used nothing better than a 
 long, single-barrelled gun of great antiquity ; making, 
 however, most excellent practice with it upon red- 
 legged partridges and quail. Now he shoots quite as 
 straight with a cheap Belgian double-barrelled piece, 
 which an Englishman would not put into the hands 
 of his under-keeper. His pointers are untrained, from 
 an English sportsman's point of view, but hunting, 
 pointing, and ' down-charging ' are hereditary in them. 
 They are of the heavy Peninsular breed, the progeni- 
 tors of the race of pointers all the world over ; por- 
 tentously double-nosed, thick-muzzled dogs, endowed 
 with the keenest scent, and very staunch. They 
 potter along, ten or twenty yards in front of the, 
 shooter, and never dream of ' ranging ' or ' quarter- 
 ing,' but have as a rule been taught to retrieve. 
 
COUNTRY LIFE AND SPOET. 135 
 
 To shoot over pointers, however, is not what the 
 Portuguese sportsman most cares for. It is not soci- 
 able enough. His motto, if he have one, is ' the greatest 
 amusement of the greatest number (of men and dogs) ; ' 
 and as the whole country, with the exception of 
 walled enclosures of a certain height, is free to shoot 
 over to any one responsible enough to be entrusted 
 with a ten-shilling gun-licence, there is a paucity of 
 game, and so to the sportsman's motto must be added 
 — ' with the least possible expenditure of game' 
 
 If I describe a Portuguese shooting party, a 
 caqada — I shall be accused by some grave and intole- 
 rant readers at home of wishing to make fun of a mode 
 of sport which diners so entirely from our own ways 
 of conducting these matters ; but this is not so at all. 
 Some thoughtful persons who love to go deeply into 
 the philosophy of things, may even think that the 
 ethics of the chase are better apprehended in Portugal 
 than at home. In England, to obtain three days of 
 battue shooting in the year, we spend a little fortune 
 in the wages of keepers and watchers, in preserving 
 coverts, and in rearing birds. We go some way to 
 corrupt the morals of a parish, and perhaps turn 
 half a dozen idlers into felons ; we make tenants dis- 
 contented, moderate people dissatisfied at seeing 
 wealth and labour so ill and unprofitably spent, the 
 humanitarian world is shocked at an unnecessary 
 slaughter, and the non-sporting world of thinkers are 
 mortified to see their countrymen engaged in one 
 other form of indefensible folly. We make, in short, 
 a small local revolution, financial and social, to get 
 
136 POBTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 three days of what is by general consent the very 
 dullest, most monotonous, and most unsatisfactory 
 form of sport in the world. 
 
 Nothing of this kind happens in Portugal. There 
 has been no preparation whatever for the sport, there 
 is no expense, and there can be no temptation to poach- 
 ing where there is no artificial abundance of game. 
 There is absolutely no seriousness about the matter 
 at all, it is amusement and relaxation pure and 
 simple that is sought for ; there is no heart-burning 
 between rival shots, no bribing of keepers, no 
 favouritism, no ill-will possible anywhere or anyhow ; 
 and lastly, no unpleasantly heavy bag to carry home 
 after a long day's walking, 
 
 A dozen gentlemen agree to bring their dogs 
 together, and a pack numbering thirty or forty of all 
 degrees — lurchers, terriers, greyhounds, and even 
 pointers — is collected. Another dozen friends and 
 acquaintances join the party. Among the whole of 
 the gentlemen six or eight only carry guns ; the rest, 
 sticks, the cow-sticks or quarter- staves, which are so 
 much the badge of agriculturists of all classes, that 
 even amateur rustics, gentlemen-farmers on their 
 holiday, seldom go afield without one. Then does 
 the chase begin. Many such a one have I engaged 
 in, and of many heard the incidents narrated in the 
 fullest detail. 
 
 In a long and vociferous line we range through 
 the great pine forests, -or the chestnut woods, poking, 
 our sticks into the matted gorse and cistus, banging 
 the tree trunks with resounding blows that echo 
 
COUNTRY LIFE AND SPORT. 137 
 
 among the hollow forest aisles. The dogs hunt a 
 little, wrangle, bark, and fight a good deal, and 
 would do so still more, but for the occasional flight, 
 into their midst, of a well directed cow-stick. 
 Nothing in the shape of game is seen ; a brown wood 
 owl, indeed, flitting from an ivied oak tree, is im- 
 mediately christened a woodcock by some imagina- 
 tive person, and is brought down, amidst shouts of 
 laughter, by a short-sighted gentleman, who holds 
 up his eye-glass in explanation of his mistake. 
 Another enthusiastic sportsman walking by my side 
 stops me suddenly, pressing my arm with so much 
 emphasis that I look to see some very large game 
 indeed afoot. He points to a holly tree, 
 
 ' What is it ? ' I ask. 
 
 4 Hush ; ' with his fingers across his lips, and he 
 whispers in my ear, ' a blackbird ! ' 
 
 My acquaintance is proceeding to a scientific 
 ' stalk ; ' but though the blackbird is legitimate game 
 in Portugal, the party is too large, the dignity of the 
 occasion too great, for the pursuit of such small deer. 
 Responding to the loud remonstrances of everyone 
 present, my companion retires from the pursuit, 
 while the blackbird takes wing and disappears, with 
 a shrill, crowing call. 
 
 In the meantime, a great commotion is taking 
 place in the centre of our line ; every man shouts out 
 ' Coelho ! ' Eabbit ! every dog gives tongue, every 
 stick is waved in the air, thumped on the ground, or 
 thrown with random aim into the tall undergrowth. 
 Several guns are fired off. Nothing is hit. not even a 
 
138 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 dog. I observe that the older and more sagacious of 
 the pack, when the first frenzy of excitement is over, 
 retire a yard or two from the coverts, and watch for 
 what may come out, as a terrier watches at a rat- 
 hole. We all run to and fro madly, we charge and 
 jostle each other, we scratch our faces in the bushes, 
 we entangle our feet in the briars and fall head over 
 heels, we scream with excitement, we shout with 
 laughter. 
 
 As yet I have seen nothing ; but presently I make 
 out a little animal which I should take for a very large 
 rat if experience did not tell me that it was a full-grown 
 Portuguese rabbit, cantering in a leisurely manner 
 towards two gentlemen with guns stationed on a 
 neighbouring knoll, the only members of our party 
 not in motion. These sportsmen cock their pieces, 
 and, aiming apparently at the points of their own 
 boots, fire simultaneously. We run up and look to 
 where the ground is still smoking for the body of 
 the rabbit. We find nothing but the hole of the 
 burrow over which these gentlemen were mount- 
 ing guard, and into which the rabbit has safely 
 escaped. 
 
 We all stop for ten minutes to argue, to recount, 
 and laugh over the misadventure, then set off again 
 through the unending forest glades. 
 
 After this episode, a boy working at a saw-pit 
 offers to show us a hare half a mile away ; we close 
 with his offer, and eventually we shoot both hare and 
 boy. The hare we bagged in a most literal sense, but 
 the boy we only wounded very slightly — so slightly, 
 
COUNTRY LIFE AND SPORT. 139 
 
 indeed, that he recovered almost by magic from the 
 fearful contortions of face and body which he was 
 making, when he was presented with a silver crown, 
 and, on being questioned, volunteered to be shot in 
 the same way at the same price once a day for the 
 rest of his lifetime, At first, I was seriously alarmed 
 by his howls, and some of the eight gentlemen with 
 guns who had fired sixteen barrels, more or less, in 
 his direction turned pale as possible murderers. The 
 poor boy was an outsider, and his interested howls 
 were no test of his courage, I am convinced that no 
 one of our party would have made any fuss at all for 
 a pellet or two ; indeed, under the excitement of the 
 rare appearance of game, the fusillade at these hunts 
 is so hot and so irregular that no man who cannot 
 trust his nerves under fire should ever join a Portu- 
 guese cacada. Still it is use and temperament that 
 make men cool ; and, well as the Portuguese have 
 shown that they can stand fire in more serious fields 
 than those of sport, I do not quite think they could 
 come up to the equanimity which I have myself seen 
 displayed by an English, gamekeeper. 
 
 It is within my knowledge how, in a famous 
 shooting county, an under-keeper was placed in the 
 centre of a large wood to stop the birds. An Eton 
 boy was among the shooters, and getting, as boys 
 will, out of the regular line, and coming near to where 
 the keeper was posted, he saw, glancing through the 
 thick underwood, that person's brown-gaitered legs. 
 The boy, taking them for a hare, fired ; but observing 
 that the beast, as he thought, hopped away a short 
 
140 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 distance unhurt, he loaded his single-barrelled gun 
 and fired again, so continuing to load and fire in hot 
 haste — the faithful servant dodging about a good 
 deal among the bushes, but never actually deserting 
 his post. At last the line of shooters and beaters 
 came up : — 
 
 ' Well, gentlemen ! ' said the keeper, ' I'm glad 
 you've come at last ; the little gentleman have been 
 a-pouring of it into me, terrible ! ' 
 
 As to the hare of which I said that we bagged 
 her in a very literal sense, it happened in this way : 
 we found her on her form, and she had not, I am 
 sure, left it two yards before she was coursed and 
 caught by the greyhounds, attacked by the lurchers, 
 and shot by everyone who had a gun ; consequently 
 she was killed before she had given any sport what- 
 ever. She made amends, however, afterwards. 
 Among the pack was an ill-looking lurcher, whose 
 bad. character had caused remonstrances to be 
 addressed to the owner by the other sportsmen. 
 ' Coitado ! Poor dog ! ' said his possessor, ' let him 
 come. He will be miserable if we leave him, and 
 howl so that my wife will wish herself dead ! ' 
 
 He came, and stuck to his master's heels the 
 whole morning in the most exemplary manner. 
 When the hare was killed it was his master who 
 carried her, holding her by the hind legs, and the 
 dog, seeing his opportunity come, suddenly gripped 
 the animal in his teeth, and held on with such force, 
 as his master tried to pull it away, that presently the 
 dog was left with the head and the master with the 
 
COUNTRY LLFE AND SPORT. 141 
 
 body. Others of the pack attracted by the noise, 
 seized that part of the hare still held by the gentle- 
 man, and got it from him, while another detachment 
 of dogs pursued the lurcher with the head in his 
 mouth. Then began a novel kind of chase, with 
 more shouting and flying about of quarter-staves, and 
 laughing and tumbling down. Some of us tried to 
 recover the body, some chased the head. We were 
 very much out of breath before we again got together 
 the two portions of the hare. 
 
 'Bring the needle and thread ! ' was called out — 
 the needle and thread ! necessities in this kind of 
 sport where the game is set upon by such packs. 
 
 They were brought. The decapitated quarry 
 was cleverly sewn together, the fur smoothed down, 
 and then gravely insinuated into a narrow linen bag, 
 also brought for the occasion. 
 
 Then we pushed on again, and presently a volley 
 from the whole force brought down a red-legged 
 partridge ; a little further on and the dogs started a 
 fox in a thick piece of gorse. We shot him. 
 Another volley at close quarters proved fatal to a 
 woodcock, whose long bill was nearly all that 
 remained to prove his identity and the straight 
 shooting of the eight gentlemen who had fired. 
 Then came luncheon, and we fought all our battles 
 over again, killing the slain many more times than 
 thrice. Then we degenerated into politics — local 
 chiefly, and election matters, just as we should have 
 done at home. 
 
 Now, I have noticed that Portuguese gentlemen 
 
142 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 of all shades of opinion, when they get together 
 among friends, like to talk about and strongly to 
 declaim against the realization of a certain wild pro- 
 ject which is well known to European politicians as 
 the Iberian Idea — the project, that is, of bringing 
 Spain and Portugal together under a single crown. 
 Oddly enough, this question is shirked in the Press of 
 the country, though Liberals and Conservatives alike 
 are against it, and, indeed, easily worked into a state 
 of patriotic and very natural indignation at a mere 
 suggestion of the possibility of such a thing. Even 
 the Miguelites, who are still not uncommon through 
 the country, though their cause is growing more and 
 more a chimera with every year of peace and good 
 government, and though their Miguelism now usually 
 sits as lightly upon them as did his Jacobitism upon 
 Dr. Johnson — even these, professedly unsatisfied men, 
 protest against Iberianism as a thing running counter 
 to all the interests, and the aspirations, and instincts, 
 and grand traditions of the country. 
 
 The truth about the Iberian idea is, I believe, 
 simply this — that the possibility of its realization is 
 not perhaps quite so remote as patriots and outsiders 
 suppose. A large party has always desired it in 
 Spain, and, curiously enough, a small one even in 
 Portugal. The country itself, however, unlike some 
 others, is too small for the unpatriotic, even when 
 swelled by the fools, to make a large party. Among 
 Continental politicians,the Absolutists, the Ultramon- 
 tanes, and the Eeds would eacli for their own and 
 obvious reasons like to see the Iberianism of the 
 
COUNTRY LIFE AND SPORT. 143 
 
 Peninsula an accomplished fact. In England, where 
 we know by experience something of racial antipa- 
 thies, no one, I suppose, would desire to bring about 
 any such union, or even a federation of Spain and 
 Portugal, always excepting the numerically insignifi- 
 cant and incurable party among our own countrymen 
 who tried to help on Carlism at the expense of 
 toleration and free institutions, and who seemed at 
 one time to expect in their unwisdom that Iberianism 
 would advance their views. 
 
 The only section of the British public who would 
 actually benefit by a realisation of the Iberian idea 
 would be the holders of Spanish Stocks. Spanish 
 Three per Cents, would certainly go up, and Portu- 
 guese as certainly go down. 
 
 After lunch we had better sport and even better 
 amusement than before. A brace of woodcocks 
 were brought down and cleverly snatched from the 
 dogs. A second hare got away from the guns, and 
 was run into after a good course. Its exceedingly 
 mangled remains were repaired as before, and fitted 
 into another little bag. But the several rabbits we 
 came upon gave more occupation and amusement 
 than anything, doubling backwards and forwards 
 among dogs and men to the most excitingly immi- 
 nent peril of both. One gentleman, laying about him 
 with his quarter-staff in the direction of a passing 
 rabbit, struck his best friend so heavy a blow on the 
 ankle that he dropped to it, and had to be ' restored ' 
 before he could limp on with the party. 
 
144 POETlJGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 I do not know whether it is that the air of a 
 Portuguese autumn day in these great sandy forests 
 of pine or chestnut, with their gay undergrowth of 
 aromatic shrubs, is more exhilarating than other air, 
 and peculiarly conducive to a flow of good spirits, or 
 whether the good humour and enjoyment come from 
 the incidents and circumstances of a Portuguese 
 shooting party ; certain it is that the thing is most 
 enjoyable. In describing this particular one, I am 
 not telling of what happened on any particular day, 
 or to any particular set of people : I could not ven- 
 ture upon such an impertinence to, my friends to 
 please any reader. It is a general account of a 
 typical caqada ; and those who know what such a 
 thing is will agree that it is not unfaithful. In many 
 a one have I joined, and, coming home again, I have 
 sometimes compared the day's sport with one spent 
 in English coverts. In Portugal, a pleasant day's 
 ramble in the forest, with not much game indeed in 
 hand at the end of it, but the lasting memory of 
 many very surprising and unlooked-for adventures 
 and misadventures. In England, a return homeward 
 often wet through and chilled to the bone, having 
 stood for hours in the sleety wind, over the ankles in 
 mud and water, my right shoulder stiff and sore from 
 long and monotonous shooting, perhaps my host 
 looking black at me for having missed the solitary 
 woodcock of the day, or for having killed more than 
 my allowance of hen pheasants. 
 
 When French people wish to say that a party of 
 pleasure has been successful, they sum up with the 
 
COUNTRY LIFE AND SPORT. 
 
 145 
 
 phrase, ' Nous avons beaucoup ri! I could always 
 have made the same remark after a shooting expedi- 
 tion into the woods of Portugal. 
 
 It is the poet Thomson, I think, who has said that 
 ' a serene melancholy is the most noble and most 
 agreeable situation of the human mind ; ' but admit- 
 ting all the nobility and serene delight of melancholy, 
 that mental attitude would be a most difficult one to 
 maintain among an enthusiastic and good-humoured 
 party of Portuguese sportsmen out for a cacada. 
 
 COUNTRY HOUSE IN PORTUGAL. 
 
146 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 CHAPTER V, 
 
 FARMING AND FARM PEOPLE. 
 
 He who comes to Portugal in autumn in search of 
 the picturesque must not, as a rule, expect to find it 
 quite after the pattern to which he has become ac- 
 customed in Northern Europe. Here there is none 
 of the calm and stately beauty of an English autumn, 
 the leafage slowly bronzing with the early touches of 
 frost, the russet bracken standing up in finer contrast 
 than ever with the greenery around, and the fallen 
 beech leaves spread like golden patines on the smooth 
 sheep-cropped turf. This is very delightful, — and 
 pleasant it is in the keen October air of our own 
 country to walk out and see the slow and gradual 
 death of the year ; a summer mellowed and tempered 
 with the coming breath of frost and snow, — a winter 
 still warm with the sun of the waning summer. 
 
 After a different fashion does autumn come upon 
 us here in Portugal. The meeting of summer and 
 winter is not a gradual transition, but a sudden con- 
 test. To walk out upon an autumn day is not to 
 assist at a euthanasia, but to see the victims of a 
 oreat elemental strife : the fields are fields on which 
 a battle has been fought. 
 
FARMING AND FARM PEOPLE. 147 
 
 The hot Lusitanian sun has stimulated an extra- 
 ordinary wealth of branch and leaf growth, and sud- 
 denly the downpour of equinoctial rain has come 
 upon it, and the strong winds have brayed and broken 
 everything, and covered the fields with leaves sodden 
 and decaying already in the warm and steamy air. 
 In the most cultivated districts the waste and desola- 
 tion are greatest, for the maize straw is mostly lying 
 in the fields in discoloured stooks, — the most unsightly 
 of harvests, — and the vines are no longer picturesque, 
 but their long sprays straggling where the wind has 
 left them, and their leaves either falling or hanging 
 down half withered and unshapely, have lost all the 
 rich sun : tints of summer. 
 
 The damp atmosphere which hangs over the 
 land at this time of the year is to some susceptible 
 constitutions a little ague-laden, and I warn the 
 tourist against a visit to Portugal till the heat 
 of early autumn be overpast, till the last week in 
 October, when bright, clear weather is the rule 
 for all the rest of the year. When St. Martin's 
 summer begins — on or about the 11th of Novem- 
 ber — there have disappeared the very last of the 
 mosquitoes ; and though they are little troublesome 
 in Portugal, attacking one only at night, their 
 bite grows more and more envenomed as the sum- 
 mer gets older, till in September they are at their 
 fiercest. 
 
 A far worse plague than mosquitoes is also past, 
 — the plague of flies. The present writer may claim 
 to have done his full share of the travelling which 
 
 L 2 
 
118 POKTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 modern society requires of its members. He has 
 cheerfully set out on, and often more cheerfully re- 
 turned from, rambles in most European countries. He 
 has come to the conclusion that among the greatest 
 evils of foreign travel in the South are the flies ; more 
 troublesome than beggars in Spain or donkey-boys in 
 Egypt, worse than the inn-keepers of Germany or 
 the brigands of Italy, greater pests even than vul- 
 gar Englishmen in Switzerland. 
 
 It is so much the fashion for modern philosophers 
 to deal with the infinitesimal, and triumphantly to 
 trace great effects to small and unsuspected causes, 
 that one may well wonder that science has so com- 
 pletely overlooked the influence of flies upon the 
 destinies of the human race. The savant whose 
 guiding principle often is de minimis curat scientia, 
 might build up a very pretty theory upon the rela- 
 tions of Musca domestica and Homo sapiens, and a 
 difference of manners, of habits, of temperament, and 
 even of dress, might be traced between the people of 
 countries where the house-fly is numerous and active, 
 and countries like England where it can almost be 
 left out of account altogether. The swarms of flies 
 are in the South no trivial matter in the economy of 
 life, but, though an every-day incident, one im- 
 portant enough to be had in serious consideration, — 
 to be made, for instance, the subject of grave simile 
 and comparison. When Homer is describing the 
 heroic rally of the Trojan warriors round the dead 
 body of Sarpedon, lie does not think it beneath the 
 dignity of the occasion to compare their numbers 
 
 
FARMING AND FAEM PEOPLE. 149 
 
 and their obstinacy, and the noise of their arms in 
 fight to the clouds of flies which 
 
 At spring time in the cattle-sheds 
 Around the milk-pail swarm with buzzing wings. 
 
 To take but one point : — the habit of taking a 
 siesta, a habit in itself modifying the whole home-life 
 and character of a people, and one which we North- 
 erners consider so thoroughly effeminate, is certainly 
 due not to the heat of the South, but to its flies. 
 None but those who have suffered it can have any 
 notion of the exasperation which is caused to a man 
 who is the victim of a cloud of buzzing flies through- 
 out a long summer day. Mental labour becomes 
 quite impossible when things get to their worst, at 
 three or four o'clock, when the afternoon is hottest 
 and drowsiest and the flies at their busiest. At such 
 a moment the human intellect is almost incapable of 
 exertion ; no brain could work out a long division sum, 
 no one could write a leading article or even a sermon. 
 A man is driven to a dark room where the flies will 
 not follow him ; he goes not for coolness only but for 
 peace, and being at rest and in the dark, he necessarily 
 sleeps. This is the rationale of the siesta of the South. 
 
 It is only inside the house that the flies are wholly 
 intolerable ; out of doors they are as numerous but 
 not aggressive. In Malta I once saw a regiment 
 seemingly of clergymen marching along the high road, 
 — a fearful spectacle ! A closer inspection showed 
 that this alarming infantry was nothing more formid- 
 able than a body of our own honest soldiers, with 
 
150 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 their scarlet uniforms blackened and quite concealed 
 by myriads of flies. But flies in the open air are 
 stationary and on their good behaviour ; indoors the 
 Southern fly is ever on the move, qucerens quern and 
 quid devoret. It is the home-keeping women who 
 suffer, not the men who have gone afield ; and there- 
 fore it is the women who always cover their heads 
 with hoods or handkerchiefs, the men only when they 
 live indoor lives, — hence monks are hooded, women 
 veiled. One step more and we have the Yashmak of 
 the Turk, the Zenana, a general invasion of women's 
 rights and liberties, and I know not what beside, — and 
 all to be traced, if philosophers would but see it, to 
 so seemingly trivial a cause as the common house-fly ! 
 
 So far as weather is concerned, I do not know 
 that after all I do well to warn my compatriots 
 against the steamy air of a Portuguese autumn. We 
 all, Englishmen, Irishmen, Scotchmen, Welshmen, and 
 Cockneys, have a weakness for dull weather. We 
 have eaten and slept and walked and talked in fog 
 and rain ; it has come to be a second nature to us. 
 In truth the Briton admires but does not always in 
 his heart love the climate of what he is pleased to call 
 ' the sunny south.' Its brightness to him is glare, its 
 constancy monotonous. 'These blue skies are charm- 
 ing in theory,' I once heard a candid Englishman say, 
 ' but the long droughts are too much for me, they 
 burn me up, the sunlight oppresses me, — I want 
 moisture, I want rain, — I want,' he said with a loving 
 emphasis on the words, ' nice, warm, muggy rain ! ' 
 
FARMING AND FARM PEOPLE. 151 
 
 If the traveller is not to be deterred by dull skies 
 and rain, and will come to Portuguese soil during the 
 autumnal equinox, he will find the country, in so far 
 as its agriculture is concerned, at its most critical and 
 most interesting stage. 
 
 The social, financial, political, and even reli- 
 gious aspects of Portugal are almost wholly identical 
 with its aspects as a country of farmers, of vine- 
 dressers, of shepherds, and of graziers. Except for a 
 small population of miners, of fishermen on the rivers 
 and estuaries, and of sailors, the whole population 
 should be, if political economy had proper sway in 
 the country, purely an agricultural one. Unfortu- 
 nately, very fallacious principles prevail among the 
 governing classes, and several branches of manu- 
 factures are encouraged to languish, and the people 
 are heavily taxed by a high and omnivorous tariff, 
 Portugal, however, is a country which, since its 
 liberal awakening fifty years ago, has shown such 
 progressive wisdom in all the arts of government, that 
 I firmly believe that all these false protective theories 
 wait but ' the inevitable hour ' to be swept away, and 
 that when the country awakes to common sense in 
 such matters it will become, more thoroughly than it 
 is even at present, a country of farmers. Even now 
 the intelligent observer of foreign social problems 
 looks to find their solution in the condition of agricul- 
 ture. I have met with more than one such observer 
 on their travels, and their honest expression of opinions, 
 even when they have little time or opportunity or 
 perhaps ability to form them soundly, are always 
 
152 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 interesting and often instructive, though not always 
 in a way they themselves might suppose or desire. 
 
 A stout, intelligent, and highly conversational 
 German was holding forth fluently at the table d'hote 
 of an hotel in a certain important city of Portugal 
 as I not long ago took my seat at that board, and I 
 listened with patience to his opinions. The Germans, 
 as everyone knows, have lately, and only lately, 
 become a highly practical people. Delighting no 
 longer to hold aloof from the ways of ordinary men 
 and to keep to the cloudland of ideology and transcen- 
 dentalism, they have descended to terra jirma, and are 
 willing to instruct the whole world in the business of 
 its daily life. Does a financier think he understands 
 the exchanges and the fluctuations in the bullion 
 market ? Let him talk for five minutes to a German 
 and learn his ignorance. Do we Englishmen and 
 Americans think we know something by experience of 
 representative government? The first Berliner shall 
 show us our mistake. The schoolmaster who is now 
 abroad in the world is the German Professor, and he is 
 no longer either abstruse, or impracticable, or philo- 
 sophically contemptuous of Philistinism. Perhaps 
 we want to know how to fight or to farm, to garden 
 or to cook, to write books or to paint pictures ? The 
 Professor will instruct us, and if we do not want to 
 be instructed, he will instruct us all the same — or all 
 the more. 
 
 4 After all, these Portuguese are fools,' the German 
 was saying, — he qualified the word by an epithet 
 which need not be recorded — ' they are fools, gentle- 
 
FARMING AND FARM PEOPLE. 153 
 
 men, as farmers : they fatten cattle without cake 
 or roots ; they don't know how to make their hay ; 
 instead of reaping their corn with a machine, they 
 cut it with a thing like a gardener's knife ; and when 
 they might use improved ploughs by good makers, 
 they employ a crooked branch with a tenpenny nail 
 tied to the end of it ! ' 
 
 The wit rather, than the wisdom of the speaker 
 (who delivered himself in an English which though 
 fluent I have ventured to transpose into a more 
 vernacular key) caused a laugh among those of us 
 who understood him. 
 
 I gathered from some further remarks which fell 
 from this gentleman, that he was one of the class who 
 travel in the interests of their friends at home, and 
 generally carry assortments of the staples of these 
 friends' business in bags or other receptacles. From 
 the cynical tone noticeable in his conversation I 
 concluded that he had found some difficulty in 
 4 placing ' these goods among the Portuguese. No 
 men are so full of information and opinions as 
 ' travellers ' of this class, or so anxious to impart 
 them, and I was willing enough to be instructed. 
 
 ' I must admit,' I replied, ' that the Portuguese 
 farmers are little better than barbarians from your 
 point of view, but what I should like to gather from 
 you is, how it would better their condition to use all 
 these new-fangled improvements.' 
 
 My new acquaintance smiled a serene smile. 
 
 ' You have perhaps, sir, not read the works of the 
 great English writer Smith ? ' he asked. 
 
154 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 ' I have read Adam Smith in the original,' I 
 answered. 
 
 ' You will then perfectly understand how the 
 wealth of nations can be increased by division of 
 labour, and by economy of labour, and by perfection 
 of labour. Now, it is clear that when a farmer cuts 
 a clumsy plough from the nearest wood, hammers out 
 his own ploughshare, and ploughs his own land with 
 this miserable implement, there is neither division of 
 labour, nor economy of labour, nor perfection of 
 labour.' 
 
 ' You could not,' I said, ' put it more neatly.' 
 
 My stout acquaintance smiled again. 
 
 ' It is the same all through the farm system. The 
 farmer might use cake to feed his cattle and enrich 
 his fields.' 
 
 ' I admit the cake.' 
 
 ' And surely, sir, you must admit that he could 
 grow roots with advantage, reap his corn crop with a 
 patent reaper, and his grass with a patent mower. 
 He might cut his chaff by steam, pulp his roots by 
 machinery, steam them in one of our patent steamers ; 
 to say nothing of employing our improved elevators, 
 and rollers, and crushers, and scarifiers, of all of 
 which, poor man, he is as ignorant as the child un- 
 born.' 
 
 I took advantage of a slight pause, during which 
 the German took out an illustrated catalogue of a 
 well-known English firm of agricultural implement- 
 makers, to say — 
 
 6 But, assuming that he coidd employ all these 
 
FARMING AND FARM PEOPLE. 155 
 
 improvements, and reform his ways with all these 
 novelties, how would he be the better ? ' 
 
 4 Sir, he would be the richer.' 
 
 4 Would he be the happier ? ' 
 
 Herr Sacculator smiled for the third time. 
 4 Really,' he said, ' I think we may assume that wealth 
 is the first step towards happiness.' 
 
 4 I believe,' I said, 4 that we know as little of the 
 first as of any subsequent step on that road.' 
 
 Irony was never well bestowed on a German, and 
 he went on : ' The mere possession of good wages is 
 certainly in itself a most excellent thing. It gives a 
 man opportunities for dealing with the political 
 machinery of his country, and leisure for self-culture 
 and the various graces of life.' 
 
 ' In some parts of the county of Hertfordshire in 
 England,' I remarked, ' the women and children work 
 at straw-plaiting, and each family makes a good deal 
 of money. Yet the people do not care a rush for 
 politics, and are so removed from self-culture and the 
 graces of life that a more idle, poaching, ill-mannered, 
 immoral set of sots are not to be found in broad 
 England.' 
 
 Facts are as nothing when compared with general 
 principles, and the German gentleman proceeded 
 undisturbed. 
 
 4 You will surely,' he said, 4 not put forward such 
 a paradox as that poverty conduces to a people's 
 happiness more than wealth ? ' 
 
 4 Sir,' I said, 4 if I put forward, or seem to put 
 forward, any paradox whatever^ it is less to defend it 
 
156 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 than to give you the opportunity of refuting it. If 
 you can show me that wealth and welfare are the 
 same things, you are very welcome to do so.' 
 
 ' If I can in any way conduce to the making of 
 the Portuguese a wealthy people, it is clear that I 
 make them also a happy people.' 
 
 ' Then it is obvious,' I said, ' that the more chaff- 
 cutters and patent rollers and scarifiers and elevators 
 the Portuguese can be got to take, the happier they 
 will become.' 
 
 4 Certainly ; the more contented.' 
 
 ' I know nothing of that,' I said. ' It may be less 
 what he gains than what he looks to gain that makes 
 a peasant contented. Peasants are only human after all.' 
 
 4 Those are refinements,' said the German shrewdly, 
 4 that I would rather not enter into. Wealth, I say, 
 and contentment are correlative terms.' 
 
 Then we argued, or rather the German argued, 
 and he declaimed, and he convinced himself, and con- 
 vinced himself that he had convinced me, and finally 
 at parting he shook hands with me, and expressed his 
 pleasure at having encountered so entirely reasonable 
 a person as myself. 
 
 I trust that I am at least not stupid enough to try 
 to confute a man against his will ; I am sure that I 
 have enough sense not to think I can convince any 
 man against his interest. The German gentleman 
 may possibly have been right in his conclusions, but 
 he had arrived at them in considerable ignorance of 
 the facts ; and there is certainly this one advantage 
 in seeing much of the world, and coming into contact 
 
FARMING AND FARM PFOPLE. 157 
 
 with the great variety of unpleasing facts and people 
 therein contained, that a man gets at last almost to 
 lose the disagreeable habit of generalizing and any 
 undue sense of the value of general principles — most 
 fertile sources of disputation and argument. A roiling 
 stone gathers no moss ; a Professor vegetating in a little 
 German University — the educated German is ever of 
 the Professorial type — gathers a great deal, and 
 evolves in the unwholesome atmosphere about him so 
 much of prejudice and preconception, as that hardly 
 any collision with the hard edges of stubborn facts 
 shall ever afterwards rid him of. Still my German 
 chance acquaintance was so intelligent a person that 
 he might have hesitated to suggest a violent reform of 
 the whole system of Portuguese agriculture, had he 
 known only as much of its conditions as it is my inten- 
 tion to communicate to the reader forthwith. His 
 judgment was indeed becoming visibly affected by so 
 much of the true doctrine as I was able to instil into 
 him between the courses of the table cVhote dinner. 
 
 Farming in Portugal is, as I must admit, at a 
 standstill, and it has moved very little for some four- 
 teen hundred years. There is consequently immense 
 room for improvement. For every hundred bushels 
 of corn that are now produced another fifty could, I 
 have little doubt, be grown, with improved hus- 
 bandry ; and two hundred beasts could probably be 
 fattened for every hundred that the farmers now sell. 
 The nation would therefore, if this be so, become a 
 richer nation ; but this could only be the case after a 
 
158 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 profound modification of the existing condition of 
 things. Though the political economist might wel- 
 come a nation with a doubled power of consuming 
 cotton goods and hardware, and though the statistician 
 might like to write down on his tables so many more 
 millions of Portuguese souls, horned cattle, sheep, 
 pigs, and bushels of corn, it does not at all follow that 
 the sum of human well-being would be one jot the 
 greater, that the star of happiness would be one 
 degree higher in the Portuguese heavens, or that 
 some very disagreeable problems would not present 
 themselves for solution which now no Portuguese 
 statesman is ever called upon to solve. 
 
 If I did not think there were some lessons to be 
 learned from the conduct of a Portuguese farm, I 
 should not venture to say so much as I am going to 
 say about Portuguese farming. 
 
 Though we are so backward in all the arts of 
 agriculture, we yet in Portugal can do what if all 
 British farmers could do the wealth of Great Britain 
 would be trebled, aud the tide turned against agricul- 
 tural distress for a century. 
 
 We can grow corn in Portugal on the same land 
 year after year. I say ' we,' for I am myself a prac- 
 tical farmer, and have farmed in Portugal for more 
 than ten years. The reader shall presently see how 
 we solve this great problem of continuous corn-crop- 
 ing, and, if he be a farmer, he shall judge how far the 
 system can be made applicable at home. 
 
 I think our five bad English harvests have brought 
 home to us more feelingly than ever how great an 
 
FARMING AND FAEM PEOPLE. 159 
 
 interest the farming is, how much more important 
 than any other, almost than all others. An excellent 
 authority has just been laying down almost as a new 
 discovery what certainly should have forced itself on 
 our convictions long enough ago as little better than 
 a platitude. ' The success,' says this eminent econo- 
 mist, ' with which agriculture is practised in a country 
 is the measure of that part of the population which is 
 set free for other employment, or may subsist at 
 leisure.' He could not have said a truer thing, though, 
 perhaps, he might have put his truth more fully and 
 more clearly. 
 
 Now, if we look back at the agricultural history 
 of any country, which is not by some exceptional 
 degree of fertility or vastness in its territory elevated 
 above and beyond the reach and wish of competition 
 from other countries ; if we look at the farm history 
 of our own country, for instance, we shall see that its 
 agricultural industry has thriven, not progressively, 
 but by fits and starts : now a time of depression, now a 
 revival, and after it, for a time, prosperity again. In 
 countries like America and Eussia, of great natural 
 fertility and suitable climate, breadcorn, the staple of 
 farming everywhere, may go on for ever being pro- 
 duced on their vast productive prairies and steppes, 
 with the minimum of interference from man's intelli- 
 gence ; but we know but too well how little that is the 
 case at home. Here, if we are to thrive, it is our own 
 wits that must beat the elements, and win the day for 
 us against competition from the outside. 
 
 If we look back at the records of British farming 
 
160 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. . 
 
 we may read plainly how its periods of prosperity, 
 local or general, have ever followed some capital device 
 of man's ingenuity, some invention, some new process, 
 or the novel application of some established principle. 
 Now the good times followed the introduction of the 
 new turnip -growing system ; now they followed the 
 system of artificial grasses ; now of the imported and 
 manufactured chemical manures, or of the artificial 
 foods for sheep and oxen. Or again, it was the use 
 of farm machinery which filled the farmers' pockets, 
 or the improved breeds of cattle which fattened early, 
 and gave him beef where his fathers got bone ; and 
 always, as competition pressed on, the impulse lost its 
 force, and dying away left all farming better, all Eng- 
 land the richer, but no one farmer better off than his 
 neighbour. 
 
 Of these various devices and inventions many came 
 from abroad, as every farmer knows, and chiefly from 
 the north-western parts of Europe, where men's wits 
 are keenest, the population thickest, and the struggle 
 with nature most active. I am not aware that any 
 one idea has ever come in recent years from the south 
 of Europe. From Portugal certainly we have never 
 imported a single agricultural idea with the splendid 
 cattle and the many pipes of port wine which that 
 country annually sends us ; and yet it is in this back- 
 ward country that the thing is done which, if England 
 could do, England's wealth would be trebled and quad- 
 rupled. Nothing so astonished me, when I first saw a 
 luxuriant Portuguese maize field, as to be told that it 
 had produced such a crop summer after summer for a 
 
FARMING AND FARM PEOPLE. 161 
 
 century, and would continue to do as much for as long 
 again. It was some little time before the solution of 
 this problem became manifest to me. The reader 
 shall have the means of judging whether it is in Portu- 
 gal only that this profitable feat is to be performed, or 
 whether our English farmers may not do as much. 
 
 The land in Portugal throughout the length and 
 breadth of the country is held under five principal 
 kinds of tenure — the allodial, the emphyteutic, the 
 leasehold, the communal, and a tenure termed 
 Parceria rural, which differs but little from the 
 Metayer system of Bavaria, France, and Italy. Here, 
 as in those countries, the landlord finds the land and 
 sometimes the seed, and receives for rent a proportion 
 of the produce. 
 
 The Allodial is the tenure which prevails chiefly 
 in the wide and naturally fertile plains of Central and 
 Southern Portugal. The holder of the fee simple of 
 the land either tills his own broad acres with the 
 minimum of capital, energy, and knowledge, or, if the 
 estate is too large, lets it on short and uncertain 
 leases to tenants who take his place and farm it, 
 almost to as little purpose as himself. The Com- 
 munal tenure is to be found chiefly in the wilder and 
 more mountainous regions ; the communist holders 
 are, for the most part, the lineal descendants of the 
 original communal grantees of the land at a time 
 when the country had just been recovered from its 
 Saracen occupants. Such holdings were, no doubt, 
 frequent in parts of the country where now the 
 
 M 
 
162 POETUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 original communists have been, in the course of suc- 
 cessive ages, bought out, or forced or cheated out of 
 their lands by neighbouring nobles or churchmen. 
 Wherever remoteness or the poverty of the soil 
 offered no temptation to such powerful encroachers 
 and swindlers, the communes have endured, though 
 often greatly mutilated of their original rights and 
 privileges. On the mountain frontier between Leon 
 and Portugal, I have found cases where they had 
 dwindled to the common possession of a range of 
 pasturage or a grove of chestnuts, a couple of rams 
 or a single bull. 
 
 The metayer system is commoner in the South 
 and Centre than in the North. It seems in Portugal, 
 as elsewhere, to have grown out of the want of capital 
 in landlords and in tenants, and, as elsewhere, it is 
 probably the best possible system where such im- 
 pecuniosity prevails. In Scotland, as is well known, 
 much valuable land, has been brought into cultivation 
 through the working of this system, and every 
 political economist remembers the discussion raised 
 by Sismondi upon the metayer system, and knows all 
 about its various advantages and disadvantages, In 
 Scotland, payment of rent in kind has given place 
 to money payments ; in Portugal, neither enough 
 agricultural nor enough financial advance has b^en 
 achieved to make this possible, and for the metayer 
 system this only can be said that, while agriculture 
 under it is unprogressive, the condition of the people ■'■ 
 who engage in it is infinitely superior to where the;; 
 lord of large estates cultivates the land himself, or 
 
FARMING AND FARM PEOPLE. 163 
 
 deputes it to tenants who can afford to the labourer 
 only the barest means of subsistence, and who are by 
 necessity alien to him in degree and in interest. The 
 metayer, on the other hand, is a man of small means, 
 but he is, as it were, insured against absolute ruin, for 
 he divides his losses as he divides his gains with his land- 
 lord ; he has the strongest motive for hard work and 
 good work, for his welfare depends upon both, and — 
 chief advantage of all — he himself being hardly higher 
 in rank than the peasant whom he has hired to work 
 with him, there can be some social sympathy between 
 employer and employed. The Portuguese metayer 
 need not be a capitalist, in even the most limited 
 sense, and every labourer may aspire to become a 
 metayer himself. The peasant, therefore, has that 
 without which labour is but another name for 
 serfdom : he knows that the lottery of life may hold 
 a prize for him, and it sweetens his toil to feel that 
 his own diligence and honesty can help him to the 
 winning of it. 
 
 There is in Portugal another tenure of land, the 
 Emphyteutic, in some of its incidents so singular, and 
 in its origin and development so unlike anything to 
 be found elsewhere, and in all these respects so in- 
 structive, that I make no apology for dwelling upon 
 it at some little length. 
 
 Portugal, as everyone must remember from his 
 first geography lessons, is a narrow strip of country, 
 extremely mountainous where it marches with Spain, 
 hilly in its three northern provinces, and having 
 broad and fertile plains in its centre, through which 
 
 M 2 
 
1G4 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 plains the Eiver Tagus flows to the sea. The most 
 southerly of its six provinces, Algarve, is in its 
 climate, in the aridity of its soil, and even its 
 palmetto-covered plains and hill slopes, like a bit cut 
 off from Africa. Here the communal tenure is still 
 to be found, but the land is also held allodially and 
 by leasehold. It is in the rich central provinces of 
 Estremadura and Alemtejo that the allodial tenures 
 chiefly prevail. In the remote frontier province of 
 Traz os Montes, lying beyond the important hill range 
 of the Marao, in the north-easterly corner of the 
 kingdom, the communal system of tenures is to be 
 found ; and in the populous province of the Minho, 
 the most northerly of all, the estates are small and 
 numerous, and held, as a rule, emphyteutically. 
 This is the most prosperous district in Portugal, and 
 probably in the whole Iberian peninsula. The Minho 
 has been compared to Lombardy, and the Minhotes, 
 from their gentler manners, gayer character, and 
 better looks, have been called the Italians of Portu- 
 gal. Yet this superiority is certainly not due to soil, 
 for the province is by no means the most naturally 
 fertile of Portugal ; nor to difference of race, for the 
 population of the kingdom, from the Tagus, north- 
 ward at least, are probably homogeneous, or nearly 
 so. Its prosperity is, I believe, chiefly due to the 
 existence of a tenure by which the length and 
 breadth of the province is parcelled out among small 
 yeomen landlords — a tenure with many of the inci- 
 dents of our English copyholds — and partly again is 
 this prosperity owing to the vicissitudes in the history 
 
FARMING AND FARM PEOPLE. 165 
 
 of its peasantry, which have ended in the achieve- 
 ment by them of this excellent tenure. 
 
 I must ask for the reader's patience while I tell 
 him how it was that time and a somewhat fortunate 
 coincidence of events, and, not least, their own pru- 
 dence and determination, have won for the yeomen 
 of the Minho the happy condition in which they now 
 find themselves. 
 
 Portugal differs from most of the countries of 
 Europe in this, that no permanent and general settle- 
 ment of the land was made or was possible until a 
 comparatively late period. The laws, the customs, 
 and the institutions left by the Eoman colonists in 
 Portugal were more or less effaced by the incursions 
 of northern nations ; and before these barbarians had 
 time to settle into the fairly decent feudal Christians 
 of mediaeval Europe, their backwood laws, and their 
 customs, and their institutions were all but effaced by 
 the Saracenic invasions and occupations, and the sub- 
 sequent conflicts of the eighth and following four 
 centuries. The advance of Saracenic conquest had 
 destroyed or swept into captivity the inhabitants of 
 vast tracts of the country ; and though these regions 
 were gradually resettled and repeopled by the Portu- 
 guese, the final ascendency of the Christians was an 
 issue of such slow growth and such gradual consum- 
 mation, that when at last the Moors had been driven 
 from the land, no claimants were forthcoming for 
 much of the reconquered territory. A large share of 
 this unowned land was apportioned among the mili- 
 tary leaders and the nobles ; a larger share became 
 
166 POETUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 Church or convent property ; and the largest share 
 of all fell to the lot of the great Military Order which 
 had waged a holy war on the soil of Portugal, and 
 had mainly helped in its recovery. 
 
 If the land had come chiefly into the hands of the 
 nobles, as in some other countries, the eventual for- 
 mation of emphyteutic estates would probably have 
 become impossible ; but it resulted from the gener- 
 osity towards the Church both of kings and private 
 donors, and from the comparative parsimony of royal 
 land grants to individuals, that the Church became 
 the chief possessor of real property throughout the 
 country ; and the prelates and heads of monastic 
 orders occupied the place and possessed the influence 
 of the great landholding nobility of our own and of 
 other countries of Northern Europe. 
 
 The contests between the barons and the kings of 
 England were anticipated in Portugal by contests 
 between the landholding prelates and their sovereigns. 
 The history of Portugal in the two hundred years 
 which followed the expulsion of the Saracens is the 
 narrative of this strife, in which the churchmen never 
 failed to lose ground, and the sovereign ever sought 
 to lessen their influence. No better means of doing 
 so presented itself than to diminish their paramount 
 influence as landholders ; and with this object, and 
 also, it may be inferred, to re-occupy the wasted 
 country, the efforts of nearly every successive 
 monarch, after the departure of the Moors, were 
 directed to establish proprietors and cultivators of 
 the soil other than monkish ones. Particular care was 
 
FARMING AND FARM PEOPLE. 167 
 
 taken that these newly-formed holdings should be 
 limited in size. King Sancho I., the successor of the 
 first great king and conqueror, Affonzo Henriquez, 
 was unwilling to bestow on an individual more land 
 than he could cultivate with his family, his slaves 
 and his servants. This example was followed by 
 King Sancho's successors. 
 
 The waning power of the Church would no doubt 
 indirectly tend to bring about the same end — namely, 
 a multiplication of small proprietary or semi-proprie- 
 tary holdings ; for the small convent farmers, origi- 
 nally tenants at will or for definite periods, as soon as 
 they perceived their monastic landlords to be losing 
 power, clamoured for and obtained fixity of tenure and 
 fixity of rent. The holding thus granted, or not dis- 
 puted, was termed aforamento, or a holding by payment 
 of aforo or fixed rent ; and this good old Portuguese 
 word would have been the designation of the tenure 
 to this day, only that later on, when letters revived, 
 in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, there revived 
 too the learning of the Eoman jurists, and the 
 pedantry rather than the necessity of the Portuguese 
 antiquarian lawyers led them to christen the old 
 tenure by the Greek and Latin name emphyteusis. 
 The ancient emphyteutic tenure is almost close 
 enough in its resemblance to the vulgar aforamento 
 to justify the pedantry of the antiquaries; and 
 though the farmers themselves will not part with 
 the old word, the lawyers use no other than emphy- 
 teusis for a copyhold estate and emphyteuta for a 
 copyholder. 
 
168 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 By the course of events which I have been en- 
 deavouring to describe, the emphyteutas obtained 
 some sort of a hold upon the land ; but it was still a 
 precarious one, and their position for a long succes- 
 sion of generations was wretched in the extreme. 
 
 Many causes were constantly at work to im- 
 poverish their holdings, and to perpetuate and aug- 
 ment the allodial estates and the wealth of the larger 
 proprietors — churchmen and nobles — their lords and 
 their neighbours. The very stringent law of entail 
 and primogeniture existing in Portugal, directly 
 devised to consolidate the great estates, was not 
 relaxed till late in the eighteenth century, and the 
 ever-recurring diminution of the emphyteutic estate 
 by fines upon alienation and succession (fines and 
 heriots were from the first incidents of emphyteusis) 
 could not but keep these small proprietors in a state 
 of miserable penury and dependence. 
 
 In the middle of the fifteenth century their con- 
 dition had become — in their own opinion at least — 
 abject. In a memorial addressed to King Affonzo V., 
 they speak of themselves in pitiable terms, as having 
 to part with their very cattle to satisfy their lords, as 
 being ground down by exaction, and as being — as 
 they express it — shorn like flocks of sheep. In 
 picturesque language, they represent themselves as 
 being driven into the towns by hunger and by op- 
 pression, and that the very beasts of the field, the 
 birds and the insects, had conspired to rob them of 
 the few grains of corn which they still possessed. 
 The patriotism of the kings of Portugal, or their 
 
FARMING AND FARM PEOFLE. 169 
 
 anxiety to countervail and impair the power of the 
 Church and the nobles, did not suffer them to leave 
 such petitions unanswered ; but relief to the Portu- 
 guese yeomen reached them slowly. It is by no 
 means unlikely that their estates would have fallen, 
 in time, into the possession of the great landholders, 
 but for the action of two causes, both singular in this 
 respect, that one of them did not and the second 
 could not happen in any of the countries of Northern 
 Europe. The first of these causes was the sudden 
 growth throughout Portugal of a thirst for foreign 
 and distant discovery and conquest, fostered by the 
 Infante Dom Enrique at the beginning of the 
 fifteenth century. 
 
 This spirit of adventure continued for two centuries 
 to be almost universal among the upper and the upper 
 middle classes of Portugal. The natural desire of 
 these classes to acquire influence by acquiring land 
 was directed to this novel and speedier mode of gain- 
 ing money, influence, and fame. Wealth flowed into 
 the country, but it was spent luxuriously in the cities, 
 and country life has never since those days been 
 popular with the richer classes in the same way that 
 it is popular in France, in Germany or in England, 
 and the possession of landed property never such an 
 object of ambition. 
 
 The second cause of the consolidation and pros- 
 perity of the emphyteutic estates will appear even 
 more singular to an English agriculturist. This was 
 the introduction from America of the cultivation of 
 maize in the middle of the sixteenth century. Much 
 
170 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 more than root crops and rye grass have done for 
 the Low Countries or the potato for Ireland has been 
 done by maize in Spain and Portngal. This produc- 
 tive grain has been a boon to Portuguese farmers, 
 and above all other farmers to the emphyteutic 
 farmer. It is obvious that, granting fixity of tenure 
 under unalterable conditions of rent, services and 
 obligations, — however burdensome they may origin- 
 ally have been, — the contract having been made in 
 unsettled times, and in a half-peopled country, these 
 conditions must necessarily grow less burdensome 
 with the increase of population, with the develop- 
 ment of communications, with the growth of security 
 to life and property and with the general rise in 
 agricultural prices which always accompanies these 
 conditions. This has happened ; and no single cause 
 has contributed so much as the possession by the 
 farmer of the new cereal, which enabled him to more 
 than double the yield of his corn-fields. 
 
 As years went on, the grievances of the yeo- 
 man proprietors, as set foi'th in the memorial I 
 have quoted above, righted themselves ; the rack 
 rents became quit rents, and the recurring fines 
 and the exactions of the superior lords became 
 trifling in comparison with the increased value of 
 the land. 
 
 When the first great statutory reform of the em- 
 phyteutic system was made in 1832, upon the 
 ascendency of the Liberal cause and the establishment 
 of Liberal principles in Portugal, the emphyteutic 
 tenures were burdensome rather from the compli- 
 
FARMING AND FARM PEOPLE. 171 
 
 cated and uncertain state of the law relating to them, 
 than from any actual hardship to the holders. 1 
 
 The operations of farming throughout non-pastoral 
 Portugal do not materially differ from those in other 
 
 1 The law relating to Emphyteusis is now finally defined and 
 settled by the Civil Code promulgated in August, 1867. The 
 rent is to be fixed by mutual agreement, not by any custom ; fines 
 on alienation and succession are abolished ; the emphyteutic 
 estate, though hereditary, is not to be parcelled among the heirs, 
 except with the consent of the lord ; the value of the estate is to 
 be discovered by assessment, and distributed among the heirs 
 according to law. (By Portuguese law, only one-third of the 
 testator's possessions can, in the majority of cases, be disposed of 
 by will ; two-thirds are divided among the heirs.) If they cannot 
 agree upon a valuation, the value is to be decided judicially. The 
 heirs are to determine among themselves upon which of them the 
 estate is to devolve, with reference to a court of law in case of 
 their non-agreement ; if none of them desire to hold it, the estate 
 is to be sold, and the price to be divided equally among them. In 
 case of non-payment of rent, the lord may proceed to recover it as 
 an ordinary debt, with interest, but has no right of re-entry even 
 though such a right be expressly stipulated for. An action for 
 the recovery of arrears does not extend further back than five 
 years. If the holder waste the estate, so that it fall below the 
 value of a sum equivalent to the rent capitalized, with one-fifth 
 added, the lord may re-enter into possession without making any 
 compensation to the holder ; the holder may mortgage the estate 
 without the consent of the lord, provided the sum so raised do not 
 exceed the capitalized rent, with one fifth added. The holder may 
 alienate, after due notice to his lord, who has a right of pre- 
 emption. The lord may also alienate his part of the estate (his 
 seignorial rights), likewise giving notice to the holder, and in such 
 a case a corresponding right of pre-emption resides with the 
 latter. These provisions apply to emphyteutic estates created 
 after the publication of the Codes (except those provisions relating 
 to succession, which take effect retrospectively), and it will be 
 observed that, excepting the lord's right of entry in case of waste, 
 they are all in favour of the holder. 
 
 The emphyteutic lord has by this legislation come to be hardly 
 
172 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 parts of Southern Europe, where wheat, rye, and 
 maize are the corn crops, where oxen and mules are 
 the beasts of draught, and where the cattle are stall- 
 fed. This is the farm system of the alluvial valleys 
 and great plains of Portugal : in the mountainous 
 regions, where there is continuous pasture, the people 
 are shepherds or herdsmen ; in the extreme South, 
 orchards of the carob tree and the fig form no 
 small proportion of the farmer's wealth ; in the 
 marshy, sea-bordering land, rice is grown. Olives 
 afford him good return everywhere but in the North, 
 and chestnut trees give him a precarious food crop — 
 and the best timber in Europe — everywhere but in 
 the extreme South. In almost every corner of the 
 kingdom the vineyard is an essential part of the farm. 
 The passing traveller through many broad tracts 
 of Central and Southern Portugal, if he be acquainted 
 with farms and farming in some of the countries 
 
 troublesome at all to the virtual owner of the estate, and to dis- 
 charge something of the functions of a useful police in the interests 
 of the community generally, as against wasteful and detrimental 
 farmers. 
 
 Existing tenures are otherwise only affected by the Code in in- 
 significant details, with this important exception, that whereas the 
 tenure by emphyteusis might formerly be limited to one or more 
 lives, the choice of a successor either residing in the holder or 
 restricted by some clause in the original deed, or else the right of 
 presentment to the holding of the estate being in the lord's gift 
 (in which case the tenure constituted a simple tenancy for lives), 
 by the present law both lord and tenant are deprived of any such 
 right of nomination, and the estate becomes a purely hereditary 
 one, subject to the succession above described. By this reform 
 many ancient estates of most complicated tenure have been brought 
 into the category of simple emphyteutic estates, to the great advan- 
 tage of the country and of individuals. 
 
FARMING AND FARM PEOPLE. 173 
 
 of Southern Europe, where over-taxation and ill- 
 government have crushed the spirit of the toilers on 
 the land, will find much in these portions of Portugal 
 to remind him of such thriftless and unprofitable 
 cultivation. It is not till he crosses the Tagus on his 
 way northward that he will find some signs of at least 
 more energetic farming in the western corner of the 
 province of Estremadura. As he passes the boundary 
 line of the Beira province, cultivation sensibly im- 
 proves ; but it is not till he finds himself on the 
 north of the Eiver Douro that he will see a land of 
 small farms tilled like well-kept gardens, luxuriant 
 crops in summer and winter, and a gaily dressed, 
 thriving and contented peasantry. Yet it is a land 
 where there is no Poor Law, no large estates, no 
 squire justices, no high' farming, no agricultural 
 machinery, no resident landlords, and not even an 
 occasional rich and educated parson to take the 
 squire's place in a parish. Notwithstanding all these 
 serious disadvantages, this small province is so thickly 
 peopled, and its people so prosperous, that if ever our 
 own rural districts should come to rear so dense a 
 population of the same sort the production of our 
 looms and iron works would have to be doubled and 
 trebled to supply them, and we could any day put 
 an army into the field to match the armed hordes of 
 Continental Europe. 
 
 It is not probable that any other mode of holding 
 the land would have resulted in the same agricultural 
 activity and well-doing as now prevails in the 
 provinces of the Minho, under the tenure by emphy- 
 
174 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 teusis. The hilly nature of the ground and its 
 necessary subdivision into small farms ; the abun- 
 dance of water of irrigation ; the constant care which 
 is required not only in its application to the land, but 
 in the construction and reparation of tanks, water- 
 wheels, and channels ; the watchfulness necessary to 
 uphold the farmers' rights and to prevent encroach- 
 ments ;— all these are circumstances under which the 
 profitable tillage of the land can be accomplished 
 only by small farmers, and by them only if their wits 
 and industry be sharpened by actual ownership of 
 the soil they till. The self-reliance, the perseverance, 
 and the providence of these independent yeomen are 
 qualities probably not resulting entirely from the 
 nature of the tenure, but also from the long training 
 of successive generations, during which they have 
 slowly won their present rights and standing. 
 
 Emphyteusis is, as I have said, the largely pre- 
 dominating tenure of Northern Portugal. Being so, 
 its influence very perceptibly extends beyond the 
 parties interested in the emphyteutic tenure. It is the 
 standard tenure of this portion of the country, and 
 it has certainly modified the relations of landholder 
 and landworker everywhere. When listening to the 
 conversation of the tenantry of the Minho and the 
 Beira, whether they be leaseholders or metayers, it is 
 impossible not to be struck by the good sense and 
 moderation of their opinions on matters connected 
 with their relations to those above and below them. 
 Without drawing any comparison with the not un- 
 common spirit of bitterness both of the landlord and 
 
FARMING AND FARM PEOPLE. 175 
 
 tenant classes, where the latter can never hope to 
 occupy his landlord's position, as is the case in some 
 of the southern provinces of Portugal, I may at least 
 express my opinion that the little distance which 
 separates the worker upon the land from the owner 
 of it is a powerful promoter of sympathy in either for 
 the difficulties and responsibilities of the other. 
 
 Farming in Northern Portugal is almost ex- 
 clusively on a small scale, limited by the small size of 
 the estates ; and the general reproach against small 
 farming — that it is unprogressive — applies truly to 
 this part of the country. Farms of fifty acres are 
 uncommon ; those of from five to fifteen acres are 
 probably the average size in the Minho ; and here a 
 a difficulty presents itself at the outset in writing 
 upon the farm system of Portugal, in this, that no 
 measure of the land itself is ever adopted, and 
 therefore no ready means exist of comparing its 
 powers of production with those of other countries. 
 The value of a farm is determined, not by its rent, 
 for from the nature of the common tenure, rent has 
 ceased to be a measure of value ; nor by its acreage, 
 for land without water of irrigation bears no com- 
 parison in value with similar land possessing it ; but 
 by the number of cartloads of Indian corn, or, in 
 mountainous districts, of rye, which the whole of it 
 can produce in average years. 
 
 The implements and tools in general use are 
 ploughs of two sorts, harrows, a broad, heavy hoe 
 (which takes the place of a spade), a smaller one for 
 weeding, and a small reaping-hook, which is used 
 
176 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW, 
 
 indifferently to cut grass and to reap the various 
 grain crops. 
 
 The ploughs differ very little from the old Eoman 
 type, and the description of the implement left by 
 the Latin writers applies very nearly to the simpler 
 and smaller of the two kinds now used by the 
 Portuguese. This plough consists of a beam, body, 
 share and sole, with, as a rule, only one stilt. There is 
 neither coulter nor mould -board, but the share is 
 carried far forward (as in the Kentish turn -wrest 
 plough), is lance-shaped, and turned slightly 
 downwards. The work of the mould-board is done 
 by two upright pegs at the heel of the plough, 
 which pegs press out the soil on either side. The 
 whole plough can easily be carried afield on the 
 shoulders of a labourer. It works only four or five 
 inches deep, and stirs the soil in parallel, open 
 furrows ; and where the land is light and crumbling, 
 as is generally the case, this slight working of it 
 would seem to be sufficient. The other plough 
 employed is a modification of the smaller and 
 simpler one. It has two stilts, one or two wheels, a 
 low double mould-board instead of the upright pegs, 
 and occasionally (when it is required to turn over 
 a furrow slice) a broad coulter is inserted in a hole 
 in the beam, which works behind the point of the 
 share, and serves to invert the slice, its inclination 
 being changed at the end of each furrow ; but the 
 Portuguese ploughman has often no occasion to alter 
 his turn-furrow, being given to the bad practice of 
 driving a curved furrow from the boundary of the 
 
FARMING AND FARM PEOPLE. 177 
 
 field, and continuing it circularly to the centre till 
 the whole field is ploughed. This plough will work 
 as deep as seven or eight inches. The fields are so 
 small and so irregular in shape, and the ground as a 
 rule so easily worked, and, again, the whole surface 
 cultivated by each proprietor so limited, that it 
 would be difficult to persuade a Minho farmer that 
 a plough which only costs him twelve or fourteen 
 shillings, which he can repair himself with very little 
 expense, and whose use he perfectly understands, 
 is less suited to him than a more perfect and 
 complicated instrument of five or six times the 
 cost. 
 
 The harrow is also of the rudest construction, 
 having fifteen to twenty teeth of iron or wood set 
 quincunx fashion into a strong, oblong-square, 
 wooden framework with two cross-bars. Eollers are 
 unknown, but as a substitute the harrow can be 
 reversed and weighted with stones, and then drawn 
 sledgewise over the land. 
 
 The hoe is indispensable in Portuguese field- 
 husbandry. The larger kind is a flat piece of iron, 
 shaped like and two-thirds as long as an English 
 spade, fixed at a slightly acute angle upon a long 
 handle. It is used in earthing up maize, in planting 
 field-cabbages, in making and altering water-courses, 
 and in supplementing imperfect ploughing. It is 
 worked with a skill that no labourer used to the 
 different movements required by a spade could 
 probably attain to. Ground can be prepared by it 
 for seeds or for planting more quickly than it can be 
 
 N 
 
178 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 dug by a spade, although the soil is less completely 
 stirred and turned over. 
 
 The clumsiest of all Portuguese tools is the mowing 
 or reaping hook ; which, as the cattle are mostly stall 
 fed, is in constant use. It is in shape a short segment 
 of a circle, of which the arc is about a foot in length ; 
 the edge is serrated and very sharp, and the hook can 
 be used to cut grass not more than five inches high, 
 the tuft of grass being grasped in the left hand and 
 the edge of the reaping-hook being drawn against the 
 stems. The work of cutting grass is exceedingly slow, 
 and a man cannot cut more than half a rood in a day's 
 work. 
 
 The cart used throughout modern Portugal is, like 
 the plough, a modification of the old Eoman type ; 
 two low wheels of solid wood, without spokes and 
 with iron tires, are fixed immovably to an axle which 
 revolves with them. The body of the cart is com- 
 posed of four or five boards laid flat and resting on 
 two supports, whose lower sides are grooved where 
 they rest on the axle. Straw or grass is retained on 
 the flat table formed by these boards by six or more 
 movable upright poles, fitting into iron-bound sockets 
 at the sides and corners of the table-like boards, the 
 centre board being prolonged forwards into a strong 
 pole, to which the oxen are harnessed. In carrying 
 stones, earth or grain, a thick, wattled, and flexible 
 hurdle about thirty inches high is fixed, in horse- shoe 
 shape, upon the table of the cart inside the uprights ; 
 the opening behind is closed with a board. The 
 whole cart is enormously strong, and the separation 
 
FARMING AND FARM PEOPLE. 179 
 
 of the wheels and axle from the body allows it to 
 stand the shocks and joltings of roads which are often 
 little more than watercourses on the steep sides of hills. 
 
 The yoke is fixed to the necks of the oxen ; in 
 some parts of the country — the most hilly — to their 
 horns, and when so fixed a leather cushion takes off 
 the pressure from the foreheads of the animals. 
 
 The cattle are a small and beautiful variety of the 
 dun-coloured breed found in most parts of the Penin- 
 sula. In this country they are bred for draught rather 
 than for meat, and therefore their points are not such 
 as an English grazier would approve. The oxen average 
 fifty-two inches in height at the shoulder, and twelve 
 hundredweight in live weight, when three-parts fat ; 
 but they reach sixteen and sometimes eighteen 
 hundredweight. They are compact in shape, with 
 deep and most powerful shoulders, sturdy legs, and 
 carry straightish horns of great width. Their strength, 
 hardiness, quickness, docility, and great beauty of 
 shape and colour, are generally appreciated by 
 observant persons accustomed to the working cattle 
 of other countries. Both cows and oxen are used for 
 draught purposes. The beef is close-grained and good. 
 
 The sheep of the Minho, and of the lowlands of 
 Northern Portugal generally, are the worst in the king- 
 dom ; one or two sheep often live with and follow the 
 farmer's small herd of cows and oxen, but flocks are 
 hardly ever seen, except in the mountainous districts. 
 
 The breed of pigs is said to be improving ; it has 
 still, however, all the marks of a neglected race — 
 length of leg, largeness of bone, and coarseness of 
 
 N 2 
 
180 
 
 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 bristle. They fatten very slowly, as a rule. Here 
 and there a good breed has been produced by a cross 
 with the Chinese race ; at Barroso, in the North, an 
 excellent breed is to be found, and another is abun- 
 dant on the plains of the Alemtejo. 
 
 The system of tillage in Portugal varies so greatly 
 from the processes of agriculture adopted in Northern 
 Europe, that a clearer perception of this variation will 
 be given by a comparative calendar of farming opera- 
 tions in England and Portugal than by any long de- 
 scription of the divergences between the two systems. 
 
 England. 
 
 Portugal. 
 
 January, 
 
 Hauling manure ; ploughing 
 of grass leas for wheat or oats : 
 of stubbles for crops and beans. 
 
 In this month the maize 
 fields reaped in autumn are 
 either lying fallow, or, having 
 been sown with artificial grasses, 
 are mown throughout the winter 
 for the cattle. 
 
 February. 
 
 Wheat, bean, and pea sow- 
 ing; preparation of ground for 
 green crops. 
 
 Sowing of all corn crops, ex- 
 cept rice, maize, and rye. The 
 pruning and tying of vines 
 should end this month. 
 
 Sowing corn crops, grass 
 and clover seeds, vetches, peas, 
 beans, and parsnips; rolling of 
 wheat. 
 
 March. 
 
 Sowing of com as in Feb- 
 ruary ; and breaking up grass 
 leas for maize sowing in follow- 
 ing month ; planting potatoes. 
 
 April. 
 
 Finishing the sowing as 
 above; sowing carrots, mangel 
 wurzel, cabbage seeds in beds, 
 flax, lucerne, etc. 
 
 horse-hoeing 
 
 wheat, etc. ; planting potatoes. 
 
 Sowing maize, kidney beans, 
 gourds ; planting Galician cab- 
 bages in maize fields. Hay- 
 making on a very small scale. 
 
FARMING AND FARM PEOPLE. 
 
 181 
 
 England. 
 
 May. 
 
 Preparing land for turnips ; 
 hoeing growing crops, etc. 
 
 Portugal. 
 
 Sowing of maize continued ; 
 hoeing of early-sown maize 
 fields. 
 
 June. 
 
 Sowing first swedes and 
 then turnips ; transplanting cab- 
 bages; mowing clover and 
 vetches. Early hay-making. 
 
 Harvest of barley, oats, rye, 
 wheat, and broad beans ; hoeing 
 and thinning of maize ; men en- 
 gaged daily in the maize fields, 
 putting on water of irrigation, 
 etc. ; cutting serradella, clover, 
 and plaintain for stall-feeding. 
 
 July 
 Turnip-sowing; hay-making; 
 cutting beans and peas. 
 
 Corn harvest. 
 
 Continuation of harvest of 
 all cereals, except maize, which 
 requires constant attention wher- 
 ever water is available; field 
 onions gathered. The male flower 
 of the maize is gathered. 
 
 August. 
 
 Work in maize fields as in 
 July. 
 
 September. 
 
 Clearing of and ploughing 
 up stubbles for winter wheat; 
 sowing Italian rye grass, winter 
 vetches, etc. 
 
 Harvest of early-sown maize; 
 of rice; vintage. 
 
 October. 
 
 Winter wheat and bean sow- 
 ing ; ploughing land 
 spring sowing. 
 
 Harvest of maize, and vin- 
 tage, continued; ploughing of 
 stubble and sowing of winter 
 barley, rye, and wheat; also 
 sowing of rye-grass, with rye 
 and barley, for winter forage; 
 harvest of kidney beans ; plant- 
 ing of kidney beans; planting 
 of Galician and other cabbages. 
 
182 
 
 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 England. 
 
 Portugal. 
 
 November. 
 
 Root harvest ; ploughing up 
 of stubbles and leas. 
 
 Sowing of broad beans, win- 
 ter wheat, rye, etc. ; men busy 
 on the threshing-floors and in 
 the barns ; vine pruning, begun 
 in end of October, throughout 
 the month and next three; olives 
 gathered in this and following 
 month. 
 
 December. 
 
 Hauling manure and thresh- 
 
 ing. 
 
 Sowing of rye, etc., as in 
 November; hauling manure out, 
 and threshing. 
 
 The chief feature of the lowland tillage of the 
 greater part of Portugal is the growth of maize, to 
 which all other culture is made subservient. In deep, 
 well-manured and irrigated land, maize will produce 
 from twenty to fifty imperial bushels of a grain of a 
 value averaging that of barley, about a ton of forage 
 in early summer, and from half a ton to a ton of most 
 nutritious and excellent straw food. The same acre 
 of ground on which maize is grown likewise produces 
 dwarf beans and gourds — about two to five bushels of 
 the former, and from one to three tons weight of the 
 latter to the acre. So productive a crop, which in land 
 well-manured and with water of irrigation available 
 would seem to be producible year after year without 
 exhaustion of the soil, is a temptation to ignore any 
 system of rotation whatever ; consequently, during the 
 five hottest months of every year, the ground is occu- 
 pied with this corn. I shall presently show how it is 
 that this apparent flying in the face of all received agri- 
 
FARMING AND FARM PEOPLE. 183 
 
 cultural doctrine is chiefly the result of the consump- 
 tion on the farm of all the straw it grows and the use 
 of gorse as litter. 
 
 Maize can be sown as early as March in this lati- 
 tude, but it is profitable to put off the ploughing up 
 of grass leas — which are then in full production — 
 till as late as possible. The middle of April is the 
 average date for sowing, but seed-time may be de- 
 ferred till the 15th or 20th of May, or even later. The 
 seed is sown broadcast, after one or more ploughings 
 with the larger kind of plough ; if the land has been 
 manured for a previous autumn crop of artificial 
 grass, no manure (or but little) is put in at seed-time ; 
 but if not, a very liberal allowance of well-fermented 
 cow- dung, sometimes as much as thirty tons to the 
 acre, is put upon the land. 1 The manure is spread upon 
 the unbroken lea, and covered in at once by a deep 
 ploughing. The land then undergoes some amount 
 of clearing and levelling with the hoe, which clears 
 away the surface weeds ; in some cases it is harrowed 
 before sowing, but oftener not. The seed (from six 
 pecks to two bushels per acre) is then sown broadcast, 
 and harrowed in. With each bushel is mixed a 
 quart or so of some kind of dwarf kidney-bean, and 
 about half as much gourd or melon seed. The beans 
 and gourd plants appear before the maize. It is usual 
 to hoe the maize plant when the fourth leaf-spike 
 shows, and about twenty days afterwards the earth is 
 drawn round the plants ; from this time forward they 
 
 1 The manuring is repeated every year, but not every year to 
 this extent. 
 
184 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 are thinned out for cattle feed. When the male 
 flower has arrived at its full perfection it is broken 
 off, within about eighteen inches of the top of the 
 stem, and used as a food for cattle. Irrigation 
 wherever available is freely employed, as soon as the 
 plant has depth of root enough to stand the wash of 
 the water, and until the whole plant begins to show 
 yellow. The cobs are cut when the husks are quite 
 dry and when the seed feels hard beneath it ; and 
 the less critical operation of cutting the straw is often 
 delayed if the weather be wet. The operation of 
 husking is often made the occasion of a feast — a kind 
 of harvest-home, where wine and dried fish and bread 
 are given by the farmer, and large parties of the 
 peasantry assemble and work far into the night, to 
 the music of guitars and violins. 
 
 The husked cobs are dried in the sun on the 
 threshing-floor, and in a fortnight or less are ready 
 for threshing out, which is the universal mode in this 
 country of getting out the grain. The straw when 
 cut is left in stooks in the fields till it is dry enough 
 to carry home. 
 
 It is clear that this whole system is open to 
 several grave objections ; many of them, however, 
 are incident to and inevitable in the nature of small 
 properties. The mixture of several crops in one field 
 has always been considered a fault in farming. In 
 the case of the Portuguese farmer, it is the result of 
 some amount of forethought ; being too poor to risk 
 his whole income on a single crop, he calculates that 
 when he loses part of his corn in a dry year he gets 
 
FARMING AND FARM PEOPLE. 185 
 
 a larger return of beans, and that a year favourable 
 to neither may give him a good crop of gourds. 
 His sacrifice of some of his maize crop is therefore a 
 rough kind of insurance against a total loss of it. 
 The apparent waste of seed is required to allow of 
 enough young plants being thinned out for the early 
 summer food of his stock. The great amount of 
 labour required in hoeing the land is a serious draw- 
 back to the system ; but in a country of small pro- 
 prietors, of small farms and capitals, and of small en- 
 closures, it would be of far less advantage to replace 
 manual labour by drills and horse-hoes than in such 
 a country as the United States, and the cheapness of 
 labour in some degree compensates for the amount of 
 it required. 
 
 Imperfect preliminary cultivation of the soil is 
 perhaps the worst point of the Portuguese system, 
 and this also is, to some extent, excused by its friable 
 condition and its comparative cleanness. 
 
 With the last hoeing of the maize, rye-grass is 
 sometimes sown, from which a first cutting is taken 
 in October or November ; but it is more usual to 
 spread the maize fields, in September, with all the 
 manure which can be got, and to sow rye-grass, 
 mixed with either oats, barley, or rye, 1 or more 
 frequently these three corns together, on the manure 
 itself, and then to plough in with the smaller of the 
 two ploughs. This very wasteful and slovenly 
 method of producing an artificial grass field, never- 
 
 1 The classical scholar may care to be reminded that this is 
 identical with the farrago of the ancient Roman agriculturists. 
 
186 POETUGAL : OLD AND NEW. " 
 
 theless, generally results in an abundance of green 
 food throughout the winter and spring. The rye 
 yields a first cutting in about five weeks, and a 
 second very abundant one is obtained from all the 
 plants jointly at Christmas time ; but the uncertain 
 depth at which the seed is covered, some being left 
 bare and some buried too deep for germination, causes 
 much loss of ground and labour, if the weather be 
 either very dry or very wet at seed-time. 
 
 It is a constant practice in Portuguese husbandry 
 to plant cabbages in the maize-fields. When this 
 corn is sown in spring-time, a labourer cuts a cleft in 
 the ground with a single downward stroke of a broad 
 hoe. He holds the hoe in the ground till an assistant 
 has placed two young cabbage-plants one at each 
 corner of the cleft ; the hoe is then removed, and the 
 earth pressed down. The men walk in a straight line 
 across the field, planting two cabbages at every 
 second pace, and then trace similar parallel rows, 
 twelve or fifteen feet apart, till the whole field 
 is finished. In the heat of summer, and when 
 shaded by the growing maize, the cabbage plants 
 make little progress ; but when the corn is reaped, 
 and the field manured and ploughed for its crop of 
 grass, the cabbages grow rapidly, and throughout the 
 winter afford a constant supply of leaves for house 
 use, and for feeding cows and pigs, and even sheep. 
 The cabbage used for this purpose is a large variety 
 of the cabbage known at home as the ' Jersey cabbage,' 
 and by the French as the Chou Cavalier. It grows 
 to the height of six feet or more, if allowed to attain 
 
FARMING AND FARM PEOPLE. 187 
 
 to its full size. The two lower leaves are picked off, 
 week after week, till the whole plant is cut down in 
 spring, to allow the soil to be again prepared for the 
 maize crop. It is the presence of the rows of cabbage 
 in the maize stubbles that makes it necessary to use 
 the small plough, and to work the land so that the 
 plants may not be disturbed. After the plough has 
 done what work it can, the untouched ground in the 
 line of the cabbages is turned over with the hoe. 
 
 Eoot crops are of little importance to the Portu- 
 guese farmer. The porous soil would suit the culti- 
 vation of turnips admirably, but not the heat and 
 dryness. They are grown, but on principles and with 
 results unknown to the British farmer. A common 
 way of growing them is to sow them upon the maize 
 stubble with rye grass ; the roots are never hoed, and, 
 entangled and obstructed by the grass, seldom exceed 
 a large apple in size. Again, they are sometimes 
 sown after onions, as I shall presently show, and with 
 fair success. Where, owing to bad seasons or bad 
 cultivation, the roots do not swell, it is common to let 
 the turnips run to flower, and a cutting is obtained of 
 the leaves and flower-stems in January and February. 
 Eape or mustard seed would probably be better suited 
 for this purpose, but I have seen neither used. 
 
 Potatoes find but a small place in the simple 
 system of Portuguese agriculture. Till lately they 
 formed no part of the general food of the people, are 
 not used for cattle feeding, and are seldom grown at 
 all, except in gardens or near towns. The same 
 applies to carrots, mangel wurzel and parsnips, the two 
 
188 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 latter of which I have never seen growing in a field 
 in Portugal. 
 
 Wheat is the predominant cereal of the provinces 
 to the south, where large fields and a stiff soil are 
 commoner than in the north. Its cultivation in the 
 north is adopted sometimes in rotation with maize, or 
 on soils too dry for the latter and too stiff for rye, or 
 when manure is not forthcoming for the maize crop. 
 The small farm system does not, as may be supposed, 
 favour the cultivation of wheat, and the crops are 
 seldom good. To judge by their appearance on the 
 ground, I should consider twenty imperial bushels to 
 be an average crop of wheat in these provinces. 
 Winter wheat is sown from November to the end of 
 January ; spring wheat from January to March ; both 
 kinds are reaped in June and July. I have noticed 
 seven or eight varieties of wheat, mostly the bearded 
 kinds. Hard wheat and soft are in about equal 
 proportions. Eed wheat is, so far as I have observed, 
 unknown, probably owing to the absence of strong 
 dark clays, to influence the colour of the skin of the 
 grain. 
 
 Broad beans are rather a garden than a field crop, 
 and the early sowing which the climate allows is very 
 favourable to their growth. They are sown broadcast, 
 and their cultivation is the same as in Great Britain. 
 The sort used is, I believe, only a very large variety 
 of the common horse-bean. 
 
 Much more important and extensive objects of 
 cultivation are the different kinds of kidney beans 
 (Phaseolus vulgaris), of which I have counted six chief 
 
FARMING AND FAEM PEOPLE. 189 
 
 sorts of the dwarf variety, and four of the climbing 
 sort. Of the dwarf kidney beans, the small white, 
 the striped black and yellow, the brown, the dark 
 yellow, the mottled, the grey and the black beans, all 
 differ considerably, not only in flavour and productive- 
 ness, but in the soils they require and the greater or 
 less luxuriance of the plant ; thereby enabling the 
 farmer to grow the particular kind most suited to the 
 soil and exposure of each field. The chmbing beans 
 are less used ; the large white, the common scarlet- 
 runner, a brown and red mottled kind, are all grown, 
 — sometimes on sticks, but oftener on the stems of 
 the taller kinds of maize. The chmbing sorts all 
 require a richer soil than the dwarf beans. 
 
 The chick-pea (Cicer arietinum) is less cultivated 
 in the northern than in the southern provinces of the 
 kingdom, where it is an important part of human 
 food ; it is sown in autumn, and does well on light, 
 dry and sandy soils. I need hardly say that it is 
 identical with the garbanzo of Spain. 
 
 I have already described the cultivation of these 
 various plants in describing that of maize, and the 
 same remark applies to the gourd. Besides these 
 plants, the lentil, the lupine, and the grey field-pea 
 are all grown : the lupine very commonly for its seed 
 and likewise as a green manure ; the lentil less fre- 
 quently ; and the field-pea very seldom. 
 
 The gourd and the tall cabbage together may be 
 said to take in Portuguese farming the important 
 place of root crops generally in the English farming 
 system. It is difficult to compute the yield of the 
 
190 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 gourd by the acre, for the ground is never exclusively 
 occupied by them ; but it is probable that in a richly 
 manured soil with water of irrigation, a weight of 
 sixty or seventy tons might be raised to the acre, — 
 about double the weight of a good crop of swedes. 
 Three or four very well marked species are grown ; 
 the largest is the round, smooth kind (a variety of 
 Cucurbito pepo), which I have seen grown in a field 
 to the weight of two hundred pounds. The long, 
 yellow, and striped sorts are, I believe, varieties of a 
 different species (C. citruUus), and are those commonly 
 employed. 
 
 The gourd is left on the ground for a fortnight or 
 more after the maize is carried, and in that short 
 time greatly increases in size with full exposure to 
 sun and air. 
 
 For cattle and pigs, gourds are a most valuable 
 winter food, and they also enter largely into the con- 
 sumption of all classes of the people. They keep 
 sound, in dry years, till the end of February, and are 
 not injured by sun or rain if kept standing in a dry 
 place ; it is usual, therefore, to lift them to the roofs 
 of low buildings, along the tops of walls, or to leave 
 them standing on rocky ground, whence they are re- 
 moved as they are required for use. 
 
 Melons and water-melons are objects of field cul- 
 tivation in Portugal, chiefly the latter species. The 
 kinds mostly grown are the cantalupes and the com- 
 mon green smooth-skinned sort, and more rarely the 
 musk melon. The melon is not grown with other 
 crops, but by itself, in land ridged up with shallow 
 
FARMING AND FARM PEOPLE. 191 
 
 furrows eight or ten feet apart. A rich soil, a dry 
 atmosphere, and water of irrigation in dry seasons, 
 produce very large crops. Water-melons are grown 
 on the same system, and give a less precarious and a 
 larger return than the sweet melon, and their abun- 
 dance and cheapness allow of their very common use 
 by the peasantry. 
 
 Of the various artificial grasses and forage plants, 
 only a small choice offers itself to the farmer of the 
 Minho and of the maize-growing district generally ; 
 of these, rye-grass is by far the most commonly used. 
 The object of the farmer being to leave the ground 
 in the occupation of such plants for as short a time 
 as possible, he sows oats, barley, and rye in autumn, 
 as I have already mentioned, solely for the sake of 
 the two or three cuttings to be got from them ; the 
 rye-grass, coming later, gives at most two or three 
 more cuttings in the spring. In damp soils the 
 narrow-leafed plantain (Plantago lanceolata) is sown 
 early in spring or in autumn, and affords frequent 
 cuttings of a rich cattle food in early summer, the 
 time when herbage is scarcest with the Portuguese 
 farmer. It is sometimes left in the ground through 
 the winter in land subject to overflow or inundation, 
 and it is often grazed as well as cut. 
 
 The common meadow soft grass (Holcus lanatus) 
 is often grown in precisely the same way ; it affords 
 a more abundant but not so good a herbage. 
 
 A leguminous plant of very frequent use is the 
 serradella {Omithopus perpusillus)^ a plant which is, I 
 believe, untried in England, but which was introduced 
 
192 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 into Germany abont twenty years ago. The plant is 
 annual, grows in sandy soil, but prefers a deep, sandy 
 loam, where it will grow to nearly the height of a 
 yard. It is sown in autumn, hardly shows above 
 ground till Christmas, and affords one good cutting 
 in May or June, in time, in favourable years, for the 
 sowing of the maize crop. Eed and Italian clover 
 are grown very much in the same way. 
 
 Millet (Panicum italicum) is grown as a herbage 
 plant. It is one of the few plants which can be sown 
 with advantage at midsummer, and it is often made 
 to follow rye or even wheat. It is usually cut before 
 the seed has ripened, or, as often occurs when late 
 sown in this climate, when the grain has formed, but 
 ripened imperfectly. It is made into hay which has 
 probably about the value of good meadow-hay — that 
 is, three times that of wheat or barley straw. 
 
 It is to be observed of the climate of Portugal (as 
 of most of the climates of Southern Europe) that 
 winter and spring are the seasons when grass fields — 
 natural and artificial — are at their best; and, where- 
 as in Great Britain the farmer is most pinched for 
 sheep and cattle feed in early spring, having con- 
 sumed his roots, and his pastures being still bare, the 
 farmer in Portugal is at this season better provided 
 with forage than at any other time of the year. 
 
 I have now given some account of the various 
 crops which make part of the regular system of. 
 tillage in the maize-growing portions of Portugal. 
 Two other plants are extensively grown, but both 
 are accessory to the general farming routine of the 
 
FAIttHXG AND FARM PEOPLE. 193 
 
 district — flax and onions : flax principally for home 
 consumption, and onions for exportation to England 
 and Brazil. 
 
 Wherever good, light, alluvial soil occurs along 
 the banks of rivers and elsewhere, the flax plant is 
 found growing, mostly in patches, but sometimes 
 in great breadths. The farmers in the north of the 
 province of the Minho — a chief centre of flax 
 cultivation — speak commonly of two distinct species, 
 the Gahcian and the Moorish ; the first of these 
 being the plant cultivated in the country from time 
 immemorial, the latter said to have been brought 
 about sixty years ago from Northern Africa. The 
 Moorish flax — perhaps Linum perenne — is a taller 
 plant, with a stronger and coarser fibre ; the Galician 
 is under the average size of flax grown in England, 
 and not of fine quality. The Gahcian is the sort 
 chiefly cultivated : it is sown in the last fortnight in 
 April, and is pulled in July, having been from two 
 to three months in the ground. The Moorish flax is 
 sown before winter, and is taken up a month earlier 
 — that is, in June — after remaining in the ground 
 about seven months. 
 
 Great care is used in the preparation of the soil 
 for both kinds. It is often ploughed three times ; 
 all weeds, stones, etc., are picked out ; and for the 
 spring (or Gahcian) flax the ground is lightly dunged 
 with well rotted manure. This kind of flax is like- 
 wise irrigated ; but the Moorish flax is neither 
 manured nor irrigated, and a richer and deeper 
 description of soil is required for its production. 
 
 o 
 
194 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 The Galician is steeped in river water for about 
 eight days, the Moorish variety nearly double that 
 time, according to the temperature of the air. The 
 flax is in some cases steeped again for two or three 
 days after it has been taken out and dried. 
 
 Some portion of the flax grown by the smaller 
 farmer is broken and skutched by hand ; but in most 
 cases both these operations are done in a mill worked 
 by mules or oxen, one of which mills is usually kept 
 in every village in flax-growing districts. The final 
 preparation, or heckling > is usually done by women 
 in workshops in the larger villages and towns. 
 
 The flax produced in Northern Portugal is con- 
 sumed in the country. 
 
 Oporto is the chief port of exportation for the 
 large variety of onion which is known in trade as the 
 Spanish or Portugal onion. Its cultivation is quite 
 an agricultural operation, and is managed as follows. 
 In the month of October the seed is sown in a 
 sheltered spot in very well manured seed beds. In 
 about ten days the plants appear, are watered 
 in dry weather, weeded, and the surface occasionally 
 stirred with a sharp pointed stick. The young 
 plants, not subjected to any severe frost (for the 
 thermometer very seldom falls below thirty-five 
 degrees of Fahrenheit), enjoy an uninterrupted 
 growth till springtime. In March they are taken up, 
 being then some five to eight inches in height, and 
 planted from nine to twelve inches apart, in furrows 
 made by the hoe in well-ploughed and harrowed 
 land. The furrows are filled to the depth of three 
 
FAKMING AND FARM PEOPLE. 195 
 
 or four inches with well-rotted manure, with which 
 the roots of the young plants are placed in actual 
 contact. A very essential condition of the successful 
 cultivation of the onion is water. The abundant 
 and timely irrigation of the growing crop requires 
 great and constant care. After transplanting, the 
 crop has two or more hoeings and weedings. With 
 the last weeding are sown, either white turnips, 
 maize, or, more rarely, grass seeds. The onion crop 
 is off the ground in August, and sometimes in July. 
 
 The stolen crop of maize so obtained grows 
 rapidly in the enriched soil, and often produces as 
 large a crop as the spring-sown fields. The turnips 
 grown after onions are pulled in December and 
 January ; and although the roots are left far too 
 near together, they are the only instances I have ever 
 seen in this country of fairly well grown turnips. 
 
 Although irrigation, as in most southern countries, 
 has so very important a share in the success of farm 
 operations in Portugal, yet the configuration of the 
 land, the absence of extensive plain country at a 
 lower level than an unfailing water supply in the 
 uplands (as is the case in Lombardy), the want of 
 long, fertile valleys connected with lakes, or ac- 
 cessible highland rivers (as in Southern Spain), have 
 stood in the way of any general system of canaliza- 
 tion for irrigating purposes in Northern Portugal. 
 
 The water of irrigation is obtained in four dif- 
 ferent ways : 
 
 1. By wells sunk into water-bearing strata, 
 whence the water is drawn either by a water-wheel, 
 
 o 2 
 
196 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 worked by oxen and made to lift an endless chain of 
 buckets, or by some similar contrivance. 
 
 2. By wells worked by similar machinery and 
 sunk near the course of slow-flowing streams. The 
 water thus obtained is carried to the interior along 
 aqueducts. 
 
 3. By means of weirs, in rivers which have a good 
 fall in them, the water of which rivers works flour 
 mills in winter, and is carried in summer to irrigate 
 fields on a lower level. 
 
 4. By the water of springs, often got by carrying 
 adits far and deep into the hills. 
 
 This latter kind of irrigation is far the commonest, 
 it is increasing year by year. Water is prospected 
 for and mined for in Portugal as silver ore is in 
 Nevada. It is slow wealth, but it is sure : the metal- 
 liferous lode gives out, but the water flows on, in omne 
 volubilis cevum, and the miner who has struck water has 
 his profits in perpetuity. Some men have a curious 
 gift for water-finding, and scent it out by very faint 
 indications. To them a tuft of rushes in the forest, 
 the growth of the yellow iris on the mountain side, or 
 the purslane and water mints springing up away from 
 their accustomed haunts, are signs enough to betray 
 the secret underground. Of course many trial shafts 
 are sunk in vain, and if one wanders in the lonely pine 
 forest which covers so many leagues of Northern 
 Portugal, one is for ever coming upon these forgotten 
 shafts and air holes, dangerous pitfalls, bramble- 
 covered, into which men have been known to slij) 
 unawares, and pass hours calling in vain to the 
 
FARMING AND FARM PEOPLE. 197 
 
 hawks and woodpeckers, till some chance charcoal- 
 burner or woodcutter has come within hearing. In 
 these subterranean channels the water is often con- 
 veyed for miles to the valley below, and the labour 
 expended on these conduits represents a quite in- 
 calculable investment of profitable capital. The 
 worst of the system is the ease with which a man can 
 be undermined and defrauded of his clear-bought 
 water. The law courts are filled with disputes as to 
 water rights, and the proverb ' Stolen waters are 
 sweet ' seems to be one that should have originated 
 in this country. 
 
 Irrigation in warm countries is generally under- 
 stood in a different sense to the irrigation practised 
 on grass lands in Great Britain, where the water 
 flows on, over, and off the field. Here it is diffused 
 over a larger surface, and the watering which maize, 
 onions, and other plants get is equivalent to the 
 watering of plants by hand in a garden. The water 
 is brought to the roots and sinks in. The porous 
 nature of the soil to a considerable depth, the great 
 degree of evaporation, and the absence of any water- 
 retaining strata near the surface, obviate any sour- 
 ness in the land which might result from the presence 
 of so much water upon it. I have never seen or 
 heard of any description of land drainage in Portu- 
 gal (except that by wide, open drains in marsh lands) ; 
 and in the prevalent crumbling, decomposed granite 
 soil of the North, where the earth only hardens into 
 an impervious rock at some yards beneath the 
 surface, and in the schisty soils which are as common 
 
198 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 and as pervious, no kind of drainage would seem to 
 be required. 
 
 In Portugal the straw of all cereals enters far 
 more largely into the consumption of oxen, horses, 
 and mules than in Great Britain. Hay is made in 
 the mountainous pasture lands of Traz-os-Montes, 
 and on the great hill range of the Estrella, but only 
 to a very small extent elsewhere, and the expense of 
 carriage is too great to allow of its use beyond the 
 district of its production. Of the different straws, 
 agricultural chemists assert that 300 pounds of wheat 
 straw, an equal quantity of barley straw, 350 pounds 
 of rye straw, 280 pounds of oat straw, and only 200 
 pounds of maize straw, are respectively equivalent in 
 nutritive power to 100 pounds of good meadow hay. 
 This calculation of the relative values of the different 
 straws more or less corresponds with the experience 
 of farmers here, who have incessant practical ac- 
 quaintance with the subject. Eye straw is harder 
 in this climate even than in England, and is called 
 ' colmo, or thatch, and the name indicates the use 
 which is commonly made of it ; but in the hilly 
 districts it is often consumed from necessity in the 
 feeding of cattle. Wheat straw is likewise hard and 
 dry, and difficult of digestion, but is largely used. 
 Barley straw is what is given, in preference to all 
 others, to horses, the general prejudice against it in 
 Great Britain being unknown here. Oat straw is 
 produced only in limited quantities. The straw of 
 maize, or rather the dried lily-like leaves of the maize 
 plant, for the stem is mostly rejected by cattle, is sup- 
 
FARMING AND FARM PEOPLE. 199 
 
 posed to be unsuitable for horses, and is not often 
 used for feeding them. It is, with grass, the chief 
 food of milch cows and of fattening and working 
 oxen both in winter and summer, and, to judge by its 
 obvious effects, and by the high estimation in which 
 it is held by Portuguese farmers, it probably exceeds 
 the value at which it is put by agricultural chemists. 
 JSTow I come to what I believe to be the solution 
 of the problem of the continuous corn-cropping of 
 the Portuguese farmer. The straw produced on the 
 farm is almost exclusively — in most farms entirely — 
 consumed as cattle food ; and it is a peculiar and 
 marked characteristic of the agriculture of this 
 country, that the fodder used in the stabling of 
 horned cattle, horses, and pigs is supplied by dried 
 gorse, heather, and the various wild plants, such as 
 bracken, cistus, rock-rose, bent grass, and wild 
 vetches, which usually grow in their company. To 
 secure a sufficient quantity of such Utter, most farms 
 have attached to them a portion of forest or wild 
 land, from which these fodder-producing plants are 
 regularly cut every three years, and which forest 
 portion is often a mile or more away from the farm- 
 yard. In other cases, the farmer enjoys a prescrip- 
 tive right to cut as much of them as he chooses from 
 the pine forest nearest to him. Of the plants so used, 
 gorse is the predominating one, often to the exclusion 
 of all others. It is the same species as is found in 
 Great Britain ; but the prevailing kind is, I believe, a 
 variety of our native gorse, having the prickles 
 rather less stronger and the stem less woody. The 
 
200 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 decaying of manure made with this litter is slower 
 than with straw, but the porous wood of the gorse is 
 infinitely more absorbent both of gases and of 
 moisture, so that the atmosphere of a Portuguese 
 stable or cow-byre, is very noticeably purer and 
 sweeter than if straw were used, and the standing for 
 the beasts is also much drier. It is needless to point 
 to the economy of a system by which every particle 
 of straw is consumed as food. A second recommen- 
 dation is that, while the seeds of the various field 
 weeds are not returned to the ground with the straw 
 among which they were grown, those which are shed 
 by the forest plants, when removed from their native 
 soil, find no congenial seed-bed when they fall upon 
 cultivated land, and either fail to germinate or fail to 
 thrive. The gorse, heather, and other plants which 
 compose this litter are cut, or rather scraped up, 
 with the broad-bladed hoe, so that moss, creeping 
 plants, the decomposing needles of the pine trees, 
 dead leaves of trees and shrubs, and the crowns and 
 root stock of ferns and wild grasses, all find their way 
 together to the farmyard. I know no other country 
 where this practice is carried out in a systematic 
 manner as in Portugal. The amount of manure pro- 
 duced on a small Portuguese farm could not fail to 
 strike a Scotch or English farmer ; and the disregard 
 by the Portuguese farmer of any system of rotation 
 of crops is, as I have said, principally due to the 
 abundance of valuable manure at his command. 
 
 The farm-buildings of the smaller proprietors are 
 simply but substantially built of squared granite, and 
 
FARMING AND FARM PEOPLE. 201 
 
 the whole lower floor of the house is often used 
 for the storing of grain and straw, and sometimes 
 even as a stable for cattle. A small yard, kept knee- 
 deep in gorse litter, is generally formed by the side 
 or two sides of the house, and the building which holds 
 the wine-press and cattle byres. High over this yard 
 are grown, almost invariably, vines on a heavy wooden 
 trellis, and the cattle in the heat of summer find cool- 
 ness and shelter under their shade. Outside the 
 buildings, well exposed to sun and wind, is the eira, 
 or threshing-floor, of slate or granite slabs, to which 
 is usually attached a small barn. 
 
 The farmer in Portugal is almost without any 
 choice either of natural or artificial manure. Guano 
 is hardly known, though its concentrated form and its 
 known value in growing maize might seem to recom- 
 mend it in a country of difficult communications. 
 
 Along the sea-shore various kinds of sea-weed 
 are regularly collected, allowed to ferment and decay, 
 and applied directly to the maize crop with good effect. 
 A still richer manure is furnished by a small species of 
 crab, caught for the purpose in nets in vast quantities. 
 At Aveiro and other places, where the coast is marshy 
 and intersected by estuaries, inlets, and slow-flowing 
 streams, boats are employed in dredging up the ground 
 weed, mixed with rich, decaying vegetable matter and 
 small shell-fish, from the bottom of these brackish waters, 
 to be used as a dressing to the fields in their neighbour- 
 hood. These various manures supply valuable phos- 
 phates and alkalies,. and to some small extent take the 
 place of the artificial manures used in Great Britain. 
 
202 POETUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 The vine in the Minho district is grown on pol- 
 larded oak and chestnut trees, and on trellises. It is 
 pruned when the supporting tree is cut back in winter, 
 and gets no cultivation but what it shares with the 
 crop growing beneath it. The vine strikes its roots 
 so far into the soil that it probably does no harm 
 beyond the slight injury caused by the shade of its 
 dense foliage in summer. The vines give a harsh, 
 dark-coloured grape, and the wine is of the kind 
 known as Vinho verde, green wine, and rarely keeps 
 sound a whole twelvemonth. It is a rough, harsh, 
 acid wine, of powerful flavour, and exceedingly dis- 
 agreeable to those who are not accustomed to its use. 
 
 The inhabitants of Portugal, or at least of North- 
 ern Portugal, are, as I have said, probably homo- 
 geneous in race ; but the character of the peasantry, 
 their habits and their manners, vary considerably in 
 the different provinces, with the difference of their 
 condition, which again is generally traceable to their 
 circumstances and surroundings. 
 
 The Minhotes are a well-fed, well-clothed, law- 
 respecting, courteous people, of a cheerful and sociable 
 disposition. They are good and intelligent labourers, 
 and make excellent soldiers. On the other hand, the 
 character of the inhabitants of some of the mountain 
 parts of Beira, and of the more remote pasture 
 lands of Traz-os-Montes, is of a more gloomy cast. 
 Crimes of violence — agrarian and otherwise — were 
 until late years not unfrequent in these districts, and 
 often remained unpunished ; and the gravity and 
 
FARMING AND FARM PEOPLE. 203 
 
 reserve of the shepherds and herdsmen of these parts 
 contrast strongly with the sociable manners of the 
 lowland husbandmen. 
 
 I am disposed to think that the condition of 
 the Northern Portuguese peasant generally — exclud- 
 ing the dwellers in some of the poorer and more un- 
 healthy districts, whose penury and misery are often 
 extreme — is, on the whole, superior to that of the 
 great average of land-workers in Europe generally. 
 A conclusion upon this point, drawn from the 
 appearance of the people themselves, can hardly be 
 deceptive ; but such an opinion would be supported 
 by a closer examination into the system of wages, the 
 amount and kind of their food, and the social habits 
 generally of the peasantry. 
 
 The mode of hiring labour differs in each province. 
 In Estremadura and Alemtejo, and in other parts of 
 Portugal where the tenure is allodial, hiring by the 
 twelvemonth is common ; and a labourer will earn 
 from five to eight pounds a year, with food, housing, 
 fuel for cooking, and a coarse woollen cloak given 
 him every two years. The wages of labour are slowly 
 rising in all Portugal. 
 
 In Beira, and generally throughout the northern 
 provinces, hiring for parts of the year is the common 
 practice. From three to four or five pounds are 
 given for the five months from December to April ; a 
 general rehiring then takes place, and a wage of from 
 four to seven pounds is earned for the rest of the year, 
 to include the hard work of maize-hoeing and harvest 
 work in the long days of summer. The contracts are 
 
204 
 
 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 made at the different local fairs held in April and 
 December. 
 
 In the Minho, among the small emphyteutic 
 yeomen, a curious practice exists (with almost endless 
 modification), by which the yeoman proprietors take 
 upon their farms a labourer who is paid partly in 
 wages, partly in kind, and partly out of the profits of 
 the farm. The contract is by its nature so compli- 
 cated and so liable to perversion, that without the 
 good sense, fairness, and moderation of the labourers 
 and peasant proprietors of this part of the kingdom, 
 the carrying out of it would be impossible. The 
 system seems to work perfectly, and possesses very 
 obvious advantages over any mode of simply buying 
 labour with money wages. The wages of a day 
 labourer, without food, vary from eight to fourteen 
 pence throughout the country. 
 
 The fare of the Portuguese peasant is coarse, but 
 it cannot be said of it that it is not comparatively 
 varied and abundant. The following scale was 
 furnished to me by a farmer in the Minho, and is 
 probably an average one : — 
 
 Food of three farm servants (two men and a woman) for a week. 
 
 Dried codfish 
 
 Lard . 
 
 Olive-oil 
 
 Rice 
 
 Bacon . 
 
 Bread (of rye and maize) 
 
 Gourds or cabbages 
 
 Olives . 
 
 Wine . 
 
 6 to 7 lbs. 
 lib. 
 li pint. 
 lib. 
 lib. 
 
 30 to 40 lbs. 
 ad libitum. 
 a quart in summer, 
 a pint to a quart in summer 
 for each person. 
 
FARMING AND FARM PEOPLE. 205 
 
 The national mode of cooking food is in a stew, 
 corresponding to the pot-au-feu of the French peasant, 
 and of which gourds or cabbages, dried kidney beans, 
 rice, beef and bacon, form the ingredients, according 
 to means or circumstances. 
 
 Fish is much consumed by the peasantry, and 
 dried cod is a favourite and universal food with all 
 classes. It is considerably dearer than fresh beef, 
 but having been deprived of its moisture and being 
 in a concentrated form, it probably possesses superior 
 food value. The sardine is another generally used 
 food, both fresh and pickled. In the latter state it is 
 consumed by the peasant in the remotest districts as 
 far as the frontier lines of Spain. 
 
 The sardine is caught in immense quantities along 
 the whole coast of Portugal. The sardine of these 
 seas is a large variety, approaching in size and, most 
 naturalists now affirm, identical in species, with the 
 Cornish pilchard. The cod is imported partly from 
 Norway, but chiefly from Newfoundland. 
 
 Potatoes are seldom eaten by field labourers, and 
 the bread food is broa, a strong, wholesome, and not 
 unpalatable bread, composed of maize and rye. The 
 universal use in Portugal of a double bread-food is to 
 my knowledge a unique circumstance, and one well 
 worth the attention of politicians and economists. 
 The prejudices of mankind in regard to any change 
 of the chief staple of their daily food are, it is known, 
 all but insuperable, and it will be within most of my 
 readers' recollection that during a recent famine in 
 Bengal the Hindoos often preferred starvation to a 
 
206 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 change in the quality of their rice. A food, therefore, 
 composed of two different cereals has certain great 
 and important advantages, for the proportions of 
 maize and of rye can be altered almost ad libitum 
 without much change in the quality or appearance 
 of the loaf. 
 
 To the use of this bread-food I believe some part 
 of the well-being of the Portuguese peasant may 
 fairly be ascribed. He is insured against periodical 
 famine, with its many disastrous attendants and con- 
 sequences, such as have followed rice famines in India, 
 the great potato' failure of Ireland, or even such as 
 but for free trade would accompany a wheat scarcity 
 in England. An entire failure of the maize crop 
 is almost impossible in Portugal. The worst year 
 is a very dry, hot one ; and such a season greatly 
 stimulates and increases the productiveness of 
 those low-lying lands which have an unfailing sup- 
 ply of water ; while a very wet year promotes the 
 growth of maize in the upland fields. Again, the 
 cold summer, unfavourable to maize, suits the rye 
 crops, and a comparatively good harvest of this 
 corn may be looked for whenever the maize crop is 
 bad. 
 
 When maize is scarce and dear, less in proportion 
 to the rye can be used in the loaf, and vice versd ; and, 
 in point of fact, this adjustment of the proportions of 
 the two corns takes place nearly every year and in 
 nearly every district. In the maize-producing pro- 
 vince of the Minho, and in the lowland districts gene- 
 rally, the usual proportions are eight parts of maize to 
 
FAKMING AND FARM PEOPLE. 207 
 
 one of rye, and in the rye lands among the mountains 
 these proportions are almost reversed. 
 
 I like particularly to dwell upon the diet used by 
 the Portuguese peasantry because I think it helps to 
 make clearer some very important points in econo- 
 mics. The peasants are epicures in a way, with many 
 multifarious tastes, as I, who have been a Portuguese 
 farmer for several years past, very well know. They 
 have souls far above the bread, beer and bacon of 
 English ploughboys, and claim to have their stew 
 cooked fresh three times a day. They are good 
 judges of olives and dried cod-fish, and have a pretty 
 taste (not our own exactly) in wine. It seems to me 
 that this is a very desirable circumstance for them, 
 for those they work for, and for the nation at large. 
 Nothing astonishes me so much as the indignation of 
 some honest and conventional people at home at 
 the fact of English working men allowing them- 
 selves luxuries which their condition should, in these 
 honest people's opinion, forbid their aspiring to. The 
 colliers when wages were high ate pate de foie gras 
 and drank champagne. How deplorable ! Certainly 
 it would have been desirable in the interests of the 
 higher culture if they had spent their earnings in 
 Eembrandt etchings, well bound books and blue 
 china, but on the other hand it would have been infi- 
 nitely less desirable if they had struck work altogether 
 the moment they had enough to eat. Any taste is 
 better than no taste, and surely it is better for a man 
 to be knowing in dried codfish and ' green wine ' 
 than to know nothing at all. When the negroes of 
 
208 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 Jamaica have gained a shilling by a few hours' work 
 they buy bananas and meal enough to last a iveek, 
 go to sleep in the sun, and laugh at the idea of another 
 stroke of work till the larder is bare again. The 
 champagne of our colliers was surely all in the interest 
 of morality, sobriety and hard work : it was an object 
 in life. Our farmers in England complain that with 
 the better wages of their labourers work is slacker. 
 What wonder that it should be? Give them wider 
 tastes, and they will do a hard day's work to gratify 
 them. The Portuguese peasant likes dainty eating, 
 and aspires to wear a gold stud in his white linen shirt 
 and a good broadcloth cloak, and to give his sweetheart 
 a pair of massive gold earrings. Let no one accuse 
 him of effeminacy : he will work hard and cheerfully 
 for sixteen hours on a summer's day in the maize-field. 
 To be sure he has higher ambition than for good food 
 and fine clothes, for he looks to obtaining a slice of 
 the land ; and, with health, strong arms, long life, 
 a shrewd head and fair luck, the odds are that a day 
 labourer in Northern Portugal will live to be a land- 
 holder. It is that chiefly, I think, which sweetens 
 his sixteen hours' toil under the sun of Portugal. 
 
 The diet question, too, goes for something, and I 
 must come back to it. I have taken an opportunity 
 lately of saying in public that Portuguese olives are 
 pickled when they are fully ripe, and are therefore 
 more of a dish and less of a hors d'ceuvre than the green 
 olives of France, Spain and Italy. They are neces- 
 sarily more fit for human food, and in my opinion far 
 better to eat than any other kind of olives. I find 
 
FARMING AND FARM PEOPLE. 209 
 
 that most people who know them agree with me. A 
 bad olive-harvest stints the population greatly ; butter 
 being almost unknown. Though the olives are 
 excellent, the oil is carelessly made and of generally 
 inferior quality. 
 
 As for another chief item in the Portuguese pea- 
 sant's bill of fare — bacalhau — it is really difficult 
 for me (who am yet far from being an optimist) to 
 approach this topic in its economic relations without 
 seeming to be over enthusiastic. 
 
 Bacalhau is a word and a thing that philologers 
 have wrangled about, politicians fought over, finan- 
 ciers rejoiced in, merchants contended for, fishermen 
 fished for, economists been puzzled about, while the 
 Portuguese people generally have quietly eaten it 
 with oil and pepper. 
 
 It is still a question with the learned whether the 
 word is taken from baculum, the stick with which the 
 split and dried fish is kept open, or the Germanic 
 word bolch, which means fish. 1 
 
 1 Sebastian Cabot, looking for the North- West passage towards 
 North Lat. 67 J°, in the year 1498, noted that 'in the seas there- 
 abouts were such multitudes of great fishes, like tunnies, and 
 which the natives call Baccalaos, that they sometimes stopped the 
 way of the ships.' Dr. Kohl, however, says that the cod fishery 
 had existed long before this on the Northern coasts of Europe, and 
 the fish were called by the Germanic nations, Cabliauwe or 
 Backljau. The word could not therefore have an Indian origin. 
 The Portuguese changed it to Bacalhau. Brevoort, on the other 
 hand, says, ' it is simply an old Mediterranean or Romance word, 
 given to the preserved cod-fish, dried and kept open by the help of 
 a small stick, haculum? The Portuguese, I may observe, call both 
 the fresh and dried cod-fish Bacalhau. 
 
210 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 It is not enough to catch the fish, it must be 
 brought to land and dried there, and a locus standi 
 for the fishermen on the coasts of Newfoundland has 
 before now been made an international question. In 
 Portugal bacalhau is taxed about three farthings per 
 pound, and the finances of the country are helped by 
 its consumption to a very considerable extent. Poli- 
 tical economists, however, ask whether it be right to 
 tax a necessary of life, and social economists whether 
 the people themselves do very wisely to eat, as an 
 almost daily food, dried fish which costs more by the 
 pound than ordinary beef. So much for the grave 
 questions that have gathered round the subject of 
 bacalhau : it is from the standpoint of its value as a 
 food for the people that I wish to regard it. 
 
 If I could persuade my countrymen to use this 
 most valuable food as the Spaniards and Portuguese 
 do, it is my firm conviction that I should be doing 
 more for their material advancement than most 
 average patriotic statesmen accomplish in a lifetime. 
 Bacalhau when cooked with oil, as it generally is, is 
 probably, weight for weight, the richest food, in all the 
 life-sustaining elements, of any known to mankind. 
 In Portugal it is a luxury as well as a daily necessary. 
 I do not know what the poorer classes of this country 
 would do if the great shoals of the Newfoundland 
 Bank and Fjords of Norway should resolve to swim 
 off to the North Pole ; and richer people would be ' 
 in as sad a plight. Nobody in Portugal thinks of 
 existence as being possible without bacalhau. The 
 working man carries a piece of it for his midday 
 
FARMING AND FAKM PEOPLE. 211 
 
 dinner ; the fishermen take it in their boats out to 
 sea — coals to Newcastle one might think ; the rich 
 man eats it most religiously on Fridays and fast days, 
 and, if he is a gourmet, inconsistently orders it again 
 for his feast dinner on Sunday. Lent is shorn of half 
 its austerity for good Catholics in the Peninsula ; and 
 bolos de bacalhau — the fish minced, made into cakes 
 and fried — represents for the middle classes our tur- 
 key and roast beef of Christmas Day. 
 
 A rather serious objection to bacalhau as a food 
 is that it is not nice to eat — that is, at first — it is an 
 acquired taste, like coffee or caviare. The sooner a 
 traveller or resident in Portugal acquires it the better 
 for him. He might as well travel or live in England 
 and not like boiled potatoes, or in Scotland and hate 
 oatcakes and bagpipes. 
 
 Bacalhau is cooked in many ways : boiled, made 
 into a sort of Irish stew, grilled like Finnan haddocks, 
 or clone into the bolos aforesaid. There is always oil 
 with it and garlic. Our people might leave out the 
 garlic and use butter for oil. 
 
 The Portuguese also eat bacalhau quite raw. I 
 have seen them do it out shooting, taking a piece 
 from their game bags ; and they seemed to like it. 
 The present writer might have expected to finish his 
 walk through life without having to eat raw fish, but 
 this was not to be. I have read that primitive man 
 ate his fish uncooked ; the South Sea Islanders do the 
 same, and it has seemed to me a most uncivilized and 
 not a pleasant thing to do, but circumstances required 
 it of me once when I was travelling in a remote part 
 
 p 2 
 
212 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 of Portugal, with a companion most properly parti- 
 cular, and curious, and learned in the preparation of 
 his daily food. 
 
 We were riding, and it was near nightfall ; we 
 were excessively hungry, and we had some leagues 
 between us and comfortable quarters. We pulled up 
 our horses at a small solitary farmhouse, and we 
 begged for something to eat. I asked the old woman 
 in charge of the house for anything she had ; but the 
 larder seemed to be all but empty. 4 Had she white 
 bread ? ' I asked. She had none. ' Ham ? Bacon ? ' 
 None. ' Meat or chickens ? ' Of course none. ' A 
 handful of olives ? or some eggs ? ' There was nothing 
 of all these things, but she had something, she hospit- 
 ably informed us, better than anything I had inquired 
 for. She went to get it, and returned triumphantly 
 with the half of a split cod-fish : an object more 
 resembling, in colour, size, shape and hardness, a short 
 piece of one-inch red deal board than any article of 
 human food I was ever before helped to. She 
 was a most cheerful and kind and cordial old lady, 
 and, as we rode off, each of us with a piece of raw 
 bacalhau in our hand, she patted me amicably on the 
 arm, and said : ' It is very good for the head. 
 Whether this was a subtle parting reflection on our 
 want of common sense about raw fish, for we had not 
 received it with any show of enthusiasm, or whether 
 our hostess only expressed the common belief there is' 
 to that effect I know not. It was certainly not in her 
 manner to be personal, and now that I think of it I 
 remember that physiologists and organic chemists at 
 
FARMING AND FARM PEOPLE. 213 
 
 home believe themselves to have discovered that ' fish 
 nourishes the brain.' The savants at home are then, 
 so far, in accord with at least one old woman in 
 Portugal. It is not, however, on this account alone 
 that I should desire to promote the use of bacalhau 
 among all classes of my countrymen. It is in its more 
 serious aspects as a source of food supply that I wish 
 to recommend it. To the house purveyor it should 
 be invaluable : a raw material which admits of being 
 dressed, if necessary, at a minute's notice, and in so 
 many different ways, and which never taints, has 
 obvious advantages over every form of animal food. 
 Though bacalhau is apparently dearer than beef, it 
 is probably cheaper when compared with reference 
 to food value, and its price in Portugal is enhanced first 
 by the duty, and probably by the fact of the demand 
 being, in so small a country, more or less intermittent. 
 Distance, too, must lend something to freight-charge. 
 If there was a general demand for it in Great Britain 
 it would cheapen. If the Portuguese, who are rigid 
 economists, find their account in buying bacalhau 
 dear, we, if we got to like it, should certainly be no 
 losers by buying it cheap and consuming it freely. 
 
 As for the question of supply, it is practically in- 
 exhaustible ; the whole Northern ocean, by travellers, 
 accounts, teems with cod-fish wherever the water 
 shoals enough to get at them. The supply is, there- 
 fore, independent of seasons. The pasturage of 
 English and American fields determine the price of 
 beef and mutton, but the fields of ocean are never 
 bare : the cod shoals migrate from time to time, but 
 
214 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 have never failed. The bringing them to England is 
 only a question of capital and enterprise, in which 
 our own colonists and countrymen are not likely to 
 fail us. 
 
 All, however, depends upon whether we can ever 
 get to like cod-fish dried, as we already like it fresh. 
 Ce rtest que le premier pas qui coute^ as my friend and 
 I found when we debated as to which of us should 
 begin on his piece of raw bacalhau. 
 
 Both countrymen and countrywomen are warmly 
 and comfortably clad, the women, perhaps, more con- 
 spicuously so than the men ; and while the latter have 
 in many places adopted the dress of townsfolk (often 
 possessing, in addition, a thick cloak of brown home- 
 spun cloth), the women still preserve the national 
 dress, which varies a little in every district, and 
 generally consists of a coarse white linen shirt, a dark 
 bodice, a pleated serge or cloth petticoat, and a broad 
 flat hat, with a black cloth cloak. The custom of 
 wearing ornaments of very fine gold is universal, even 
 among the poorer of the peasant women, and the 
 value of these ornaments testifies to the present and 
 long continued well-being of their wearers. Few 
 peasant women have a less value in ornaments than 
 one or two pounds ; and I am assured, and can believe, 
 that many of them possess gold ornaments worth 
 twenty or thirty pounds. 
 
 Women work habitually in the fields, and begin 
 to do so as children ; as quite young girls they 
 accompany the ox carts, walking in front of. the oxen 
 with goads in their hands, while the men follow to 
 
FARMING AND FAEM PEOPLE. 215 
 
 load and unload the carts ; they drive the cattle afield, 
 and mind them while they are grazing. As they grow 
 older, they cut and carry home the grass, weed the 
 maize and wheat, and do their share of all the work 
 of the farm except ploughing and the harder work 
 with the hoe. 
 
 The system of field gangs is utterly unknown in 
 Portugal. 
 
 While this general employment of women nearly 
 doubles the agricultural working-power of the nation, 
 the women themselves are certainly neither demoral- 
 ized nor physically deteriorated by their labours. 
 
 Such is the farm system in the naturally barren 
 but artificially affluent province of the Minho, where, 
 I have no hesitation in saying, the general social well- 
 being of the tillers of the land is greater than in any 
 part of the world I have yet seen. 
 
 When my German acquaintance at the table dlwte 
 — for whose benefit and at whose particular request 
 I had condensed into a speech which took but a very 
 few minutes in the utterance some small portion of 
 the information which I have now (I fear with much 
 greater prolixity) given to the reader, — when, I say, 
 my German friend again spoke, he was somewhat less 
 impressed than I should like my reader to be with my 
 views. 
 
 ' The torrent of human progress,' he said, ; (for it 
 is a torrent in these days, and nothing less rapid) 
 cannot be restrained by mere sentimental obstacles.' 
 
 I answered, ' In the meantime, and until the full 
 
216 POETUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 flood of utilitarianism is upon us, I venture to appre- 
 hend that you have found few customers for agricul- 
 tural machinery in the northern provinces ? ' 
 
 ' Very few,' he said ; ' in fact, none at all.' 
 
 ' And you will never find customers.' 
 
 ' The people of these provinces are little better 
 than idiots,' he remarked, ' and do not understand 
 their own interests.' 
 
 'I should call them,' I said, ' a shrewd people, and 
 so far intelligent that it would be difficult to persuade 
 a farmer with twelve or twenty acres of land to give 
 as much as the whole yearly profits of his farm for a 
 machine that he could never find enough work for.' 
 
 ' Humph ! ' said the German. 
 
 ' You should go southwards ; there, though the 
 labourers are thriftless and slothful, the land ill- tilled, 
 and the country poor, you will find at any rate estates 
 large enough for expensive machines to do sufficient 
 work to pay for the outlay upon them.' 
 
 ' I shall go there and try,' said the German. 
 
 The German gentleman remained silent, and I 
 hoped he was impressed ; but he presently said, 
 
 ' I admit that you have told me something that I 
 did not know before ; nevertheless I cannot but think 
 that there is a solution for the intellectual, social, and 
 moral obstruction which you describe, more in accord- 
 ance with immutable general principles and the 
 doctrines of the great Smith than you perhaps 
 imagine.' 
 
 Here our conversation ceased, with the unspoken 
 reflection on my part that very intelligent persons are 
 
FARMING AND FARM PEOPLE. 217 
 
 sometimes singularly opposed to the reception of new 
 opinions ; and when once they have taken in a full 
 cargo of information and ideas, are very loth to do 
 any further traffic in these commodities. 
 
 I am reminded of a similar limitation in the 
 sagacity of the most sagacious of all animals after man 
 — the elephant. 
 
 It is related of one of these thoughtful creatures 
 that, his keeper failing to feed him sufficiently during 
 the day, it was his habit every night to draw the 
 heavy wooden post to which he was fastened by means 
 of a stout chain, by main force out of the ground, 
 and to make his way to a neighbouring rice-field, and 
 there, after carefully fixing his post in a convenient 
 part of the field — so great was the force of habit and 
 association with him — he would proceed to feed upon 
 all the rice within reach of his tether. In the morn- 
 ing he again drew his post up, and returning to his 
 stable, renxed it in its accustomed place. 
 
 I could not but reflect that my German acquaint- 
 ance possessed not a little of this rather narrow 
 elephantine wisdom ; and he is, I fear, not singular. 
 Many and many an intelligent traveller have I met, 
 in, as it were, foreign rice fields, carrying his post 
 with him, planting it firmly in the ground from time 
 to time, and tethering himself thereto, to the very 
 lamentable limitation of his outlook upon the world 
 around him. 
 
218 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 PORT WINE. 1 
 
 If the secret history of many of the utterances on the 
 subject of wine that have been made within the last 
 thirty years could be made known to the world, the 
 world would be singularly astonished at learning 
 from whose hands it has been accepting the doctrine 
 which it holds with a very firm faith indeed. A man 
 writes a learned book, or a popular book, or a long 
 review in an influential periodical, or a smart one 
 in a newspaper ; or he takes a scientific and seem- 
 ingly impartial interest in the digestion of wine con- 
 sumers and writes an essay, or he fires off a dozen 
 
 1 I published some years ago in a leading periodical, under the 
 transparent pseudonym of Matthew Freke Turner, a paper en- 
 titled, Wine and Wine Merchants. This paper I have now re- 
 written, with copious additions, into the present chapter. When 
 it appeared, many worthy gentlemen, whose interests seemed to 
 them to run counter to the facts and conclusions I put forth, 
 were made very angry with me, and used strong language in print. 
 Much as the original article has been altered to suit its present 
 place as a chapter in a book on Portugal, I have been careful to 
 take away from it nothing which could have the good effect of 
 continuing to irritate and offend the aforesaid interested persons, 
 being convinced that one of the most righteous and pleasing func- 
 tions of literature is to tell the plain truth, and shame those who 
 have any interest in suppressing it. 
 
PORT WINE. 219 
 
 controversial pamphlets in succession ; and in each 
 one of these cases the good, easy public believes 
 that the author has no object in view but its instruc- 
 tion. 
 
 There are cases, no doubt, in which the writer 
 has no other object before him ; and there is, I am 
 sure, no case in which he does not believe himself to 
 be an impartial instructor of mankind ; nevertheless, 
 as human nature is at present constituted, it would 
 be reassuring to be quite certain how the writers are 
 circumstanced. It would, perhaps, be too much to 
 expect that the author of pamphlet, article, essay, 
 review, or book should begin by saying, ' I am a 
 dealer in the ware I am about to describe,' or ' I am 
 the brother, uncle, or intimate friend of some one 
 who is, and I am interested in the good repute of cer- 
 tain wares that I am about to praise, and in the ill 
 repute of certain other wares that, as the reader 
 shall presently observe, I shall run down ; ' but I can- 
 not recollect a single instance in which such a pre- 
 face has been written. 
 
 Now, I am not for a moment going to imply that 
 a gentleman who lives by selling one kind of wine, 
 say the fine vintages of our Australian Colonies, is 
 anything but quite conscientious when he asserts in a 
 printed book that Chateau Margaux is poor stuff, and 
 Lafitte very much overrated. I only say that he 
 is not a fit person to write a book to instruct the 
 public. It is, no doubt, a very illiberal ordinance 
 that a judge should not sit on the bench in his native 
 county, but it recommends itself to the common 
 
220 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 sense of human nature. As one of a simple-minded 
 public, I protest against our having to accept our 
 opinions about wine from gentlemen whom a custo- 
 mary rule would exclude from the wine committees of 
 their London Clubs. 
 
 After saying so much, it is well that the present 
 writer should observe that he is not himself pecuni- 
 arily interested, directly or indirectly, even in the re- 
 motest way, in wine. 
 
 The universal interest that is now taken in wine, 
 and consequently the mass of literature dealing with 
 the subject, dates from little more than about twenty 
 or thirty years ago. When port and sherry were the 
 daily drink of English gentlemen, claret and cham- 
 pagne not very common ones, and the German wines 
 hardly known, there was very little to make a book 
 about. The secrets of the trade were also better 
 kept ; it was in fewer hands ; the duties were enor- 
 mous, and the lighter wines which are now favoured 
 by taxation were then so overburthened as only to 
 reach a very few rich men. There were few rivalries 
 among wine merchants, seeing that wines of each variety 
 were the staple of every merchant's trade, and there- 
 fore if a man sold claret he did not care to say a bad 
 word for his neighbour who sold port, as it is to be 
 feared he does now when wine-firms have multiplied 
 and, as always happens with an increasing trade, 
 businesses have been sub-divided. It was then the 
 golden age of wine-dealing, when an innocent and 
 unsuspecting public drank over-brandied port, and 
 
PORT WINE. 221 
 
 ' plastered ' sherry, and loaded claret, and paid their 
 wine bills, and held their tongues. 
 
 Yet, even in those days of happy ignorance and 
 guileless customers, some stir had been made, a panic 
 created, and a dead set made against one of the truest, 
 best, and safest (I shall explain this word presently) 
 of imported wines. A fashionable doctor discovered 
 that madeira contained acid in pernicious proportions. 
 He was believed, and the Eegent set the example of 
 drinking sherry instead. Fear and fashion together 
 did their work, and madeira has never regained the 
 prestige which it then lost ; while sherry, which had 
 before been little used, not only took its place but 
 has found greater favour, to judge from the evidence of 
 the quantities imported, than any wine, even port, 
 has ever had in these islands ; and, be it observed, 
 the sherry that superseded madeira was not the light 
 white wine which grows on the hills round Xeres ; 
 it was not the wine which once was a famous drink 
 in England — the 4 Sherris sack ' [Xeres secco) known 
 in Shakespeare's time — a dry wine which had to be 
 sugared as we sugar tea. 1 It was not this natural wine, 
 but a fabricated liquor which took its place, — a wine 
 coloured and sweetened Avith burnt sugar and boiled 
 must to imitate the flavour of madeira, brandied to 
 make it keep, and ' plastered ' (doctored with plaster 
 of Paris) to take away the over-acidity. This it was 
 that captivated the simple-minded wine-drinker, the 
 
 1 So commonly was this done that, as will be remembered, 
 Poins addresses Falstaff as ' Sir John Sack and Sugar,' and that 
 worthy remarks piteously, ' If sack and sugar be a fault, God help 
 the wicked ! ' 
 
222 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 absence of sourness. The natural acidity was 
 neutralized with an alkali, and became what chemists 
 call a 4 salt : ' and as his doctors told him to beware 
 of acid, and he was satisfied that there was little of it 
 in sherry, he never stopped to inquire whether, in its 
 new form, it was possibly not as harmful as before. 
 It was enough that he did not taste the sourness ; he 
 was no chemist, his palate was his only laboratory. 
 Let it be observed that the sherry I thus disparage 
 is the sherry of years gone by, of what architects 
 would call the transition period — the transition be- 
 tween good modern sherry and madeira. Everyone 
 knows that good sherry now is a very pure and whole- 
 some wine. It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say 
 at the present day that this theory of acidity was 
 founded on a misconception. 
 
 The various acids in madeira, the free and fixed 
 acids, the tartaric, which mostly pre-exists in the 
 grape and is in moderation harmless, and the acetic 
 acid, which is another name for vinegar and usually 
 marks some degree of unsoundness — all these acids 
 are found in less proportion than in sound claret, and 
 yet claret is admitted, and rightly admitted, to be a 
 wholesome wine. In truth madeira was condemned 
 on false evidence. On dietetic grounds there is no 
 particular reason for its loss of favour, but it is too 
 late for a new trial or an appeal from a wrong verdict 
 whose justice has so long been acquiesced in. The 
 day of madeira has probably gone by, not to return. 
 
 It is to Mr. Gladstone, as everyone knows, that we 
 
PORT WINE. 223 
 
 owe the change in the wine duties twenty years ago 
 which has brought about quite a new state of 
 things in the wine trade, and which shook to their 
 foundations the thrones of the old established wine- 
 fir ins. 
 
 From the year 1703, when Lord Methuen 
 concluded his famous treaty with Portugal, which 
 admitted Portuguese wines through our Custom- 
 house on easier terms than the till then favourite 
 wines of Gascony — from that time port wine began to 
 be drunk in England, and the wines of France to be 
 neglected. It was our subtle British policy to drink 
 the wines of our ally, and to eschew those of our 
 hereditary enemy. As time went on and anti-Galli- 
 canism grew stronger during our wars with France of 
 the middle of the century, it was in the wines of 
 Portugal and of its colony Madeira that we drank 
 success to our arms and confusion to our enemies. 
 At the commencement of the present century the 
 policy which favoured port wine, and imposed accu- 
 mulated duties that came in time to be prohibitive 
 on those of France, was more and more approved 
 and seconded by the nation, which the abominations 
 of the Revolution, and our long struggle with the power 
 of Napoleon, had converted almost entirely to high 
 Toryism ; so that a patriotic Englishman got to reckon 
 it to be one of his privileges and blessings that the 
 State had interfered to prevent him from drinking 
 claret and to let him fill his glass with port and 
 madeira, wines which by this time he had got to like 
 beyond all others. 
 
224 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 Moreover, nature herself seemed to conspire with 
 the ruler of France to make the State-favoured wines 
 more than ever acceptable to Englishmen. 1 From 
 1802 to 1815, inclusive, there was a succession of 
 splendid vintages, both in Portugal and Madeira. 
 Never before had such wines been made. Most of 
 these fourteen vintages were abundant ; all were good ; 
 one was the famous 'Comet Vintage,' of 1811 ; and 
 the last was the magnificent vintage of 1815, which 
 has never been excelled in Portugal. On the other 
 hand, the wines made in other parts of the world 
 during this period were of indifferent quality, and 
 most of the vintages of the Medoc, always excepting 
 the ' Comet Vintage,' were bad. But even in this 
 last year of its apparent complete triumph, a very 
 keen observer of the times might have foreseen the 
 eventual weakening of the long-continued bond 
 between wine and the State, and that a great politician 
 would arise in the future, one of whose titles to fame 
 
 1 I say ' Englishmen ' advisedly. Port was never greatly in 
 favour in either Ireland or Scotland. It would be difficult to 
 name a period in which good claret was not obtainable in Dublin. 
 The Scotch retained, perhaps from their ancient connection with 
 France, a strong liking for the wines of Medoc, and the poet did 
 not speak the literal truth who rhymed as follows : 
 
 * Firm and erect the Caledonian stood, 
 
 Old was his mutton, and his claret good. 
 " Let him drink port ! " the English statesman cried : 
 
 He drank the poison, and his spirit died.' 
 
 There was more rhyme than reason in this doggrel ; and as 
 long as a smuggler chose to run a cargo of Gascon wine on Leith 
 Sands, Scotchmen were found to drink it in spite of the English 
 statesman and his tax. Edinburgh has never lost her old reputa- 
 tion for claret. 
 
PORT WINE. • 225 
 
 would be that he had enabled his countrymen to 
 drink the wine of their hereditary foes (at fourteen 
 shillings the dozen). For, in this very year 1815 the 
 great battle was fought from and after which our 
 antipathy to Frenchmen began to lessen, and our 
 desire to drink their wines to increase. Then came 
 the opening of the Continent, and Englishmen went 
 abroad again and found, to their surprise, that there 
 were wines fit for an Englishman to drink besides 
 port and madeira. Then it so happened that the 
 vintages in Portugal, and also in Madeira, for the next 
 four years were detestable. Then came an event 
 which, little as it might seem to be connected with 
 any diminution of the veneration for port wine in 
 English breasts, was in truth the ' beginning of the 
 end.' I dwell upon this circumstance, because I 
 am not aware that it has been so much as mentioned 
 in any one of the many works treating of wine. 
 
 The year 1820 is memorable in the chronicles of 
 wine as the most remarkable vintage of port wine ever 
 known. The wine made in that year was not indeed 
 so fine as that of 1815, but it was nearly as good, and 
 it was such in other respects as had never been known 
 before; for the wine made in 1820 was as sweet as 
 syrup, and nearly as black as ink, it was full of 
 naturally-formed alcohol, and of all the various con- 
 stituents — most of them far beyond the analysis of 
 the ablest chemist — which go to make of wine a 
 liquor differing from all other liquors. It was this 
 seemingly most favourable circumstance which, in 
 time, injured the good repute of port wine ; for the 
 
 Q 
 
226 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 public, having once tasted this dark, liqueur-like, 
 highly flavoured wine of 1820, would accept of 
 nothing less dark and less rich as genuine port. Then 
 set in the adulteration of port wine, and all the 
 various manoeuvres by which wines lacking colour, 
 flavour, and bouquet are endowed artificially with 
 characteristics which nature has not bestowed upon 
 them. 
 
 These tricks began before the grapes had left the 
 winepress, into which were thrown bags containing 
 dried elderberries, whose colouring matter was 
 transferred to the grape-juice. When the must had 
 gone some way towards fermentation — before, that 
 is, the whole of its sweetness was converted into 
 spirit — brandy in far greater proportion than had 
 previously been employed was added to check the 
 fermentation. Here, then, was a wine to which arti- 
 ficial means had imparted colour, sweetness, and 
 spirit; but nothing could give it the full, natural 
 vinous flavour, for this was hindered by the over- 
 interrupted fermentation. Such tampering as this 
 would ruin any wine but port, and the result would 
 be a poor, undrinkable stuff; and with port it only 
 did not entirely fail because the Lusitanian grape, 
 ripened in the intense heat of its native hill-slopes, 
 develops such powerful vinous qualities as even this 
 hard treatment of it could not entirely suppress. 
 
 Things went on without much change for the first 
 half of the present century. Sherry, as I have 
 shown, took the place of madeira. Port, however, 
 though much abused, still held its ground ; but the 
 
PORT WINE. 227 
 
 easy public was beginning to feel aggrieved ; the 
 processes of port wine making began to leak out, 
 and the evils sometimes connected with those pro- 
 cesses began to be greatly exaggerated : bad jokes 
 about blacking and logwood began to circulate. 
 ' Your old port, mind,' said Douglas Jerrold, ordering 
 a fresh bottle at an inn, ' not your elder port ; ' and 
 the insinuation, as we have seen, was not unjustified. 
 In 1852 the grievances of wine drinkers had not 
 lessened, while their knowledge of wine had greatly 
 increased. Things were ripe for a change. In 
 this year occurred two events which mainly brought 
 it about. One was the session of a Committee of 
 the House of Commons during the summer of 1852. 
 The other was the vine disease — the. oidium 1 — 
 
 1 The Oidium Tucheri appears in early summer as a white, 
 filmy mould or fungus on the leaves ; later on, it shows on the 
 unripe fruit ; and if allowed to run its course, it stunts the growth 
 of the grape, and in most cases causes it to dwindle, to split open, 
 and to rot. The panic produced in districts where the vine repre- 
 sents eighty or ninety per cent, of the farmer's produce, may easily 
 be imagined. The finest growths of wine suffered first, just as the 
 most highly-bred animals succumb soonest to an epidemic. A 
 large vineyard in Burgundy produced that year twenty- three 
 hogsheads (pieces), which the year before had yielded over two 
 hundred. The Medoc wine farmers suffered greatly, but some- 
 what less than those of other parts of France. In the port wine 
 district the year 1852 was disastrous. The farmers who grow the 
 vines that make port grow hardly any other crop. One of the 
 best vineyards, which had seldom given less than one hundred 
 and sixty pipes, made in the year 1852 but five; and the quality 
 was so poor that the labourers on the estate could hardly drink it. 
 In Madeira the destruction of vines was greater than elsewhere ; 
 and for several years no wine at all was produced — none at least 
 that could rank as madeira. If science or empiricism had not 
 
 Q 2 
 
^28 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 which, though observed seven years before, first 
 appeared in great virulence in the same summer ; 
 and, for the time, almost ruined the vineyards of 
 Europe. 
 
 The French were the first in the field with a 
 remedy, which is found in sulphur. Blown on to 
 the vine leaves and grape bunches, in the shape of 
 an impalpable powder, from a pair of bellows, the 
 cure is perfect. The fungus growth is arrested, and 
 if the plant be well dredged over with sulphur 
 periodically from early spring-time, it is seldom even 
 attacked. The French vine growers, to whose 
 quicker wits the value of the cure came home 
 sooner than to those of the farmers of Spain, 
 Portugal, Madeira, and Germany, got their vineyards 
 into full production while the farmers of Southern 
 Europe were still employing their priests with bell 
 and book to exorcise the evil spirit that had invaded 
 their vineyards. Thus did the Frenchmen push 
 forward in the race ; and would have come near to 
 winning it, so far as Great Britain was concerned, 
 had their competition not been hindered by the 
 heavy import duties which, though now greatly 
 reduced, still most unfairly handicapped them. 
 
 The other event, the evidence taken in Committee, 
 caused a great deal of commotion in the world of 
 wine consumers. What happened in most Parlia- 
 mentary Committees happened in this one. A' 
 
 devised an almost perfect remedy, there is good reason to believe 
 that at the present clay not a vineyard, vine, or wine-merchant 
 would exist in Europe. 
 
PORT WINE. 229 
 
 huge mass of evidence — some valuable, more worth- 
 less, and most of it ex parte and interested, and 
 therefore worse than worthless — was laid before a 
 party of not very competent judges, who possessed 
 neither capacity, nor the necessary knowledge, nor 
 even leisure, to sift it. 
 
 Among the witnesses the one whose evidence 
 created by far the most interest was the late Baron 
 Forrester. He was the only witness who could 
 speak from personal experience of port wine making, 
 being a merchant residing at Oporto, and he did not 
 hesitate to speak out boldly what was in him to say. 
 Certainly, liberavit animam, he made a clean breast 
 of it. This gentleman, an energetic man, very asser- 
 tive of opinions unpalatable to his fellow port wine 
 merchants, but which were by no means wholly desti- 
 tute of soundness, had arrived at the conclusion that 
 port could be made without any adventitious spirit, or 
 with but very little, and without the help of colouring 
 matter. 
 
 These modest propositions were not enunciated 
 without arousing a violent controversy, in which 
 Mr. Forrester argued his point with much strong 
 denunciation of his trade rivals. His evidence, 
 however, produced, and deservedly produced, a great 
 effect in this country. 
 
 I do not agree with a great deal that was 
 advanced by Baron Forrester, but it is incontestable 
 that this remarkable man left his mark on the history 
 of the English wine trade, and that the effects of his 
 writings have been on the whole salutary. 
 
230 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 Mr. Forrester paid his theories the compliment of 
 acting up to them. He proposed to himself to make 
 wine as he had said it should be made, and he 
 delivered lectures in various towns in England, 
 explaining his views and his intentions — and these 
 were to sell pure port wine. It was triumphantly 
 asserted by his opponents that much of his port wine 
 did not keep sound, and was returned to him by his 
 customers. Even if this allegation had been true, 
 which it probably was only to a limited extent, it 
 proves nothing beyond Mr. Forrester's want of skill 
 or luck, or his too vehement belief in a sound theory ; 
 for that port will keep which is made without brandy 
 added to check fermentation, is a quite demonstrable 
 proposition. Whether the wine does not require a 
 little brandy afterwards is another matter ; and it 
 does not appear that Mr. Forrester denied this, or 
 that he failed in most cases to make this subsequent 
 addition of spirit. 
 
 The true point at issue has always seemed to me 
 to be, not whether port can be made without the 
 addition of distilled wine, but whether wine so made 
 is worth making or worth drinking. Such wine 
 is an unmarketable product, and I think deserv- 
 edly so. It is a strong, rough and comparatively 
 flavourless liquor. If a man were to add six drops 
 of ink to a glass of very common red burgundy he 
 would get something exceedingly like unfortified 
 port. Every Oporto wine merchant has tried the ex- 
 periment of unfortified port wine. It is a pity they 
 cannot sell it, for they would quickly make their 
 
PORT WINE. 231 
 
 fortunes ; but the plain truth is that it is an abomina- 
 ble drink. 
 
 Public opinion was in this state when Mr. 
 Gladstone turned his attention to the question of 
 wine. It was clear enough that a reform was needed, 
 and if the then Chancellor of the Exchequer had 
 been an ordinary man, the reform would have been 
 brought about in a very simple and straightforward 
 manner, and — with due deference be it suggested — 
 with a result possibly more satisfactory to the ex- 
 chequer, to wine consumers, and to the majority of 
 wine merchants, than that which has followed upon 
 the revolution in the wine trade effected in 1860 and 
 1861. But Mr. Gladstone is not an ordinary man, 
 nor could a great Budget speech be made out of so 
 very simple a matter as a reduction of the wine 
 duties by a reasonable amount, and the fixing of a 
 maximum of spirituous strength beyond which wine 
 should cease to be classed as wine, and be taxed as 
 spirit. 
 
 There had already been enunciated theories about 
 pure wines, unbrandied wines, and so forth, and these 
 somewhat vague notions were fixed, crystallized, and 
 made popular by Mr. Gladstone. 
 
 Nothing could be more elaborate, nothing more 
 ingenious, and yet nothing more lucid and, to quite 
 ignorant people, more convincing, than Mr. Glad- 
 stone's exposition of the grand principle that was 
 brought home to the comprehension and convictions 
 of the whole British nation the morning after the 
 Chancellor's Budget speech. The argument was 
 
232 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW, 
 
 shortly this : wine is fermented grape juice, and this 
 juice generates in the course of fermentation a certain 
 percentage of spirit, say from eighteen to twenty-six 
 per cent., 1 more or less. Any addition of spirit over 
 and above this naturally developed quantity is an 
 unnecessary, an altogether abominable and reprehen- 
 sible addition, and a thing to be discouraged and even 
 punished. Moreover, it is a defrauding of the spirit re- 
 venue that a liquor should pay the lower duty on wine, 
 and be all the time partly composed of that which 
 is liable to the higher duty upon spirit. This was the 
 argument, and the inference, and the corollary. The 
 reasoning is just, but the premises are quite false. 
 
 Wine, to be sure, does not very often naturally 
 generate more than thirty per cent, of spirit, though 
 the Australians claim to make natural wine containing 
 forty per cent., and the Spaniards have sometimes 
 claimed as much or more, but the addition of some 
 extraneous antiseptic substance, in greater or less 
 quantity, is an incident in the preparation of every 
 red wine of which it is intended to preserve the 
 original soundness, that ever was made, or that ever 
 will be made. The natural wines of Europe — 
 those made to be consumed on the spot, and which are 
 
 1 Of proof spirit, which is about one-half pure alcohol and one- 
 half water. It has always been sturdily contended by the ' pure 
 wine ' doctrinaires that wine cannot naturally generate more than 
 twenty-five per cent, of spirit. It is an error pure and simple, but 
 it is an error enshrined in one of those models of truth and dis- 
 interestedness, an English Blue-book, and is, in consequence, 
 brandished on all occasions by the 'pure wine' people as an un- 
 bailable fact. 
 
PORT WINE. 233 
 
 probably in the proportion of something like a thou- 
 sand to one of the wines prepared for exportation — ■ 
 are intended to be drunk in the summer after they 
 are made. Very rarely will they keep two years. 
 Great care in vinification will indeed go some way, 
 but it cannot perform a miracle. Science has suggested 
 many variations in wine making but it can do little 
 but complicate what is a very simple matter. In order 
 to show how simple and easy is the process of wine 
 making, I proceed to describe it very shortly. 
 
 The ripe grapes are thrown into a vat, and 
 trodden under foot ; the skins, the stones, the juice, 
 and some or all of the stalks are allowed to remain 
 till the liquid ferments. When the heat of fermenta- 
 tion begins to abate, the wine, for it has already the 
 chief attributes of wine, is run into casks, or tonels, 
 which are casks of a large size, whereby the active 
 fermentation is checked, but it is usually not quite 
 arrested till the cold weather of early winter sets in. 
 The wine then clears, the casks are filled up to the 
 top, the bungs are driven in tight, and the wine is fit 
 for consumption. This is how the peasants and 
 farmers of France, Italy and Greece, of Spain, of 
 Portugal, and of Hungary, make the wines that 
 quench their thirst in the heat and burden of the 
 southern summer's day ; and this probably is how red 
 wine has been made since first the juice of grapes 
 was pressed out and fermented. The ingenuity of 
 the most ingenious people in the world has added 
 almost nothing to these time-honoured processes. 
 
 In some of the vineyards of Burgundy, indeed, a 
 
234 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 machine is used to separate the stalks and the 
 grapes, and the pressing of the grapes is done by 
 machinery, but the great growths of the Medoc, the 
 Chateau Margaux, and Chateau Lafitte are the result 
 of processes nearly as simple as those employed by 
 the peasant wine growers of Southern Europe, whose 
 rough red wines are used as our labourers use beer 
 or cider. The differences are differences in degree 
 only ; in the care with which the grapes are picked, 
 and green and decayed ones rejected, and with which 
 a due proportion of the stalks is removed ; the 
 attention with which the fermenting liquid is watched 
 and drawn off at the right moment, the number of 
 subsequent rackings, the scrupulous cleanliness of all 
 the vessels used ; but the process which I have 
 described — and my descriptions are not taken from 
 books but from personal observation in several of the 
 wine-producing countries of Europe — are those which 
 suffiee only to make wine that is not wanted to keep 
 more than a twelvemonth. There is in all red wine, — 
 and none other quite deserves the name of wine, or 
 contains its full constituents, 1 — there is in every red 
 
 1 White wine is usually wine that is fermented without the 
 skins and' stalks ; it does not, therefore, contain its full share of 
 the various ' extractives ' which are factors in the result which we 
 call wine. Common experience tells us that these wines have not 
 the flavour or the bouquet of red wines, and analogy would lead 
 us as surely as experience does to conclude that they do not share 
 their remedial and restorative virtues. White wines are rather 
 grape ciders than true wines. It is a well-known fact that when 
 the viues of Madeira were destroyed in 1852, a liquor was made 
 from apples and pears, and even from the fruit of the loquat tree, 
 and that such fermented liquor was near enough in character to 
 
PORT WINE. 235 
 
 wine, with one or two exceptions which I will notice 
 presently, some element of decay which, in a longer 
 or a shorter time, brings about its destruction. 
 
 In ancient times, as soon as a wine had obtained 
 any repute beyond the district of its production, some 
 artificial mode of preserving it was devised. With 
 every respect for the skill of wine makers and wine 
 merchants of modern days, they must be pronounced 
 to be mere children in comparison with the wine arti- 
 ficers of ancient Greece. The people of Cette and 
 Hamburg profess to imitate any wine they are asked 
 for, but then who that has tasted ' Hambro' Sherry,' 
 or ' Cette Port,' can speak of the performances of 
 these French and German rogues with common 
 patience ? Sticky, pungent, sickly, and altogether 
 abominable compounds of potato spirit, treacle, and 
 unknown chemical flavourings — often, it is asserted, 
 without a drop of grape juice — these are what a Ger- 
 man writer positively boasts of as triumphs of applied 
 science. Very different were the practices of the 
 Greeks. Their imitations of the best growths of 
 Italy were, we are informed, preferred at Kome to 
 the genuine wines themselves. 
 
 The wine doctors of the present day, in possessing 
 alcohol, have one signal advantage over those of ancient 
 Greece and Eome, who knew not the art of distilling 
 spirit. Alcohol is the sheet anchor of the modern 
 
 the true wine of the island to sell in England as inferior madeira ; 
 and champagne made of gooseberries and rhubarb, abominable as 
 it is, is not so unlike the French wine as to fail in finding a ready 
 sale. 
 
236 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 wine maker. What, then — might a wine maker in 
 Cadiz, Bordeaux, Macon, or Oporto ask — were the 
 methods they employed by which, in the absence of 
 brandy, wine could be preserved for ten, twenty, and 
 even sixty years and upwards ? We have fortunately 
 several of the treatises upon wine making by ancient 
 authors, and we are able to follow step by step the 
 ingenious processes formed on discoveries which the 
 Eomans and the Greeks, our masters in the art of 
 wine making, had arrived at ; not by means of 
 scientific deductions, but by the pure empirical 
 method of frequent failure and occasional success. 
 
 These forgotten processes have an important bear- 
 ing upon the question of the preservation of wines 
 and their so-called adulteration. It is the question 
 which underlies the whole subject of wine for us in 
 this country, who can as a rule drink none but such 
 as is so prepared artificially as to enable it to travel 
 by sea and by land, and to keep sound a longer or 
 shorter time. It is, moreover, a question upon which, 
 for obvious reasons, those who are most capable of 
 enlightening the public are the most interested and 
 least impartial of teachers. Its importance then 
 being such, the present writer, who claims to have 
 enjoyed peculiar opportunities of watching the appli- 
 cation of some of the processes of the ancients in the 
 very countries where their wines were grown, makes 
 no apology for dwelling for a moment on this subject 
 of ancient wine making. 
 
 In ancient times the preliminary treading out of 
 the grapes and the expressing of their juice were pre- 
 
PORT WINE. 237 
 
 cisely such as I have already described, and the colour 
 of the wine and its astringency were, as they still are, 
 greater or less according as the must was allowed to 
 remain a longer or shorter time with the stalks and 
 skins. The must was in all cases eventually drawn into 
 dolia— large, wide-mouthed jars of porous earthen- 
 ware, coated inside with pitch — and in these vessels the 
 liquid was allowed to ferment, and, on or about the 
 ninth day, had become wine. A lid was then fitted 
 closely to the top of the great jar, or dolium, and, it 
 is presumed, luted, to keep out the air. The lid was 
 removed once a month, the wine skimmed, and the 
 loss by evaporation made up from another jar. The 
 wine was now ready for consumption under the name 
 of ' vinum dollar e J which we may translate freely 
 ' vin ordinaire in the wood.' 
 
 Eed wine so made in the latitude of Borne or 
 Naples would exactly resemble the commoner country 
 wines with which every traveller in the South of 
 Europe is familiar, with this difference, that it would 
 have a flavour of pitch from the lining of the jar in 
 which it had been kept, and this taste every single 
 wine made in ancient times must have more or less 
 possessed. This is perhaps enough of itself to condemn 
 such ancient wines in the opinion of modern wine 
 drinkers, but if the reader will take the word of one 
 who has drunk wine so flavoured, the taste is by no 
 means disagreeable. The pitch used in the South of 
 Europe is not the coarse gum distilled from the pines 
 that grow in Northern Europe, but the much milder 
 and more aromatic pitch yielded by the pine of Italy, 
 
238 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 the Stone Pine ; and men soon acquire a taste for 
 such flavours. 
 
 Before I begin to describe the methods whereby 
 the ancients, who possessed neither spirit nor sugar 
 (the two substances without which modern wine 
 merchants and wine doctors could not move a single 
 step), practised the art of wine curing, with a success 
 now lost, I will state in a very few words what is the 
 nature of the problem offered to them and to us by 
 the preservation of wines. 
 
 The juice of grapes contains among many com- 
 ponents, mostly in infinitesimal proportions, such as 
 gelatine, gum, wax, potash, soda, lime, iron, and 
 many others which need not at present be regarded, 
 considerable percentages of acid, of sugar, of albumen, 
 and of tannin. It is with these four constituents only 
 that we need for the moment occupy ourselves. It 
 is the presence of the albumen chiefly that makes 
 grape juice a fermentable liquid when it is exposed to 
 a temperature of between sixty and eighty degrees 
 of Fahrenheit. Sugar has, as is well known, no power 
 of fermenting and of passing into decay — of which 
 fermentation is one of the first stages — is by itself 
 incapable of change, but the albuminous part of the 
 must, the so-called ferment, causes the sugar to be 
 decomposed, to break up and separate into spirit and 
 into carbonic acid — in plain English, causes the must 
 to ferment, and when most of the sugar is thus trans- 
 formed into spirit, the wine making is complete ; but 
 the process does not end here, seeing that vinous 
 fermentation is but one step towards complete decay. 
 
PORT WINE. 239 
 
 If left to itself the liquid would next undergo the 
 acetous fermentation, and thereafter the putrid. A 
 natural wine, accordingly, with due deference to 
 certain ' doctrinaires,' is a wine that, whatever may 
 be its present soundness, is on the high road to decay. 
 Wine making is therefore the art of stopping, for a 
 longer or shorter time, and by artificial means, the 
 progress of putrescence after the liquor has passed 
 the first stage towards it. I have shown how with 
 common wines this is done by drawing the wine from 
 its lees, removing it, that is, from a part of the ferment- 
 producing albumen, fibrin, and so forth, which, so 
 soon as spirit begins to form, fall to the bottom. To 
 do this, and to transfer the wine to a cool cellar, does 
 not indeed quite stop fermentation, but it nearly 
 arrests it. The process goes on slowly for a month 
 or two, more and more of the sugar passing into car- 
 bonic acid gas and into spirit, and more and more 
 albumen falling down as sediment, then the frosts of 
 winter come and stop even this slower fermentation, 
 and then, as I have shown, the wine clears. 
 
 The problem in wine making then is simply this — 
 how, without imparting any ill savour or unwhole- 
 some quality to the wine, to get rid of this aptitude 
 to decay. The difficulty of course increases with the 
 richness of the wine ; with wine, that is, which 
 possesses the largest share of those constituents which 
 go to make what is called ' body ; ' in other words, 
 with the wines that contain the least water, and that 
 are, therefore, cceteris paribus, the most valuable ; — 
 with the burgundies, the ports, and the various rich 
 
240 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 but commercially useless, because imperfectly made, 
 red wines of Spain and Italy. It is precisely with 
 rich wines of this character that the Greeks and 
 Eomans tried and solved the problem before us. 
 
 Sugar, spirit, and the tannin contained in the 
 wine itself, are the three chief preservative agents in 
 wine making, with the addition of one very important 
 extraneous one — sulphur. We shall see how the 
 ancients applied every one of these agents, always 
 remembering that, having no sugar nor distilled 
 spirit, they could not make direct use of those sub- 
 stances, and how they anticipated in their practice 
 some of the so-called discoveries of modern days. 
 
 The wine which we have followed in its course as 
 far as the ' dolium ' was by the ancients racked again 
 and again so soon as the fermentation had completely 
 ended ; being received each time into a vessel charged 
 with the fumes of burning sulphur, 1 each time acquir- 
 ing a fresh impregnation from the various resinous 
 and antiseptic substances with which the jar was 
 lined, and each time losing more and more of its albu- 
 men, and therefore each time getting nearer and 
 nearer to being an indestructible fluid. In the mean- 
 while, some of the first and sweetest runnings from 
 the wine-press had been kept apart, and the fermenta- 
 tion of this liquor arrested while it was still full of 
 
 1 The antiseptic properties of sulphurous acid gas are better 
 known than understood. Sulphuring wines is a universal practice 
 at the present day with the wine makers of all countries. The 
 sulphur probably destroys the spores and germ growths which 
 exist in most vinous liquids. 
 
PORT WINE. 241 
 
 sugar. 1 To possess this sugar-charged liquid, whose 
 sweetness was increasable by boiling, and whose 
 albuminous portions were precipitated by the same 
 means, was equivalent to and even better than the 
 possession of sugar itself, whose use is so indispensable 
 in the ' improvement ' of such wines as burgundies 
 and brown sherries. When the wine had made all 
 the spirit it could, and parted with most of its sugar, 
 its austerity would have been great ; so great, indeed, 
 that old wine of this sort made without sugar was 
 drunk mixed with honey, in the proportion of four of 
 wine and one of honey. It was therefore to restore 
 the saccharine matter that the sweet must was added 
 to the fermented wine, just as at the present day, 
 in the great wine factory of Bercy, where the wines 
 drunk in Paris undergo their final preparation for the 
 metropolis, thousands of tons of sugar are mixed 
 annually with the too austere wines of southern and 
 central France. Here the advantage would clearly 
 be with the ancients. To add un fermented grape 
 juice, containing in itself all the elements of wine, is 
 obviously better for the consumer than the simple 
 addition of sugar. 
 
 The ancients, however, knew a great deal more 
 than this of wine curing. A French savant, Monsieur 
 Appert, has professedly discovered the preservative 
 and ripening effects upon wine of a heat nearly equal 
 
 1 The possibility of this feat without the employment of alcohol 
 is a measure of the skill of these old wine makers, and of the 
 strength of their antiseptic compounds, that will come home 
 \ery readily to the comprehension of modern wine merchants. 
 
 R 
 
242 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 to that of boiling water, and M. Pasteur has more re- 
 cently fully explained the rationale of the process in 
 a learned volume. By exposing wine in closed ves- 
 sels for a few hours to a temperature of 185 degrees 
 of Fahr., these effects are, according to the French 
 savant, produced. They were produced two thousand 
 years ago, but in a much more complete way, by the 
 application of artificial heat for weeks and months to 
 the jars of wine ; and this practice was so universal 
 that an ancient writer tells us that a heating-house, 
 an apotheca or fumarium, was an indispensable part 
 of every country house. The constancy of this prac- 
 tice was, I make no doubt, one main cause of the 
 soundness and durability of the ancient wines. The 
 red wines, such as the Falernian, 1 were, we are told, 
 hardly fit to drink under twenty years, and even the 
 commoner wines required from four to ten. The 
 Appert-Pasteur process, though much talked of at 
 the time, has found but little favour with wine mer- 
 chants, and is a proof how lamentably modern science, 
 for once at least, falls short of ancient empiricism. 
 
 1 The learned have concluded, very much to their satisfaction, 
 that this most famous of the wines of antiquity was a white wine, 
 like madeira. It was certainly, however, a red wine, and the 
 ' amber ' colour ascribed to it (Pliny says that amber of a good 
 colour was called ' Falernian ') would apply only to its tawny 
 appearance after long keeping. The frequent rackings and finings 
 to which it was subjected would in a few years deprive it of colour. 
 Ked wine almost always loses its colour with keeping. Old bur- 
 gundy is invariably tawny, and port wine thirty or forty years old 
 is of the very amber colour that distinguished the Falernian. A 
 wine that possessed in some cases the austerity, and in others the 
 sweetness ascribed to Falernian, could only have been a red 
 wine, made with the full and perfect constituents of the grape. 
 
PORT WINE. 243 
 
 The mellowness which all wine acquires by age is 
 supposed, and I believe rightly supposed, to be partly 
 due to its slow, or rather, its gradual oxygenation, 
 and the heating of it would certainly promote this 
 oxygenation, besides destroying the germs of a fungus 
 growth which has been proved to be the forerunner, 
 and perhaps the cause, of the decay of the wine. All, 
 then, that modern science professes to accomplish by 
 the immersion of the wine, in bottles or other hermeti- 
 cally-closed vessels, in hot water for two Kours, was 
 accomplished in the fumarium ; and a good deal more 
 was done, for the fumarium, as its name implies, was 
 a smoke-house, and there is not the smallest doubt that 
 the pyroligneous acid of wood-smoke penetrated the 
 comparatively porous texture of the earthenware jar, 
 and communicated its flavour and its preservative 
 virtues to the wine inside. The smoky flavour, unless 
 in excess, was no more objected to than the similar 
 flavour in Westphalia hams or the peat reek in whisky 
 at the present day, 
 
 I have reason to believe that a further effect was 
 
 produced by long exposure in the fumarium. The 
 
 well-known property of the vapour of water to pass 
 
 through interstices of certain substances impermeable 
 
 to the vapour of alcohol \ was, I consider, taken advan- 
 
 1 A property not so well known, perhaps, as it should be. 
 The Australian wine-growers tested the wines they sent to the 
 Vienna Exhibition, and were astonished to find them stronger in 
 spirit when the voyage was ended. The evaporation of the watery 
 vapour in the tropics had reduced the quantity of the wine, and 
 increased its strength by several degrees. This phenomenon 
 takes place, as every experienced wine merchant knows, more con- 
 spicuously with white than with red wine. 
 
244 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 tage of, and if so, the wine, after long exposure in the 
 smoke-houses, would have become less bulky but more 
 spirituous. In other words, the branclying of wine 
 would have been virtually effected by a people who 
 had never learnt how to distil spirit. 
 
 Occasionally the reduction of bulk was carried 
 much further. The wine was inspissated by heat — 
 deprived, that is, of most of its water, and rendered 
 therefore, bulk for bulk, much more valuable. Such 
 inspissated wines were diluted with water when they 
 were drunk, and the advantage of having wine in so 
 portable a form is of course conspicuous enough in 
 times when overland transit could only be effected by 
 beasts of burden, and when traffic by sea was slow, 
 difficult, dangerous, and costly. 
 
 Having thus seen how the Greeks and Eomans 
 ' cured ' their wines, I am now going to tell how this 
 object is attained with the principal varieties of wine 
 drunk in Great Britain at the present day. 
 
 I have said, and I most emphatically repeat, that 
 all natural red wine is subject to decay, and that all 
 wine whatsoever must be treated artificially before it will 
 last more than one or two years. 
 
 To begin with Claret. The finest growths of the 
 Medoc district are peculiar in this respect, that they 
 contain less fermentable matter than probably any 
 known wine ; and this they owe partly to admirable 
 care in vinification, partly to a very complete fermen- 
 tation, but principally to the fact that the grapes 
 that make the wine are not so charged with the ele- 
 ments of vinosity as those ripened in warmer climates. 
 
PORT WINE. 245 
 
 They require in consequence less artificial treatment 
 than any other, and in the cases of the so-called 
 6 first growths ' of Chateaux Margaux, Larose, and 
 Lafitte, when the season has been a good one, the 
 6 curing ' seldom goes further than repeated fumiga- 
 tion with sulphur ; and the adulteration of the wine, 
 if the word must be employed, amounts only to its 
 very slight impregnation with the sulphurous acid 
 gas, which is immediately converted into sulphuric acid, 
 or vitriol. This, however, need cause no alarm ; the 
 percentage is infinitesimal, and vitriol, though it has 
 an ugly name, is, as every doctor will tell us, one of 
 the best of tonics. 1 The quantity of spirit added to 
 the fine claret is so small as hardly to be worth con- 
 sidering at all. A few pints are thrown upon the 
 grapes before the crushing begins, and a few more 
 are added, ostensibly to rinse out the casks, whenever 
 the wine is racked, and before it is shipped. In some 
 cases perhaps clarets get no addition of spirit at all. 
 The ' loading ' of claret is adopted chiefly for those 
 wines intended for the English market, and is effected. 
 by the addition of fuller bodied, more astringent, 
 and more spirituous wines, such as those of Her- 
 mitage. 
 
 The above remarks apply to the half-dozen finer 
 growths of the Medoc, wines which owe their poten- 
 tiality of preservation to a happy coincidence of soil, 
 
 1 This existence of vitriol in wines is, as might be supposed, a 
 common ground of attack, but a very unfair one, seeing that the 
 vitriol, or sulphuric acid, or the much greater proportion of it, 
 would find substances that would immediately reduce it to the 
 nearly inert condition of sulphates. 
 
246 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 climate, quality of wine, and care in cultivation and 
 in vinification. The majority of these exquisite wines 
 require to be kept four years in the wood to gain 
 mellowness, and four in bottle to acquire ' bouquet.' 
 After this, except in rare cases, claret (if unbrandied) 
 slowly degenerates, loses colour, and acquires acidity 
 and a bitter taste, then gets thick, and is sooner or 
 later a ruined wine. Longevity in clarets not of the 
 first growths is rare, and though instances of it may be 
 quoted, they are chiefly found in wines that have 
 never travelled twenty miles from their native cellar. 
 
 The fact, then, that clarets can in rare instances be 
 made without antiseptic treatment with spirit, is 
 therefore an apparent but not a real exception to the 
 rule I have laid down as to the necessity of such 
 treatment in all red wines. The life of fine claret is 
 indeed often greatly prolonged, but it is not preserved 
 indefinitely. 
 
 So much for the fine clarets. In them the tannin, 
 or astringent quality, the great natural preservative 
 against decay, and the natural acid of the grape, are 
 both subordinated to its other constituents to make 
 them in their way perfect wines. Not so the inferior 
 growths of the Mecloc, which we alone of the con- 
 sumers of them have christened j claret.' It is from 
 these latter wines, whose acidity and astringency are 
 as a rule in most disagreeable preponderance, that 
 are fabricated the wines known in the wine trade as 
 Chateau Margaux, Lafitte, and Larose. 
 
 When we remember that these three vineyards 
 together hardly cover five hundred acres, and never 
 
PORT WINE. 247 
 
 in the most abundant years make so much as two 
 thousand hogsheads of wine, scarcely enough to 
 furnish the cellars of a score of wholesale wine 
 merchants, it is somewhat ludicrous to reflect that 
 any number of dozens of these expensive wines can 
 be ordered from any number of wine merchants in 
 any large city in Europe or America. From St. 
 Petersburg to Lisbon, from Glasgow to Constantinople, 
 from Montreal to New Orleans, and thence southwards 
 to Eio and Buenos Ayres, and round the world to 
 the great cities of Australia and India, a man 
 may walk into any wine merchant's and order a 
 dozen of Chateau Margaux or Lafitte, and be reason- 
 ably disappointed if he is refused. 
 
 The performance of this ; inexhaustible bottle 
 trick ' over so wide a geographical area is only possi- 
 ble by treating the inferior growths (not of the Medoc 
 only, for the exports from Bordeaux of so-called 
 Medoc wines are said by French writers to be twelve 
 times greater than the whole production of that 
 district) in such a way as to give them a fictitious 
 resemblance to the first growths. To remove the 
 excess of acid an alkali is employed, and of course a 
 neutral salt is produced by their combination. Thin- 
 ness and absence of flavour are remedied sometimes 
 by the addition of more generous wines, occasionally 
 by fruity syrups ; bouquet is sold in bottles in the 
 chemists' shops of Bordeaux at ' two francs and up- 
 wards > according to quality.' To get rid of excessive 
 tannin is more difficult, but it can be effected by 
 repeated fining, at some cost, however, to the flavour 
 
248 PORTUGAL: OLD AISD NEW. 
 
 of the wine. This process is troublesome and expen- 
 sive, and the majority of cheap clarets, if they are 
 not rough, have a flat taste which reveals the secret 
 of their treatment to all wine makers ; the majority of 
 cheap clarets sold in this country, unless they be 
 very poor and very watery indeed, are, when they 
 contain all their native tannin, so rough that no one 
 with any pretension to delicacy of palate cares to 
 drink a glass undiluted with water. In France the 
 commoner Bordeaux wines are used with water, and 
 those that are drunk unmixed are prepared at Bercy 
 for immediate consumption in the restaurants of Paris, 
 by being watered and sweetened, flavoured and 
 alcoholized. In this way the excess of tannin is not 
 removed, but it is lessened by dilution or masked by 
 sugar. 
 
 All this, to be sure, is adulteration, but it is 
 
 almost certainly harmless. It is easy to frighten 
 
 simple and ignorant wine drinkers by telling them 
 
 they are drinking vitriol, and sulphate of potash, and 
 
 grain spirit, but it is a question of degree. Light 
 
 French wine by common consent and judged by 
 
 common experience is a wholesome article of diet, 
 
 let who will speak against it. Its fault is that it is 
 
 expensive. A wine, according to a writer who is 
 
 considered an authority upon the subject, may be 
 
 called cheap that costs not more than half-a-crown a 
 
 bottle. Now, if such a wine be of French growth, let 
 
 it be considered how very little vinous quality there 
 
 is in a half-crown bottle of claret — in other words, 
 
 how much water there is in proportion to the wine ; 
 
PORT WINE. 249 
 
 not necessarily water of adulteration, but water that 
 has been the original constituent of grapes ripened in 
 a climate not hot enough to bestow upon them the 
 full richness and vinosity that are found in the wines 
 of the south, in port or burgundy, or even in sherry 
 or madeira. Claret at fourteen shillings the dozen 
 was to become the drink of the people, the drink of 
 working men, and the reign of sobriety was forthwith 
 to commence ; but the working man is no fool : 
 before he spends fourteen shillings upon twelve 
 bottles, that is, two gallons of ' Gladstone Claret,' he 
 asks himself how many quarts of plain water he will 
 have to deduct, and he refrains from the bargain. 
 Light claret is not economical as a wine. It has 
 never reached lower down in the social scale than the 
 middle classes. 
 
 Of sherry adulteration the same can be said as of 
 claret. The finest wines of Xeres are soft, dry, and 
 somewhat spirituous wines, and but little artificial aid 
 is required to enable them to preserve their sound- 
 ness to an age far exceeding that reached by claret. 
 Even with the majority of such wines as these, and 
 certainly with all the commoner sherries, the system 
 of so-called ' plastering ' is followed, which consists in 
 throwing about thirty pounds of dry plaster of Paris 
 upon the quantity of untrodden grapes required to 
 make a butt of wine. The result is to precipitate the 
 natural wine acids, and to substitute for them sul- 
 phuric acid ; this mineral acid coming into contact 
 with the potash in the must, converts it into sulphate 
 of potash, whereas had things taken their course, 
 
250 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 bitartrate of potash (commonly called tartar) would 
 have been present — a salt always to be found in 
 young wines. This is the head and front of the 
 offence known as ' plastering,' made so much of by 
 those who desire to exhibit sherry in its worst colours. 
 Tartar is well known to be a not over wholesome 
 constituent of newly-made wine. Sulphate of potash 
 is certainly no very deleterious substance, and to put 
 it in the stead of tartar may, for any evidence the 
 other way, be rather a benefit than not. 
 
 A heavier indictment against the sherry makers 
 is their apparently too abundant use of spirit. A 
 white wine can possess little or no tannin, and there- 
 fore requires a preservative ; but, on the other hand, 
 if well made, such a wine should not be troubled with 
 the fruitiness and fermentable matter of the more 
 vinous red wines ; it should therefore not need such 
 a dose of spirit as it too often gets. It is probable 
 that the demands of consumers, rather than the 
 necessities of wine makers, are the cause of the ex- 
 cess of spirit in sherry. The same taste also causes 
 the dyeing of the wine with burnt sugar, and the 
 sweetening and fortifying it with dulce, or half fer- 
 mented grape-juice. These are quite harmless adul- 
 terations — if they deserve the name — as innocent, 
 indeed, and as openly employed, as the putting of 
 sugar and cream into our cups of tea. On the whole 
 I am convinced that sound sherry is a wholesome 
 wine, and one which we could very ill afford to do 
 without. 
 
 Of champagne I need say little. Everyone knows 
 
POET, WINE. 251 
 
 that it is an imperfectly fermented grape juice made 
 of grapes not thoroughly ripened, sweetened with 
 sugar-candy dissolved in brandy. The want of tan- 
 nin is supplied by oak shavings or tannic acid. Back- 
 ing and sulphuring are the chief methods of 4 curing ' 
 it. Experience, which is always immeasurably supe- 
 rior to the most positive utterances of theoretical 
 chemists, teaches us that, in spite of its being so arti- 
 ficial a wine, champagne is not only wholesome, but 
 a remedial agent of the very greatest value. 
 
 Hock and burgundy can hardly be regarded ^as 
 common wines in England. The common, rough 
 burgundies, indeed, find their way into consumption, 
 and an indiscriminating public classes them with 
 clarets ; and not unwisely, seeing that the inferior 
 French red wines are artificially brought to something 
 of a common standard. The 4 great wines ' of the 
 Burgundy district, the ' Clos Yougeot,' ' Eichebourg,' 
 and ' Eomanee Conti,' the most exquisite of wines, 
 true ' drink of the gods,' will probably never be known 
 in their full perfection beyond the region of their 
 production. They will hardly bear travel by land, 
 and transit by sea almost always injures them. 
 Unfortunately, in the case of the wine of modern 
 times, which is immeasurably superior to all others, 
 the skill of the modern wine curer utterly breaks 
 down. 
 
 Though port wine has the reputation of being the 
 most adulterated and the least natural of all wines, it 
 is, to the best of my knowledge and belief — and I 
 have had opportunities of watching all the processes 
 
252 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 of making it during thirteen years — one of the very- 
 purest. I believe that a man who drinks a glass of 
 port drinks as nearly natural and as concentrated a 
 form of fermented grape juice as it is humanly 
 possible to set before him. 
 
 There are no secrets and there is no reserve about 
 the processes of port vinification. All the world may 
 learn all about them, and the Wine Committee of the 
 House of Commons of 1879, which has now ended 
 its labours, has collected and sifted so much evidence 
 on the subject, and examined and cross-examined so 
 many impartial and partial witnesses, that no one has 
 any longer an excuse for ignoring the facts. 
 
 Adulteration is in wine, as in everything else, 
 
 mostly an affair of competition and of public taste. 
 
 Formerly Englishmen liked port wine to be almost 
 
 black in colour and very fruity and strong, whereupon 
 
 dried elderberries were employed to help to stain it. 
 
 If one merchant did it, his rivals had to follow suit. 
 
 It was deplorable enough, but a little too much was 
 
 made of it, for the wine was by no means seriously 
 
 injured or made unwholesome. The light wine 
 
 people, oblivious of their own misdeeds, were terribly 
 
 hurt by the thought that anybody could dye a wine 
 
 with elderberries. They did their utmost to publish 
 
 the fact and to proclaim their own innocence. Doing 
 
 this they perhaps did not mean to benefit the port 
 
 wine trade, but they were Balaams unawares : meaning 
 
 to bring a curse, they brought a blessing on the trade, 
 
 for though the public were not made to leave off 
 
 liking port wine, they left oil' liking it over dark and 
 
POUT WINE. 25 
 
 fruity ; and straightway the elderberry staining 
 ceased. 
 
 As for adulteration by logwood it always was a 
 libellous fable. Any chemist knows that the peculiar 
 reaction of logwood makes it absolutely inoperative 
 as a dye in any sort of wine. As long as the public 
 want port wine to have no more than its own true 
 garnet-red colour, which turns with age to a dark 
 amber, no merchant would be so extravagant as to 
 put elderberry into it. If the wine is required to be 
 made darker, there is a much cheaper dye and a far 
 more beautiful one always at hand in Portugal : it is 
 the natural colour of the darker varieties of the port 
 wine grape. To say that grapes are cheaper in Por- 
 tugal than elderberries in England seems an ex- 
 aggeration, but to my certain knowledge they are 
 much cheaper. About three years ago I was offered 
 more for the produce of a few elderberry trees in 
 Surrey than I could get for an equal weight of the 
 produce of my vines at Oporto. I wish to make 
 this point clear in support of my contention that 
 port wine is pure, because there is nothing so cheap 
 as port wine itself to adulterate it with. A curious 
 fact is that the common rough clarety wines grown 
 in the neighbourhood of Oporto and drunk by the 
 peasantry are often dearer than the choice vintages 
 of the port wine district. The apparent anomaly is 
 to be accounted for by the fact, that while the com- 
 moner wine is drinkable within six months of its 
 leaving the wine vat, new port wine — the trade speak 
 of it as young wine — has gone but one stage of its 
 
254 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 journey towards being drinkable port wine. It has 
 to be kept, to be racked, to be fined, to be skilfully 
 ' turned over,' to be carefully watched, to be fortified 
 with distilled wine, and previous to all this to be 
 carried a perilous voyage down the Eiver Douro, to 
 pay warehouse charges in Oporto and England, to 
 pay a tax on export, a heavy import duty, merchants' 
 profits, freight charges, insurance charges, and several 
 others. Port wine had need then to start cheap, for 
 else assuredly none but millionaires could ever drink it. 
 My friend Mr. Gallenga, the eminent correspon- 
 dent of the ' Times,' in the course of his recent im- 
 partial investigations into the mysteries of the great 
 wine question, informed me, in illustration of the 
 cheapness of wines in the country of their production, 
 that a pint of an honest red wine could be bought in 
 Piedmont from the cask on a market day for 20 cen- 
 times ; I was able still further to extend the limit of 
 Mr. Gallenga's illustration by informing him that I, a 
 farmer in Portugal, would be glad to sell sound red 
 wine, excellent of its kind, from my own vineyard at 
 considerably less than three pence per quart. To be 
 sure my wine, made on a granite soil, though sound 
 and strong, would not recommend itself to a culti- 
 vated taste. It has the gout du terrain, which, if my 
 recollection serves me, nearly all the wines of Northern 
 Italy possess. Nevertheless wine is wine, and it can 
 cost no more to make it on a good soil and with a 
 good aspect than under the most unfavourable cir- 
 cumstances. Mr. Gallenga naturally asked, 'Then 
 where do all the profits go ? ' So far as port wine is 
 
PORT WINE. 255 
 
 concerned I think I have already given an intelligible 
 answer to this question. 
 
 Port wine is made in only one corner of Portugal. 
 It is a district marked out by nature itself to be one 
 huge vineyard ; its soil is a peculiar brown, crumbling, 
 slaty schist ; it is cut off from the sea by one lofty 
 range of mountains, it is shut in from the north and 
 east by others. This district of the port wine vine- 
 yards is hilly and precipitous, and the vines grow on 
 the barren-looking soil built up into multitudinous 
 terraces often from top to bottom of the hills. This 
 singular tract lies about sixty miles up the Douro and 
 on its banks, and it occupies a strip of country about 
 twenty-seven miles in length, and five or six in breadth. 
 It is cold here in winter, but in summer the sun 
 shines into the narrow valley, and is reverberated from 
 the hill amphitheatres with a particular intensity. 
 The whole region, cut off from the breezes, lies still 
 and becalmed under the summer sun : the heat is 
 tropical. Nowhere else in Europe can the vines get 
 such a roasting, nowhere else are the juices of the 
 grape elaborated into such a rich and potent liquor. 
 One understands port wine at the first glance of the 
 wine country. It would of course be easy to get a 
 hotter summer in the tropics, but the vine is not a 
 plant of the tropics, it wants the severe cold of winter 
 to give it a seasonable rest. It gets this : the port 
 wine district is one of the few parts of Portugal where 
 I have seen ice that will bear a man. 
 
 The population of the wine country is scanty, and 
 is of course composed chiefly of wine farmers. 
 
256 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 Labourers are few, but when the vines require their 
 annual hoeings and pruning, and at vintage time, 
 men flock in from the neighbouring provinces and 
 from as far off as the mountains of Galicia in 
 northern Spain. 
 
 In the port wine district the vines are grown as 
 bushes — something as currant trees are with us. 
 They are closely pruned down early in the year and 
 the summer shoots are supported by stakes. Else- 
 where in the Peninsula (except where a specially 
 good wine is wanted) the vine is trained over 
 trellises or against pollarded trees. It is pretty and 
 there are more grapes got in this way, but the wine 
 is poor. 
 
 The vintage begins towards the end of September ; 
 it is conducted more or less in the manner I have 
 already described. Much care and knowledge are re- 
 quired in the selection of the right proportions of the 
 many varieties of grapes that grow in the district, some 
 for colour, some for flavour, some for bouquet, some 
 for strength ; and scientific instruments (saccharo- 
 meters) are used to determine the right moment for 
 drawing off the must. It is drawn into tonels, huge 
 casks often with a capacity of over thirty pipes. 
 The drawing off and the slight addition of alcohol 
 now made arrests or nearly arrests the fermentation. 
 
 When I say alcohol in connection with a high or 
 fairly high class of port wine, I ought to say distilled 
 wine. It is a spirit distilled from the wine itself and 
 contains of course only that which is inherent in the 
 wine it is derived from. This spirit thus added 
 
PORT WINE. 21 
 
 •)/ 
 
 during the growth, as it were, of the wine, becomes 
 chemically incorporated and combined with it. This 
 fact came out clearly in the evidence before the last 
 Parliamentary committee. 
 
 With the cold of autumn the wine deposits its 
 lees ; it is then racked off into the ordinary port wine 
 pipes — a long and narrow cask containing 115 gallons. 
 In the spring it is carried down the Douro to the 
 warehouses of the merchants at Oporto. 
 
 It is the practice of the established English wine 
 merchants at Oporto to buy the grape produce of 
 the vineyards and to have the wine made by the 
 farmers under their own superintendence, watched 
 and warehoused by their own employes, and finally 
 brought into their own keeping at Oporto. The 
 wine firms hold enormous stocks of wine in their 
 warehouses ripening for English consumption. This 
 large stock is essential to the business, for the wines 
 shipped are of two sorts : ' vintage ' wines, that is, 
 wines of a particular year ; and ' brand ' wines, which 
 are usually made up of the vintages of several years. 
 When a shipper gets an order for, say, a hundred 
 pipes (more or less) of wine of a particular character, 
 he naturally requires a great variety of wines where- 
 with to make up the order. It is to be observed 
 that a brand wine is not by any means an inferior 
 wine: it may often indeed be superior to a vintage 
 wine, and depends of course upon the quality of the 
 wines of which it is made up. Except in remarkable 
 years, where nature combines in one vintage all the 
 various excellences which port wine can possess, I 
 
 s 
 
258 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 am inclined to think that port, like hermitage, is the 
 better for being made up of the produce of different 
 vineyards and even different years. The wine district, 
 as I have shown, is one huge vineyard ; beyond its 
 limits little good wine is made, within them little 
 that is not good. There is therefore no need for 
 classification of wines by the names of their vine- 
 yards as in France. Some few port wine vineyards 
 especially favoured in soil and aspect are known to 
 fame. Yesuvio, Koeda, Eoriz, Noval, and a very few 
 others have reputations beyond Portugal. 
 
 It will be seen from my account of port wine 
 growing, making, and selling that the trade is some- 
 thing of a monopoly — a monopoly of a legitimate kind 
 enough, resulting from the skill and knowledge 
 applied to it and the capital invested. The supply 
 too is limited by the limits of the region which 
 furnishes it. What with the ravages of the oidium 
 disease in the past and of the Phylloxera Vastatrix in 
 the present and future, I do not think the port wine 
 country will in future years ever send more than 
 40,000 pipes of wine to England. 
 
 When I speak of a monopoly, I do not mean that 
 competition does not exist. It is active enough- 
 witness the low price of port wine — but it is confined 
 in the long run to the established firms. An outsider 
 can only satisfactorily enter the trade by the slow 
 process of establishing warehouses, getting together a 
 skilled staff and purchasing a stock. To be sure 
 there are occasional opportunities of buying wine in 
 open market, and such wine may even bean honest 
 
PORT WINE. 259 
 
 wine, but it may also be nothing of the kind. There 
 is a class of persons in the wine district who have got 
 themselves the name of Boticarios — apothecaries — 
 and who have the reputation of compounding their 
 wines with queer ingredients. Their wine may seem 
 fair enough, but wines, like men, must have fair ante- 
 cedents as well as a fair seeming. A wise man will 
 no more take such doubtful liquors into his cellar 
 than he will take a servant into his service without a 
 character. The one is apt to turn sour, and the other 
 to steal his spoons. I clo not think such wine as this 
 often finds its way to England. I hope it does not. 
 Fortunately for us there is a demand for wine not of 
 the highest quality in Portugal itself, and for shipment 
 to Brazil. 
 
 There is a method of adulterating port wine which 
 I fear is not uncommon, but it can only be practised 
 in Great Britain. It consists in mixing it with the 
 red wine made in the neighbourhood of Tarragona in 
 Spain. This Spanish wine is as nearly as possible 
 half the price of the very cheapest port wine. It is 
 made as port wine is made, and is quite a harmless, 
 sound and honest wine, very like port wine to look at, 
 but having little or none of those qualities of high 
 flavour and bouquet, none of those essential etherous 
 attributes which make port wine a wine apart. A 
 mixture with ' Spanish red,' as this estimable liquid 
 is called, only spoils port wine in the sense that it 
 dilutes it. It may be well supposed that ' Spanish 
 red ' is sometimes a sore subject with port wine 
 merchants. It may be argued, however, that the 
 
 B 2 
 
260 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 demand for port in England is so much greater than 
 the supply, that it is just as well for producers and 
 consumers alike that it is adulterated with nothing 
 worse than red Tarragona wine. The adulteration 
 only applies to the cheapest kinds of wine — such as 
 is sold in public houses ; but working men are getting 
 to be connoisseurs, and many such establishments I 
 am told enjoy a reputation for selling only the pure 
 port wine of known firms. I do not suppose that 
 any really respectable English wine merchant would 
 mix his wine with anything. Nevertheless, whenever 
 port wine seems to the customers to lack flavour and 
 the price is not very low, a civil inquiry pointing to 
 the possible presence of ' Spanish red ' might be 
 judicious. 
 
 Some years ago, c it came to my knowledge ' (as 
 policemen say) in my official capacity in this city that 
 a very curious error in geography was being perpe- 
 trated. Some eighteen casks of red wine had come 
 all the way to Oporto from the east coast of Spain 
 for transhipment at this port to England. It seemed 
 to me quite to come within the sphere of my official 
 duties to mention the fact of this circuitous voyage 
 in a telegram to the Customs authorities at home, and 
 when the ship reached its destination a custom house 
 officer was ready with a branding iron to mark the 
 eighteen impostors indelibly with the words ' Eed 
 wine from Spain.' No one consequently was a loser 
 by this freak of navigation, and the spirited importer 
 was no gainer. 
 
 It would not very well become me to go fully in 
 
PORT WINE. 261 
 
 this place into the question of the wine duties, which 
 there is some talk of modifying, nor do I think my 
 readers would be greatly entertained with me if I did. 
 Yet it is a great question with much of human interest 
 about it : a subject for a three hours' Budget-speech, 
 a question for bold financial generalization, fall of 
 interesting detail, bristling with facts and data ; with 
 all sorts of conflicting interests to steer between, and 
 the haven in sight of great commercial development 
 and of great philanthropic results. It is a thing 
 for only one great statesman and orator to meddle 
 with. 
 
 I will therefore say no more than this — that our 
 wine duties oppress no one very much. They are 
 not a pressing grievance. They bring, in a very 
 comfortable way, not very far short of two millions 
 sterling. We can get along with them very plea- 
 santly, but if France, Spain, and Portugal like to 
 make it worth our while, we will reduce the duties 
 in their interests, in our own, and in those of free 
 trade. Instead of making France pay a shilling a 
 gallon on her wine we might let her off with six- 
 pence, and Spain and Portugal might obtain admission 
 for their sherries and ports with a shilling payment 
 on each gallon instead of half-a-crown, which is the 
 present duty. If we lower our duties in this way and 
 make no treaty bargains with these three countries 
 it is free trade and good sense, but it is freer trade 
 and better sense if we lower the duties and make 
 good bargains too ; always assuming that the achieve- 
 ment of three commercial treaties abreast is a diplo- 
 
2C2 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 matic possibility, which is extremely doubtful. Only 
 let the arrangements be for a long term, that there 
 may be no turning back towards the road to pro- 
 tection. 
 
 I have been often questioned, as a person who 
 ought to know, as to the dietetical properties of port 
 wine. Certainly if the general public are in no 
 better agreement on the point than the doctors there 
 is plenty of occasion for such questioning. We 
 have recently had an active controversy among the 
 faculty chiefly on this very point, and it struck me 
 when I read it that anyone with strong opinions on 
 either side might find the fullest medical authority 
 for his views. My own modest opinion about wine 
 entirely coincides with that which the world at large 
 has held for several thousand years past, and will 
 probably hold for as long a time to come. It is that 
 wine in moderation is the best and most harmless 
 restorative in health and sickness that the ingenuity of 
 man has ever invented. I think that the more a wine 
 is a wine the more restorative it is. Whatever may 
 be the theoretical views of some medical gentlemen, I 
 find there is a consensus of practice among the doctors 
 of all nations to give wine to the convalescent and to 
 the weakly, and to give them the most vinous wine 
 for choice. The consumption of port wine at the 
 London hospitals is, to my knowledge, enormous. 
 
 The pure wine theorists conceive that sound light 
 claret is more digestible than sherry and port. I 
 think there can be no doubt about it ; so also is claret 
 and water more digestible than pure claret, and rice 
 
POET WINE. 263 
 
 pudding lighter food than beef and bread ; but if a 
 healthy man, in full work of brain or muscle, wants to 
 maintain his health and his strength, or having been 
 ill to get well again, he had better drink something 
 more restorative than claret and water, and eat some- 
 thing more substantial than rice pudding. 
 
 Some few doctors in the controversy differed from 
 their brother doctors to the extent of advising people 
 to drink spirits and water rather than wine. This 
 suggestion seems to me to be singularly opposed to 
 common sense, and to be put forward on the assump- 
 tion that it is the alcohol in the wine that is chiefly 
 restorative and of value, which is altogether a mis- 
 take. It is not the alcohol, but the ethers and the 
 other various and purely vinous ingredients, the 
 cunning product of nature's own laboratory, which 
 chiefly are restorative. It is not exactly a chemical 
 question, for the best chemists can tell us little on 
 these obscure points. It is a question settled by any 
 one who drinks a glass of fine old burgundy, or of 
 port, or of sweet tokay. Solvitur bibendo. I consider 
 this suggestion of the doctors to be a particularly 
 mischievous one, because raw spirits, with or without 
 water, spirits not incorporated and combined with 
 wine, are to most people stimulating, and certainly 
 neither soothing nor restorative. They certainly also 
 are injurious sooner or later. If a man takes a glass 
 of wine when he requires it he is satisfied : he has 
 taken a calmative and a tonic. If he drinks the 
 equivalent alcohol in the shape of spirits and water 
 he is not satisfied or made the better, the dose is too 
 

 264 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 small to calm his nerves, and large enough to do hiin 
 a hurt. He wants more and he goes on. I think 
 if we English drank wine and beer, eschewing spirits, 
 we should cease to be a nation of drunkards. 1 I 
 hardly see a drunken man about Oporto, where strong 
 port wine is to be got for a trifle in every public house. 
 The southern Spaniards are as sober as the Portuguese, 
 
 1 But it must not be light wine. That the light wine of France 
 was to wean us from spirits, close the gin palaces, and make Eng- 
 land sober and virtuous, was the pleasant vision raised for us in 
 1860, and too soon discovered to be a dream. It is found in prac- 
 tice that the general ran of men who drink light wine qualify it 
 by drinking spirits neat. The Assommoir is set up in the Paris 
 wine shop, men want alcohol all the more for getting little of it 
 in their wine, and take a dram with nearly every glass of claret. 
 It almost sounds like an exaggeration to say as much as this, and 
 though I know very well it is true, I should hardly venture to 
 put it on paper but for the admissions of some of the French wit- 
 nesses before the recent Parliamentary "Wine Committee. 
 
 M. Lalande, President of the Chamber of Commerce of Bor- 
 deaux, says (No. 5268) : ' In spite of the enormous increase in the 
 duties on our spirits since the war, the consumption has increased, 
 and also the consumption of wine has been increasing too. There 
 seems to be not much relation between the two.' That is, one 
 does not supplant the other. The evidence of M. Teissonniere, 
 Vice-President of the Chamber of Commerce of Paris, is stronger 
 still. He actually suggests the lowering of the duty on light 
 wines in this country, on the ground that more consumption of 
 them includes more consumption of spirits, and would secure a 
 larger spirit revenue ! ' This drink,' he says (Answer No. 50)y 
 meaning light wine, ' brought into general consumption would in- 
 crease the consumption of your alcoholic liquors, and I will give 
 you examples in proof of that from France.' . . . ' The city of 
 Paris which consumes annually 4,000,000 hectolitres of wines 
 consumes also 1,173,000 of alcohol.' 
 
 This is on the whole the best argument I have yet met with 
 for lowering the duties on those strong full wines which certain! 
 do harmlessly supersede the use of alcoholic drink. 
 
PORT WINE. .. 265 
 
 though strong wine is their drink too. I hope the 
 small minority of doctors who recommend raw spirits 
 to their patients will take all these points into their 
 consideration and modify their opinions. 
 
 So much for the doctors, who, though they do not 
 agree among themselves, and might therefore be left 
 to answer each other, are yet practical men. As for 
 the wine specialists, they are nothing of the kind, and 
 no more to be implicitly trusted than other specialists 
 in science. If I did not fear to seem malicious I could 
 tell some queer anecdotes of certain conflicts of practice 
 and theory on the part of these gentlemen. Their 
 theories are gospel truths to them and to people who 
 run after new doctrine, only until they are reversed 
 by newer theories ; and impartial observers see that 
 this reversal happens in a cycle of about three years. 
 Such theories as they favour us with would never get 
 a footing among us at all if only we could afford time 
 and patience and knowledge and preliminary scepti- 
 cism for a close examination of them. In short, 
 
 * C'est notre credulite qui fait leur science.' 
 
 In conclusion I will repeat in very plain terms 
 what is after all the most important axiom in connection 
 with wine. It is that such a red wine as port, grown 
 in the centre of the geographical zone which is the 
 habitat of the vine plant, and under favouring in- 
 fluences of soil and aspect, is so full of all the finest 
 vinous attributes, and therefore, unfortunately, of all 
 the elements of decay, that it requires a fuller anti- 
 septic treatment than other and poorer wines. I 
 
^66 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 have shown how the ancients, skilful cenologists, 
 indirectly alcoholized their wines though they knew 
 not the art of distillation. Falernian was, I am 
 absolutely sure, as fully alcoholized as the strongest 
 port wine. Modern port wine makers alcoholize their 
 wine directly, and no impartial man can deny that 
 the result is an excellent result. If it be alleged that 
 they put too much spirit into their wine, they reply 
 very convincingly that spirit is six times dearer than 
 wine, and that it is clearly to their interest to use as 
 little as will keep the wine sound. 
 
 Whether port contain much or little spirit — I am 
 myself in favour of the least that is possible — it has 
 one signal advantage over all other red wines of its 
 high vinous quality : it is safe, it will travel, and it is 
 long-lived. A man may invest in it with the con- 
 fidence with which he buys into the three per cents. 
 If a man buys a cask of fine burgundy in England 
 and bottles it, the odds are, so far as my experience 
 goes, considerably against the wine's remaining sound 
 for two years. He may as well lay out his money in 
 Turkish or Egyptian stock. If a man makes a similar 
 investment in good claret, the odds are certainly 
 greatly in favour of the wine's keeping and of its im- 
 proving, at least up to a certain date ; but if a man 
 invests in port wine, it is not a question of odds at 
 all. Let him buy a pipe, or a hogshead, or a quarter 
 cask of port wine at a fair price through a respect- 
 able wine merchant and the element of chance is 
 eliminated. It is an absolute certainty that the wine 
 will not only keep sound but will improve in value 
 
PORT WINE. 267 
 
 every year of its life. Not only is his capital safe but 
 the wine will pay him interest. 
 
 If I am asked what is a fair price, I must answer 
 that, not being a wine merchant, it does not become 
 me to say. 
 
268 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 A PORTUGUESE TROY. 
 
 Nature, whose mastery of hand in decorating the 
 scenes, flies, and slips of her own great airy theatre, 
 has been the theme of scenery-loving travellers' 
 admiration from all times, is, it must be confessed, 
 not seldom a very poor landscape painter. 
 
 The tourist who passes over the river Tagus at 
 Lisbon may, if he pleases, get a striking illustration 
 of this fact. The ferry steamer from that city 
 crosses in less than an hour the broad estuary of the 
 Tagus, and lands its passengers at Barreiro, amid 
 black and muddy beach waves whence the paddles 
 of the boat churn up fearful exhalations. Barreiro 
 is the terminus of the railway which runs eastward 
 to Evora and Beja — famous cities in Eoman and in 
 Moorish times, and now still goodly resorts of men — 
 and southward to Setubal. 
 
 As I was making this little voyage on my way 
 to Setubal. and as the steamer neared the southern 
 shores of the Tagus, I heard the words ' How fine ! ' 
 break, as it were, involuntarily from the lips of an 
 Engl is] 1 traveller standing by my side among the 
 
A PORTUGUESE TROY. 269 
 
 crowd on board. I regarded first the view and then 
 the very intelligent-looking person who had ad- 
 mired it. 
 
 ' Pray,' I asked, ' do yon mean this view here in 
 front of us over the shore flats, with the green 
 fields and white and red houses in the distance ? ' 
 
 ' Not at all,' said the intelligent person ; ' I mean 
 the one to our right, where those beautifully 
 coloured red and yellow hills rise from the river edge, 
 and the stone pines, growing along the hill-crest, cut 
 the blue sky ; and see how the waves ripple and 
 foam upon the sandy beach. Lovely ! ' Lovely ! ' 
 
 1 easily perceived that my intelligent-looking 
 acquaintance had belied his expression, and was talk- 
 ing nonsense. There was indeed some little attempt 
 at a picture, but the result was absolute failure. 
 Nature indeed always draws correctly— so does photo- 
 graphy — but of composition, harmony, effect, breadth, 
 keeping, suggestiveness (the most important of all), 
 there was not a trace. Offences there were against 
 every canon of art, as we dwellers upon earth have 
 come to lay them down. The red and yellow of the 
 bare cliff-side were crude, and harmonized neither 
 with sea nor sky ; the sky looked more like a newly- 
 painted blue wall than the transparent vault of heaven; 
 the water between us and the cliff was deplorable 
 as water, it seemed distinctly convex instead of flat, as 
 I have too often seen the seas and lakes of young 
 amateurs in water-colour art ; the foam of the waves 
 on the shore could have been represented by a line 
 drawn in white chalk with a ruler. The puny stone- 
 
270 TORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 pines — those charming accessories in my acquaint- 
 ance's eyes — were in fact no more picturesque than, 
 and very like, a long row of dark-green cotton 
 umbrellas opened and planted in the ground. It was 
 altogether as an art-work a pitiable failure. 
 
 As one secret of the art of being good company 
 is to know less and have worse taste than one's com- 
 panion, of course I expressed nothing of my views to 
 the intelligent-looking person in question. If these 
 pages should unfortunately fall under the eye of my 
 acquaintance, if he should remember his fellow-pas- 
 senger on the ferry-boat, who affably responded, 
 ' Ah, to be sure ! ' to his eulogy of the southern shore 
 of the Tagus, he must bear him no malice, but reflect 
 that thought is free and tastes may differ. 
 
 I lost sight of my acquaintance at the station, 
 Barreiro : he may have gone east ; I went south to 
 Setubal. Had he been with me, I suspect that we 
 should have found ourselves in most perfect accord 
 in our opinion of the hideous and dreary wastes of 
 country over which the train passes. Never, I think, 
 anywhere have I seen agriculture fighting at such 
 odds against the soil, and fighting successfully too, for 
 these thin, sandy dunes, with here and there a mud 
 creek, here and there a patch of rusty moorland, the 
 whole flat stretch of country treeless, dreary, barren, 
 inhospitable, produce the best-flavoured and most 
 famous wine of Southern Portugal — the Lavradio, so 
 called from the hamlet of that name, whence, too, a 
 name far better known to England than the wine, 
 that of IT.E. the late Count of Lavradio, the most 
 
A POETUGUESE TROY. 271 
 
 popular of Portuguese ministers at the Court of St. 
 James's. 
 
 Had Dante chosen to represent the future state of 
 the wicked and impenitent farmer, he might have 
 placed him in some such region as that which 
 we are now passing through. Mr. Arch himself 
 could wish our English tenant-farmers no worse an 
 Inferno ! 
 
 Soil, sun, and wind fight against the tiller of the 
 land. The soil is no more consistent than the con- 
 tents of an hour-glass, the rain sinks through it with- 
 out benefit. The fervid sun generates indeed some 
 rare cenanthic fragrance in the grape, but its fierce- 
 ness withers and kills, as I can see, half the vine 
 plants in the vineyards ;' and these vineyards, what 
 almost weird and dreary things they must seem to 
 the first glance of eyes not used to vine growing ! 
 Now in early spring there is hardly a green leaf show- 
 ing, and no suggestion of the lush leafage of the 
 graceful ' gadding vine,' as it shows itself on trellises 
 in Italy and Northern Portugal. Hereabouts a vine- 
 yard is a rough field, unenclosed save by a low sand 
 mound, stuck along its ridge here and there with a 
 stunted aloe or prickly pear, — a poor pretence of a 
 fence, passable everywhere. The weed-grown, sandy 
 expanse within is the vineyard, and at every two 
 yards there uprear themselves dark twisted stumps, 
 like black snakes with their heads and half their 
 bodies in the air, contorted in their struggles to free 
 themselves from imprisonment in the earth beneath. 
 These are the vines, pruned back, and as the spring 
 
272 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 goes on they will put forth leaves and four or five 
 weakly, yard-long shoots. 
 
 The wheat-crops on the sandy soil are not more 
 promising ; they are indeed almost ludicrous in their 
 scantiness. Each seed grain has sent up but a single 
 stem, quill-like in its thinness and untillered. What 
 farmer could set about seriously to reap and stack 
 and garner and thrash such a hollow mockery of a 
 crop? Why, one might hand-pick half an acre of 
 such poor stuff and carry it off like a nosegay ! A 
 couple of active English gleaners might clear a field 
 of it in a day, and garner it in their cottage kitchens ! 
 The wind draughts passing east and west along the 
 great Tagus estuary peculiarly torment this unsheltered 
 plain. Hardly a tree will stand against them any- 
 where, and the great reed cane, indispensable to make 
 stakes for the vine plant, three times a man's height 
 in more favoured localities, dwindles here to walking- 
 stick size. The very instruments of labour seem to 
 be such as might have been devised to add to the 
 husbandman's burden of toil. The hoe is but a cubit 
 long in the handle, and the worker with it must bend 
 to the very earth. The blade is constructed to suit 
 the soil he works in ; it is broader and a good deal 
 longer than an English spade, and set on at a sharp 
 angle with its handle. One sees innumerable flashes 
 of these great hoes in the sun, for the toiling of 
 labourers seems to be incessant, and of the load of 
 dry, sandy soil lifted into the air, a third seems each 
 time to run off like water before it can be turned to 
 its new position, 
 
A PORTUGUESE TROY. 273 
 
 Malaria hangs in the air here ; the inhabitants 
 are all ague smitten — there is no mistaking the signs 
 of it on their pale and haggard faces. There is 
 hardly a bird or a wild flower, though the farmer 
 generally is no appreciator of either. Only, for wild 
 flowers, is the little moss-like wild sorrel, whose blood- 
 red blossom stains the ground in broad patches as if 
 real blood has just been shed on it — fit adornment 
 for our Inferno. The air is quite songless, and the 
 only beat of wings is when the great marsh-harrier 
 or the dark-feathered buzzard flits overhead, brooding, 
 as a poetical fancy might have it, like the spirit of 
 evil over this curse-stricken place, and also, as the 
 farmer's fears no doubt more often suggest, on the 
 look-out for his stray chickens near the farmstead. 
 
 Now, see what a cunning artist is Nature after all, 
 and what force there is in contrast ! When our senses 
 have become quite impenetrated with this dreary 
 scene, with the stagnant mud-creeks, the tawny sand, 
 showing unseemly among the straggling wheat plants, 
 with the want of greenery, of shade, of growing and 
 moving things — for there is not a cloud even to drop 
 its shadow on the level earth — then suddenly the 
 train passes through a dividing ridge, and in an instant 
 we are in a new and a marvellously beautiful land. 
 League-long groves of orange and lemon trees fill the 
 valley, their new-shot blossoms are already showing, 
 the air is full everywhere of their scent, while still 
 the fair ripe fruit is hanging on the branches, ' golden 
 lamps in a green night ' of leafage. The fields are 
 dark green with the rank luxuriance of growing 
 
 T 
 
274 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 crops. Fruit trees of every kind, peach, almond, 
 pear, and cherry, are in full blossom, and every cor- 
 ner of waste ground is radiant with the bloom of 
 spring flowers. 
 
 Geology is what will best explain this sudden 
 transformation. We have left the alluvial sand-flats 
 of some ancient sea, and are now among the rocks, 
 clays and schists, sandstones and limestones of the 
 oolites. Few formations have such boldly contorted 
 rock-peaks, such triumphs of Nature's masonry in 
 mountain and cliff, such intensely red rock surfaces, 
 such perfect harmonies of greys and purples. 
 
 On a great massive cliff in the valley is set the 
 ancient Moorish stronghold of Palmella — still a strong 
 place of arms — with the oblique rays of the morning 
 sun slanting brightly on its square towers and tall 
 battlements. Palmella commands all the six miles of 
 fertile valley reaching to Setubal, which has its own 
 hill fortress. Setubal lies close to the beach, and its 
 white houses glitter in the sun, doubly white in their 
 setting of dark green orange groves and of the clear, 
 deep blue waters of the bay. Everywhere in this 
 delightful landscape the earth -surface contrasts its 
 pure, deep reds against the green of grass and leaf 
 with surprising force of colour. Beyond everything, 
 in the west, overtopping town and valley and tower 
 and all lesser hills, stands the great range of the 
 Arrabida, peak upon peak, till the Atlantic is 
 reached ; treeless mountains showing on their nearest 
 ridge the red stone softened by distance to a tender 
 purple ; further off in the clefts of the mountain tops 
 
A PORTUGUESE TROY. 275 
 
 are clear air-depths of exquisite ultramarine, and in 
 the furthest distance of all the early morning sunlight, 
 striking full upon the bare peaks and pinnacles, 
 shows them powdered with pearl and gold. 
 
 In all this scene, in its infinite variety of hill, dale, 
 wood and water, in its strength of colour and bright 
 airy perspectives, there is a resemblance to those 
 wonderful landscapes of the early Italian masters, 
 who make of such pictures a sort of epitome of 
 human life — of life under the sunny skies and in the 
 genial air of the golden south. We see in these 
 pictures of theirs the labours of men in field and 
 vineyard, wayfarers on foot and horseback along the 
 roads ; the city with each dwelling in careful detail, the 
 church below, the feudal castle on the cliff above, the 
 flocks and herds feeding in the pastures, the winging 
 of birds through the air, the winding river, the fre- 
 quent bridges ; the blue, transparent waves of the sea, 
 with boats and ships on it ; the fleecy clouds hanging 
 aloft — all drawn with exquisite fineness of clear out- 
 line and force of pure and subtle colouring ; and in 
 the far distance just such peaks, pinnacles, and preci- 
 pices as we have here in the Arrabida mountains. 
 Such an outlook upon nature and man's work with 
 nature as we get it through the art of these old painters 
 is not a landscape in our narrow modern sense, but a 
 panorama ; and such as I am trying to describe it do 
 we get here amidst these orange-growing valleys, 
 these hills and distant mountains, and this Portu- 
 guese city by the clear waters of its bay. It is 
 nature in the south, with its warmth, its light, its 
 
 T 2 
 
276 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 brightness and its gaiety epitomized into one great 
 picture. 
 
 There are two or three inns at Setubal, and I 
 happened to choose the one near the sea, a comfort- 
 able enough place of lodgment ; and I will observe 
 here that the wayfarer in this country need never 
 much trouble himself to inquire as to the best inn. 
 There is nothing very good and nothing very bad in 
 a town of the size of Setubal. Competition equalizes 
 the accommodation and equalizes prices. Everywhere 
 one gets great civility and extraordinarily hard beds, 
 abundant and not uneatable food, much dust, many 
 flies, a passable wine, not very passable coffee, and 
 most excellent green tea without milk, at five minutes' 
 notice, day or night. One sometimes gets, to be 
 sure, more — much more — than all this ; but he is a 
 poor traveller who regards these unfeeable attendants 
 — non ragionam di lor. 
 
 My coming to Setubal this spring — I had passed 
 through the town once before — was with the object 
 of visiting the ruins of an ancient city, buried in the 
 sand-hills of a low-lying promontory in the bay over 
 against the town of Setubal. The site of the ruins 
 has long been known, probably for five or six 
 hundred years, as Troia, and I suspect that this 
 curious name may date from Eenaissance times, may 
 have been bestowed by the learned, a prevailing 
 party in those days, and may simply have been 
 equivalent to ' a place of many ruins ; ' but its first 
 name, or rather its very ancient name, was, it is almost 
 
A PORTUGUESE TROY. 277 
 
 certain, Cetobriga, or some variation of that name. 
 Eesende, the Camden of Portugal, and the predecessor 
 of our great English antiquary by a generation, is, to my 
 knowledge, the first writer who has noticed these ruins. 
 He describes the discovery at Troia of a statue, Eoman 
 inscriptions in abundance, and the ruins of a temple 
 of Jupiter Ammon. Subsequent Portuguese archae- 
 ologists—there was no lack of antiquarian industry 
 in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries — discovered 
 more remains, and discoursed at still greater length 
 than Eesende, the father of them all in Portugal. 
 Then came the abeyance of all intellectual movement 
 in this and some other countries. There came to be 
 a time when there were no antiquaries even, in Por- 
 tugal. While some of us woke out of our sleep 
 through the eighteenth century, Portugal slept on, 
 and misgoverned herself, and was a perfect Gallio of a 
 country in every respect. She woke up, however, to 
 most excellent purpose with the first strokes of the new 
 century, to astonish the world with her capacity for 
 loyalty, for patriotism, and for hard fighting, but there- 
 after turned to sleep again for a while, and forgot, amid 
 more important matters, all about Troia and its ruins. 
 I do not know that anybody would have thought 
 again about them, but that it happened that, in the 
 autumn of the very year in which the last Prench 
 soldier had been driven from the Peninsula — in 1814, 
 that is — there came a most portentous storm of rain. 
 The rivers which feed the estuary which washes 
 Troia and Setubal were swollen beyond what had 
 ever been known, and the floods carried away great 
 
278 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 lumps of the sand of the shore at Troia, and then 
 again the ruins were visible, and many curious things 
 were found — the skeleton of a man, a great leaden 
 casket containing objects of silver, a patera, a 
 candelabrum, all of silver ; and these objects were 
 pronounced by the learned who saw them, and 
 theorized upon them (as is and ever will be the way 
 of the learned), to be Phoenician. It was not till 
 1850, however, that the archaeologists bestirred them- 
 selves in the matter. Then, under the patronage of 
 the Duke of Palmella of that day — the Dukes of 
 Palmella are great people at Setubal, and have land and 
 a great palace in the neighbourhood — a society was 
 formed with a long name (so long, that I forget it) to 
 explore the ruins of Troia ; and subscriptions were 
 raised, and the Duke headed the list ; subscribing, no 
 doubt, more in energy and learning than in paltry 
 money, for I find that the whole funds of the Society 
 amounted to the very non-magnificent sum of 253/. 
 
 The society was considerably more successful 
 than the parsimony of its members deserved, for 
 they found a great deal. Probably the ruins lay 
 very thick. They began to dig on the 1st of May, 
 1850, stopped on the second day of June, on account 
 first of heat, then of rain, began again in the autumn 
 of the same year, and exhausted their funds and their 
 patience in the following March. They uncovered' a 
 very perfect and very beautiful Eoman house of con- 
 siderable size ; they found all that might be expected 
 to be found in Eoman ruins — columns of coloured 
 marble, Saguntine vases, lachrymatories and cine- 
 
A PORTUGUESE TROY. 279 
 
 rary urns of glass, bronze and earthenware lamps, 
 amphorae, mosaic pavements, sty la of bone, and so 
 forth — all pointing to a period of later Eoman 
 domination. Of coins great numbers were found, none 
 Phoenician — had they existed, they would probably 
 have lain at a lower level ; but Eoman coins of bronze 
 to the number of about sixteen hundred. Trajan 
 and Antoninus Pius were represented by one or two 
 coins of each only, two only were found of Julian the 
 Apostate, seventeen of Constantius Gallus, or of Con- 
 stantius, three hundred and forty-one of Gratian, who 
 died a.d. 383, a hundred and eighty-five of Maximus, 
 who overthrew and succeeded him, and was, fi\e years 
 later, overthrown by Theodosius the Great. Of 
 Theodosius himself no fewer than four hundred and 
 eighteen coins were found in the few months of ex- 
 ploration ; of coins of his two sons, Arcadius, first 
 Emperor of the East, and of the stupid Honorius, 
 Emperor of the West, who reigned twenty-eight 
 years and died in 423, the numbers dwindle, only 
 two hundred coins having been found of each of 
 them, and these are the last emperors whose coins 
 were found in Troia. 
 
 With all these facts before him, the antiquary — 
 indeed, a plainer man than an antiquary — may con- 
 clude with some agreeable degree of certainty that 
 Cetobriga as a Eoman town flourished chiefly between 
 a.d. 300 and 400, and that its decadence began soon 
 after the appearance in the Peninsula of the Visi- 
 gothic invaders in about 411, under their King 
 Athaulf, brother-in-law to the Emperor Honorius. 
 
280 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 Perhaps Cetobriga did not cease to be an inhabited 
 place till the time of Euric, late in the same century, 
 when nearly the whole of modern Spain and Portu- 
 gal fell into the hands of the Visigoths. I have not 
 heard of a single Gothic coin being found, and 
 certainly these barbarians were not people to care 
 for a luxurious villeggiatura in the soft air and amid 
 the perfumed groves of this lovely Lusitanian Baise. 
 
 Arrived at Setubal, I bargained with two boatmen 
 to take me across to Troia, intending to spend the day 
 there. Returning to the inn, I found a well-dressed 
 and courteous Portuguese gentleman reading, with 
 the help of his eyeglass, the name on my port- 
 manteau. Having acquainted himself with my name, 
 he did me the honour of addressing me in the French 
 tongue, and lost no time in giving me much useful in- 
 formation. Setubal was a fairly civilized place, he said ; 
 the streets were clean, and the authorities, on the whole, 
 enlightened ; the sea-bathing was not at all bad, the 
 sands smooth and firm, and the water as salt nearly as 
 the ocean itself. As for Troia, which I informed him 
 I was about to visit, he did not think much of it. He 
 smiled contemptuously as he told me the story of the 
 French company who had — as is well known to 
 archaeologists — recently purchased the whole sandy 
 promontory, for the sake of the finds to be made 
 there. ' Much good might it do them,' was my 
 acquaintance's ironical remark ; ' a foolish set of 
 fellows, spending good money on a barren sandbank.' 
 He had never taken the trouble to cross the water 
 
A PORTUGUESE TROY. 
 
 281 
 
 to see Troia ; it was four miles away, and it was 
 quite a useless trouble, for the place was visible from 
 the inn windows. He would show it to me. 
 
 He did so, pointing out a break in the opposite 
 coast-line, which seemed to rise abruptly from the 
 sea to the height of from thirty to fifty feet. The 
 break or gap was where a little river ran in, and to 
 our left of that was a large roofless building. That 
 
 was the ruined shrine of Our Lady of Troia : beyond 
 it, a hundred yards to our left, close to the water, I 
 could make out the indistinct outlines of a building ; 
 that was, he told me, a house excavated forty years 
 ago by the antiquaries ; it was Eoman — at least so 
 they persuaded themselves ; he had never had any 
 
282 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 curiosity to see more of it than he could see from 
 this side. 
 
 This philosophic contempt for the ancient Komans, 
 who are so bound up with the history of the town, 
 and the very moderate praise accorded by my new 
 acquaintance to Setubal itself, led me to apprehend 
 that he was not a native of the place. It turned 
 out that he was not, but had been living for some 
 six years, as he informed me, at the famous town 
 ofX . 
 
 Now, the Portuguese are fuller even than we our- 
 selves of wholesome local patriotism, and nearly as 
 much so as the Americans. When the stage coach 
 on the American frontier of Canada passes through 
 the scene of those well-contested campaigns where 
 our troops and our enemies scored almost exactly 
 the same number of victories, it is the custom of the 
 Yankee driver to ease his horses, and even to pull up 
 altogether, as often as he comes to the scene of some 
 American victory. 
 
 ' Here it was, gentlemen,' he cries to his passen- 
 gers, ' that we whipped the Britishers in such a year. 
 Down that hill did they run, horse and foot, bag and 
 baggage, pursued by our brave fellows, bayonet in 
 hand.' But whenever the place of a British victory 
 is reached, the coachman holds his team well together, 
 cracks his whip, whistles to his horses, and gallops 
 past it at so fearful a pace that even if there be a 
 Britisher or two on the coach, or perchance an 
 American with an historical conscience, the jolting 
 and the holding on to their seats for bare life deprive 
 
A PORTUGUESE TROY. 283 
 
 them of all power of speech and remonstrance against 
 this one-sided mode of illustrating history. 
 
 I can imagine a Portuguese coachman capable of 
 this amiable Chauvinism ; but to speak the plain 
 truth, he would very seldom have occasion to hurry 
 his horses — many are the fields of battle, and very 
 few the scenes of Portuguese defeat. The Portu- 
 guese love to dwell on the great victories of their 
 forefathers, and certainly they do very well, to keep 
 green the memory of those splendid achievements 
 which have won them, against enormous odds, freedom 
 and an enduring national existence ; and they like (as 
 we like) to be reminded now and then of these great 
 feats. So it was that when my acquaintance at the 
 inn informed me that he was connected with the town 
 
 of X , I alluded, almost as a matter of course, to 
 
 its fame as the scene of a great Portuguese victory ; 
 it being, indeed, the best authenticated of all their 
 early triumphs over the Moors. 
 
 I was wrong ; my friend was a philosopher, and I 
 should like to believe that his impartial philoso- 
 phic standpoint, and that of many Continental free- 
 thinkers who resemble him, was based on any broad 
 acquaintance with either the past or the present. 
 
 When I spoke of the connection of X with 
 
 this famous historical event, he smiled, and was silent 
 for a moment ; then he spoke : — 
 
 4 II faut avouer, Monsieur, que les anciens ont dit 
 beaucoup de sottises sur ces choses-la.' 
 
 4 We must forgive them,' I suggested, ' in con- 
 sideration of the paucity of their lights.' 
 
284 POKTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 4 The report is,' lie asked, cautiously feeling his 
 
 way, 4 of some great victory at X over the 
 
 Eomans. Is that not it ? ' 
 
 ' The report I have heard is not quite to that 
 effect, but it comes, after all, to very nearly the same 
 thing in the end.' 
 
 We parted with protestations of mutual respect. 
 
 It took us over an hour to cross the bay with a 
 light wind from the north, and, at the boatmen's 
 desire, we landed to the west of the little stream 
 before described, to fill their jar with water, which 
 they maintain to be better than any in Setubal. I 
 followed the boatmen a quarter of a mile through 
 the strangest vegetation that I have ever seen in 
 Portugal. I found myself like a man new landed in 
 some unknown island. We passed through a grove 
 of a tall, broom-like, very graceful shrub some twelve 
 or fifteen feet in height, bearing racemes of a whitish 
 flower, not unlike laburnum in shape, and having a 
 delightful scent. All the trees of it were in full 
 blossom, and the air was heavy with a spring-like 
 perfume. Innumerable small butterflies of a pretty 
 brown and yellow kind fluttered in the air, the large 
 harmless ringed snake of Portugal glided among the 
 roots of these shrubs, and every smaller bush held 
 one or two large grey sand lizards. The ground 
 in places was almost covered with a dull brown 
 scarabams beetle, the size of a sixpence. 
 
 When we had reached the top of the bank of 
 hard sandy soil which commences to rise from the 
 
A PORTUGUESE TROY. 285 
 
 water's edge, I found that I was looking down upon a 
 little plain some half mile across, surrounded and 
 protected on all sides by a similar bank or rim of 
 shrub-covered sand hills. In its centre was a lagoon, 
 tenanted by water and shore birds, and all round it 
 meadows firm to the tread and brightly green, not 
 with grass, but a thick growth of some compact, 
 aromatic shrub. March and April are the months 
 for wild-flowers in Portugal, and the ground was 
 enamelled, like a rich cloisonne, with the blossoms of 
 many familiar bulbous and other vernal plants, con- 
 spicuous among the latter the red and yellow tufts of 
 the rock rose ; but there were flowers here whose pre- 
 sence, till I learnt to account for it, was a complete 
 puzzle to me. There were roods upon roods of ground, 
 sloping to the south, thickly overgrown with a 
 prickly shrub, bearing flower and fruit together — 
 the large, star-like flower a dull blue, the fruit, of 
 plum size, a gay orange in colour, and so abundant 
 as to give a very distinct local colouring to the whole 
 landscape. This shrub, unless I am mistaken, is the 
 common mad-apple of the East Indies, 1 but the most 
 striking plant was a free-flowering one of lowly 
 
 1 ' The mad-apple of the East Indies,' Solanum insanum. It 
 has become a sea-shore weed in most tropical and sub-tropical 
 countries, east and west. The large brown lizard I saw was the 
 Amphisboena drier ea, whose European habitat is almost confined 
 to Portugal. The snake at Troia was the common and harmless 
 Coluber natrix. The butterfly I saw was one of the genus termed 
 by entomologists Skippers, but I did not recognise the species. 
 The bulbous and tuberous rooted plants of Portugal are so innu- 
 merable that I will not attempt to begin to name them. The 
 scarabseus beetle I cannot give a name to. 
 
286 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 growth, the flower a deep, pure blue — that colour so 
 rare in our gardens — and so free a bloomer that 
 every tuft of it glowed like a bit of southern sky. 
 The plant is of the family of the Boraginaceas ; more 
 than that I cannot say, for I never saw it before or 
 since, nor have I found anyone who has seen or 
 knows it, or can name it. Besides this blue flower I 
 found many other plants, in and out of bloom, which 
 were absolutely new to me. 
 
 The solution of the problem of the congregation 
 on this little headland of so much variety and such 
 luxuriance of plant growth is very simple. Setubal 
 is resorted to by vessels coming for cargoes of salt 
 from all "parts of the world, for they make here the 
 best bay salt known anywhere. These vessels often 
 come in ballast, that ballast is generally sand or 
 gravel, and before loading with salt they have to dis- 
 charge it. Formerly they threw it into the sea near 
 their moorings, but this practice was gradually shoal- 
 ing the harbour, and by a recent order of the harbour 
 authorities, the ballast has to be carried across the 
 estuary in lighters, and discharged high and dry on 
 the beach at Troia. My boatmen told me this, and I 
 saw myself the heaps of sand ballast on the shore. 
 Containing as it must a variety of seeds and germs 
 and eggs of insects from all the corners of the habita- 
 ble world, a most interesting experiment in acclima- 
 tization is thus being carried on. I have no doubt 
 that half the plants I saw at Troia were exotic. It 
 docs not follow that they would thrive elsewhere in 
 Portugal than at Troia, for both soil and climate and 
 
A PORTUGUESE TROY. 287 
 
 exposure favour them greatly. It lies nearly on the 
 38th parallel, but its climate is milder even than that 
 summery degree of latitude, for it is protected from 
 the north not only by the great Estrella range which 
 ends at Cintra, just north of Lisbon, and modifies the 
 whole climate of Southern Portugal, but it is abso- 
 lutely cut off by the tall Arrabida hills from every 
 breath of northerly winds, and therefore must enjoy 
 a climate very far superior to that of Lisbon. 
 
 I lost a great deal of valuable time in wandering 
 about this interesting valley, and I could pleasantly 
 have spent days there. Every fresh step showed me 
 some new and strange plant growth : aromatic shrubs 
 in great variety ; here a curious grey lichen standing 
 up from the ground like turf, three or four inches 
 high, and so rigid in its substance and fibre as to 
 bear a man's weight without bending ; there a 
 creeping plant not yet in flower, with a pointed leaf 
 quite unknown to me in shape. I walked half round 
 the lagoon, watching the gobies and the bright-finned 
 gurnets darting to and fro in its clear, brackish water, 
 the dunlins and sandpipers in flocks by the shore, 
 the solitary heron angling in the farthest corner, the 
 little white-winged terns hovering over, and ever and 
 anon dipping with an audible splash into its smooth 
 surface ; then I turned back to the boat, and we set 
 sail, running up the shore to Cetobriga. 
 
 I took a piece of bread and began to eat, wishing 
 to lose no time, and my boatmen too got out their 
 provisions, and hospitably asked me to join in their 
 dinner of cold fried fish. I did, and found it very good. 
 
288 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 i I see, 5 I said, ' that you gentlemen who follow 
 the sea live very well ; your bread is of the whitest 
 flour, your wine is as good as a man need wish for, 
 and as for your fried fish, one might look in vain for 
 anything better all over Lisbon itself.' 
 
 ' We are poor men, your Excellency,' said the 
 more lively of the two boatmen, ' but we work hard ; 
 and it is true we gain money, but we spend it again 
 as quickly. And your Excellency may think that 
 my brother-in-law and I, being owners of this good 
 boat, with sail and mast and rudder, might be proud 
 and lazy, but that is not so at all, for as often as God 
 sends us work to do and money to gain, so often do 
 we set to, heart and soul, to gain it. It is not every 
 day that we have a rich English or Eussian Lord 
 Captain who wants to run down in our boat to the 
 Arrabida Convent, or up the Bay to the salt pans, 
 nor can we use our nets and catch fish every week. 
 Then we take a few days at unloading salt into the 
 holds of the foreign ships, or we work at salt making 
 till something better turns up.' 
 
 4 You are certainly the best kind of men in the 
 world,' I replied, not without conviction, ' and I 
 heartily wish there were more like you.' 
 
 Compliments are never wasted on a Portuguese, 
 and he started anew in his discourse. 
 
 6 So it is that we eat well, drink well, and lodge 
 well ; but if your Excellency thinks that this wine 
 has a good flavour, and this fish is good, what would 
 you think of our way of living when some thirty or 
 forty of us have come from the sea-fishing and stop our 
 
A PORTUGUESE TROY. 289 
 
 boats yonder under the Arrabida hill, where we have 
 built ourselves a square, walled enclosure. Then we 
 take of the best and freshest of our catch, light our 
 fires, cook our fish, and eat it — not as this is, cold 
 and tasteless, but quite hot and steaming, and for 
 sauce we squeeze over it the juice of fresh lemons, 
 which this is without ; and instead of this wine, which 
 is a fair enough liquor, and which comes from Alferva 
 near the town, then do we drink no wine but that 
 which grows on the Arrabida itself, which is a wine 
 of the mountains, and twice as good as this. Thus 
 do we feast and make merry when we come back 
 from the sea-fishing ; and I can assure your Excel- 
 lency that even the Duke of Palmella himself in his 
 great palace does not fare better than we do, nor 
 even the Lord Captain of the English brig there, now 
 loading in the harbour, even when he sits down in the 
 saloon of his ship to a table covered with white linen, 
 and has china plates and dishes, and sailors in gilt 
 buttons to wait upon him, and many crystal glasses 
 and bottles beside him, as I have seen these Lord 
 Captains do scores of times with my own eyes.' 
 
 Thus it was that I became acquainted with the 
 ways of polite society, native and foreign, at Setu- 
 bal. 
 
 As my boatman was thus developing his views 
 with a fulness of diction which I am hardly attempt- 
 ing to reproduce, and with a wealth of ajypropriate 
 gesture which added greatly to the charm of his 
 conversation, I was drawing most interesting ethno- 
 logical conclusions from his manners, and from his 
 
 u 
 
290 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 dress, and from the cast of his features. His dress 
 was simple, and one might fancy that but a very few 
 days' work with a salt shovel in the ship of a foreign 
 'Lord Captain' would purchase a whole suit of clothes. 
 A white linen shirt, a pair of loose blue cotton trousers 
 reaching to just below the knee, and a scarlet sash 
 wound three times round his waist, with a red Nea- 
 politan cap, made up this light and picturesque 
 costume. No doubt he had a hooded cloak of brown 
 Saragoca cloth at home, for winter wear and sea- 
 going ; but the only extra clothing I observed, the 
 only great-coat (if I may venture on such a bull), was 
 a pair of cloth trousers thrown under the seat of the 
 boat, for use in case of wet or cold. 
 
 Every antiquary will allow the Oriental character 
 of this dress, and not even an antiquary could dispute 
 the perfectly Eastern cast of my head boatman's very 
 handsome face, with his thin, well-cut features, large 
 and piercing eyes, smooth skin, and dark, olive com- 
 plexion. If there is any truth at all in hereditary 
 physiognomy, he was a Phoenician of pure lineage ; 
 and the archseologist who reads this will be glad to 
 have this confirmation of the hypothesis, which I 
 know he has already made, as to the Phoenician origin 
 of Cetobriga from the presence in that word of the 
 undeniably Phoenician ' ceto,' ' citho,' or ' sytho ' (the 
 learned spell it in all three ways), together with the 
 mention of Phoenician colonization on this coast by 
 the early writers. My second boatman, on the other 
 hand, the companion and brother-in-law of my Phoe- 
 nician acquaintance, was, on the evidence of his round 
 
A PORTUGUESE TROY. 291 
 
 face, high cheek bones and blunt features, his easy 
 temper and slower intelligence, a pure Yisigoth. 
 
 I am sorry to perceive, in the interests of compar- 
 ative ethnology, that the two races are beginning to 
 commingle at Setubal. It is, however, satisfactory to 
 observe that if in the old times the primitive Phoe- 
 nician colonists, and even the Eomans of Cetobriga 
 themselves, had to submit to Enric and his Goths, the 
 tables have at last been turned ; the Phoenician was 
 the better man of the two, and his ascendency over 
 his Gothic companion was satisfactorily complete. It 
 is clear, indeed, from all history that numbers only 
 ever made my second boatman's progenitors formid- 
 able — overwhelming numbers and a servile habit of 
 discipline — just as certain modern Goths in a recent 
 great war in Western Europe owed their triumphs 
 over better men to these very two circumstances. 
 
 While I was thus agreeably generalizing and play- 
 ing at archaeology, our boat presently reached this 
 Portuguese Troy. 
 
 A Spanish proverb says :— 
 
 1 La sciencia es locura, 
 Si buen senso no la ciira ; ' 
 
 which may very properly be translated, ' Most 
 savants (especially antiquaries) are a little wrong in 
 the head.' Notwithstanding which warning, it is 
 incumbent on me to theorize a little before introduc- 
 ing the reader to these ruins of Cetobriga. 
 
 First, we want a hypothesis to account for the fact 
 that any people should have made a settlement on 
 this absolutely barren headland, when the good, fertile 
 
 u 2 
 
292 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 shore of Setubal was apparently ready to receive 
 them. So far as the Phoenicians are concerned, if 
 they were the first colonists it is indeed quite intel- 
 ligible that a handful of traders coming to make a 
 settlement should choose this narrow tongue of land, 
 surrounded by the element of which they had the 
 full command. To account for the presence of the 
 Eomans here, we must theorize more boldly. 
 
 Now, I think we may safely guess first that the 
 high bank of sand which now rises, almost abruptly, 
 not quite from the water's edge, but from the narrow 
 beach a few yards in width, did not exist in Eoman 
 times. It is an accumulation — geologists may settle 
 how formed — of quite recent date ; and it was the acci- 
 dental removal by a high flood of some of this accumu- 
 lation which revealed, as I have told, the existence of 
 the ruins in 1814. Pompeii is covered about fifteen 
 feet in height by the sand and ashes from a volcano ; 
 Cetobriga is similarly embedded in mounds of testa- 
 ceous sand, brought either by the winds or the waves. 
 
 When the Duke of Palmella's Society made their 
 excavations they simply removed this sand from the 
 top, and came in time to the roof, or the place where 
 it had been, then they laid bare the upper story, then 
 the ground floor. It is a plain well-built house of 
 rubble stone, with courses of thin brick. The mortar 
 is a strong cement, such as the Eomans well knew, 
 the secret of preparing ; and it is noteworthy that an 
 excellent hydraulic cement, identical I believe with 
 that used in this house, is obtained to this day in the 
 Arrabida hills. 
 
A PORTUGUESE TROY. 293 
 
 If the whole of the sand dune which lies along the 
 water's edge at Troia could be removed, we should 
 undoubtedly have revealed to us the ancient Eoman 
 town of Cetobriga, in probably a very fair state of 
 preservation. The sand removed, there is reason to 
 suppose that the peninsula on which the ruins stand 
 was good fertile land, for I found the level ground on 
 which the house was built to be a deep loamy soil, 
 quite capable of growing plants and trees. Then 
 again, unlike Pompeii, from which the sea has 
 retreated a mile, at Cetobriga the sea has encroached 
 upon and greatly narrowed the land. Through the 
 clear ar>d shallow waters of the bay, one sees the 
 debris of walls, bricks, tiles and masses of concrete, 
 for thirty or forty yards from the shore. The exca- 
 vated house faces the bay, and its front door is not 
 ten yards from the water's edge, and not half that 
 height above it. There was probably in former times 
 an intervening shingly beach fifty or sixty yards in 
 width. 
 
 Having examined the house itself, which seemed 
 to me larger and loftier than the ordinary houses in 
 the Pompeii streets, I walked some three quarters of 
 a mile along the shore, finding the same lofty sand 
 dune rising everywhere from the beach, well covered 
 with shrubs and flowering plants ; and, in places 
 where the sand had been washed away by the great 
 floods of last autumn, there were visible portions of 
 Eoman wall, of archways and vaults, showing how 
 rich would be the result of even a few days' hard 
 work with pick and shovel. This walk along the 
 
294 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 beach was, I have no doubt, a sort of marine parade 
 of the town. The best houses were ' sea-view resi- 
 dences,' as the Brighton lodging-house keepers say, 
 and this part, no doubt, a gay enough place in old 
 Eoman times. 
 
 On the beach there lie innumerable remains of 
 shallow reservoirs or receptacles, from ten to fifteen 
 feet long and from five to ten broad, and about four 
 or five feet in depth. They are built with good 
 foundations in the ground, of concrete, and are 
 finished off very smoothly with cement inside. Any- 
 one who knows that the Eomans were a luxurious 
 people fond of sea-bathing, would come to the conclu- 
 sion that these shallow cisterns were baths ; he would 
 even think the device a most happy one, where the 
 bottom of the sea, as it is here, is shingly. But the 
 learned never arrive at an obvious conclusion, and 
 the weighty Hiibner * is of opinion that these recep- 
 tacles were used for the curing of fish. 
 
 1 ' The weighty Hiibner.' I use this epithet advisedly. Herr 
 HUbner's voluminous work, the ' Corpus Inscriptionum Lati- 
 narum,' is (so far as a traveller not unused to the powers of pack 
 animals can judge) more than a load for the strongest mule. It 
 is also much more than a load for the strongest reader. The 
 learned German consents to the conclusion arrived at long before 
 by Resende that the remains of Troia are the ancient Oetobriga, 
 and that Cetobriga was a place of considerable importance. ' Sig- 
 norum nonullorum,' he says, 'reliquiae, nummi Uteris indigenis 
 inscripti, supellex ex auro argentove facta saepius ibi reperta et 
 edificiorum cum aliorum turn officinarum salsamentariarum prope 
 litus sitarum rudera oppidum olim fuisse non ignobile demonstrant, 
 quod ipse testis oculatus affirmo.' I cannot, however, bring 
 myself to believe that tho dwellers in Cetobriga could have con- 
 sented to have so disagreeable an operation as the salting of fish 
 
A PORTUGUESE TROY. 295 
 
 Though so very little work of exploration has been 
 done at Troia, we can thus, as will have been seen, 
 make a very plausible guess as to what Cetobriga 
 was and till when it lasted. As to its founders, its 
 name, preserved with no great change in the modern 
 Setubal, tells us something ; Ceto is perhaps Phoe- 
 nician, and briga, the termination, is almost certainly 
 Celtic, or what generally passes for Celtic. The 
 traveller may, if he lends himself thereto with proper 
 anthropological enthusiasm, find in the lineaments of 
 the people and in the dress of the fishing population, 
 at least some confirmation of the Eastern derivation 
 of its inhabitants. I hope no sceptic will attempt 
 seriously to deny the Phoenician origin of Cetobriga, 
 for we archaeologists — the most generally reasonable 
 and open to conviction of all men — are peculiarly 
 tenacious when it conies to believing in the presence 
 of the Phoenicians. In this case there is really more 
 to go upon than the vague conclusions of philology 
 or those, quite as vague perhaps, to be drawn from 
 the features of the population. 
 
 Strabo, as all hard readers know, has told us of 
 the traffic of the Phoenicians, those bold seafaring 
 traders, along the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts 
 of Spain and Portugal. Avienus corroborates him. 
 
 carried on under the windows of their best houses, and on ground 
 which must have been more valuable than any other in the head- 
 land. Moreover, the receptacles, in size, shape and position, are not 
 in any way fitted to the curing of fish . I hold strongly to the bath 
 theory, and if an alternative one is required, I would rather be- 
 lieve that these cisterns were small vivaria — aquaria, as we should 
 now call them — for the preservation for a time of living sea-fish. 
 
296 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 We learn that they established trading stations — ■ 
 ' factories,' or assemblages of factors or agents, such 
 as we ourselves used to have all over the world — in 
 Portugal as well as elsewhere. Herein our Phoenician 
 hypothesis is very pleasantly supported by such facts 
 as we have on the authority of the old writers. 1 The 
 Turduli, they say, inhabit the coasts of Portugal from 
 the Tagus northward to the Douro. The Bastuli are 
 settled between the Tagus (which lies but fifteen miles 
 north of Troia) and the Guadiana — a stretch of rich 
 and beautiful coast ; the soil fruitful, rivers abundant, 
 harbours many, and the air soft and balmy. The 
 question of course is, Who were the Bastuli ? and the 
 answer is, Almost certainly a Phoenician race. They 
 probably came to Portugal from Carthage or its neigh- 
 bourhood. Ptolemy calls them Bastuli-peni. What 
 more can an antiquarian want in the nature of corro- 
 boration? Strabo goes even further to help us to 
 identify the founders of Cetobriga, for he speaks 
 particularly of certain Bastuli who lived upon a 
 narrow strait of land near the sea. Now, looking in 
 the map at the whole line of sea-coast between the 
 Tagus and the Guadiana, which the geographers give 
 to the Bastuli, I find but one such tongue of land as 
 Strabo describes: it is Troia itself. In addition to all 
 this evidence, Phoenician coins have been dug up at 
 Cetobriga. That good and diligent Portuguese anti- , 
 quary, Gama Xaro, found one there which bears on 
 its obverse a head in profile which, if the coin is 
 Cetobrigan, gives us a poor idea of the looks and 
 1 Pliny and Pomponins Mela. 
 
A PORTUGUESE TROY. 297 
 
 amiability of its inhabitants ; on its reverse are two 
 dolphins or perhaps porpoises. Porpoises might well 
 be l. ,ade symbols of Cetobriga, for in its Bay they are 
 always to be seen playing and leaping through the 
 waves. The people call them golfinios. 
 
 I explored to the best of my ability at Troia ; 
 passing over, as non-Roman, a house on the south-west 
 side of the headland facing the little river, said by my 
 boatmen to have been dug out by the French explor- 
 ing company. It seemed to me to be a large barn- 
 like building, not more than three or four centuries 
 old. I found buried a few inches below the surface 
 on which its foundations are built, fragments of green 
 glazed pottery which cannot, according to our exist- 
 ing knowledge of the potter's art, be of an earlier 
 date than the twelfth or thirteenth century. 
 
 When I had done my clay's work — a hard one 
 under the perpendicular rays of the Setubal sun — I 
 was induced to sail across the Bay to the Arrabida 
 mountains before nightfall, so tempting did the bright 
 waters of the Bay look, and the hills themselves 
 in the already slanting sun rays, with their colours 
 and their brightness so splendidly intensified, standing 
 up before me in the rich western light, like huge cliffs 
 and peaks of various translucent gems — opal and 
 amethyst, garnet and chrysolite. 
 
 We ran over the five or six miles very quickly 
 with a fresh breeze, and landed at the nearest point ; 
 and I took directions from my boatmen as to how I 
 was to reach a particular lofty peak of rock : — ' Your 
 Excellency will pass through the orange groves till 
 
 \ 
 
298 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 they end on the hill-side, and there is a vineyard, and 
 after that a clump of olive trees which you can see 
 from here ; then you are on the bare hill-side, and 
 you walk straight up till you come to a ruined 
 
 hermitage ; keep that to the right ' or to the left, 
 
 it may have been, for, like most other people, I 
 suppose, I invariably forget such directions one 
 minute after I have heard them. 
 
 I am inclined to think that on the southern slopes 
 of these Arrabida hills may be found a climate 
 warmer and more healthy — for there is no marsh- 
 land about — than any spot in the whole of Portugal. 
 Here the monks — a body of Grey Friars, an order 
 always judicious in their choice of sites — set up an 
 important monastery. There is a story, too, of a 
 young man, a native of Lisbon, who, having been sent 
 to Madeira for a chest complaint, returned from that 
 island not bettered in health. As a last resource, his 
 friends sent him to the Arrabida. There he bought 
 a goatherd's house, with his goats, living summer and 
 winter in the former, and mainly on the produce of 
 the latter. His health came back to him, and he 
 lives there still, offering, hermit-like, to chance 
 visitors to his mountain, shelter and a share of his 
 simple fare. This is the story as I heard it from 
 several people. I did not see him. 
 
 Another testimony to the geniality of this climate 
 is that Brotero, the Portuguese botanist, gives the 
 Arrabida range as the sole habitat of many Portuguese 
 plants which grow nowhere else in Europe. I did 
 not, indeed, in my very hurried walk, find any plants 
 
A PORTUGUESE TROY. 299 
 
 that were new to me, though the ground was carpeted 
 with spring flowers ; and I noticed that none of the 
 strange plant growths of the Troia headland were to 
 be found here. 
 
 It was nightfall when I reached the bottom of the 
 hill, and nine o'clock before our boat got back to 
 Setubal. I was very tired and hungry, and glad to 
 remember that a conference had taken place that 
 morning between the cook and myself, which had 
 ended in that very affable person promising to have 
 dinner ready for me at whatever hour of the evening 
 or night I might return. He kept his word : and I 
 hope no one at Senhor Escoven's inn may ever fare 
 worse than I did that night. 
 
 A party of burgesses, worthy people, probably 
 from the capital, were supping with some of their 
 friends at the table d'hote as I came in. A man is never 
 so critical as in the ten minutes before his dinner, and 
 my chance table-mates must set down my cynical 
 contemplation, of them to this circumstance. 
 
 An English master of the art of social well-doing 
 has laid down the maxim that no man should ever 
 monopolise the conversation for more than half a 
 minute. (I myself think the time is too long.) The 
 Portuguese do not adopt this rule, and in truth I 
 have never sojourned among the people who do. 
 Among the supper party at Setubal two gentlemen 
 strove with each other as to which of them should break 
 it most completely. When two well-known French 
 orators, members of the Legislature, were contending 
 
300 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 for the ear of that assembly, the one who had lost it for 
 the moment smiled pleasantly upon the audience during 
 the flowing rhetoric of his rival, conscious of his own 
 latent power of talk, contenting himself with remark- 
 ing behind his hand, ' S'il crache, il est perdu ! ' I 
 noticed something of this polite self-confidence in that 
 one of the two Portuguese gentlemen who happened 
 for the moment to be silent. The rest of the party — 
 terrible conversationalists too, after their kind, I dare 
 say, some of them — were witnesses and seconds only 
 while this duel of talk was proceeding, merely smiling 
 or nodding, or being properly moved or indignant, as 
 was required of them. 
 
 The night was pleasant, yet several of the party 
 had woollen comforters on. Some of the women wore 
 worsted knitted hoods and were discordantly dressed ; 
 men and women leant slouchingly over the table, 
 curving their elbows and hands and wrists half round 
 their plates (so do crabs and lobsters, I believe, at 
 their own ocean dinner-tables curve unwieldy claws 
 round their food) ; and these otherwise pleasant ladies 
 and gentlemen might well seem to the straight-backed 
 Briton, taught not to let his elbows stray at meal 
 times too far from his sides, to be departing not a 
 little from the proprieties to be observed at table. 
 How easy is intolerance in such matters, and how 
 poor and miserable the triumph of finding food for 
 frivolous laughter in such trifling differences as these ! 
 How few of my countrymen would think of setting 
 against all this the fact that one bottle of port wine 
 had sufficed for the whole party of twelve, and that 
 
A PORTUGUESE TROY. 
 
 it was but half emptied ; or that every man of the 
 party showed his wish to be gracious by bowing, as 
 he rose from the table, to the stranger who had sat 
 at meat with him. 
 
 On the other hand, it would have been a truly 
 ridiculous thing for a newly-landed tourist, had one 
 been there, to see that as the two sections of the party 
 took leave of each other, they did so in a manner to 
 offend and even to excruciate all our insular suscep- 
 tibilities. The women kissed each other — and this in- 
 deed might pass — but the men likewise embraced ; 
 and this really was too great an outrage on a critical 
 British traveller waiting for his dinner. The Portuguese 
 of the male sex, when they meet after absence and when 
 they part for any time, rush into each other's arms as 
 people in England do nowhere but on the transpon- 
 tine stage. They are a thickset population, and they 
 perform the ludicrous act not without a certain burly 
 dignity, and yet tenderly too ; not, I must say for 
 them, kissing each other on their too often chubby 
 cheeks, as I have seen Italians and Southern French- 
 men do ; but when they find themselves in each 
 other's arms they thump each other gently on the 
 back in token of amity ; anon each draws back his 
 head and contemplates his friend's countenance, 
 pleasantly with smiles if meeting, mournfully and 
 tearfully if about to part. 
 
 It is easy to laugh at all this, but it is an old 
 custom in Portugal. There is nothing really 
 effeminate in the usage any more than in those who 
 practise it. Heroes have done it ere now. ]S T ot 
 
302 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 otherwise, be sure, was the great Yasco da Gama 
 clasped in the arms of his friends when he came 
 back, having, after perils innumerable, doubled the 
 Cape and found the sea route to the Indies. In no 
 other fashion, I am certain, did the still greater 
 Prince Henry the Navigator embrace the famous sea 
 commanders who had carried his exploring ships 
 into unknown recesses of the mysterious ocean, 
 thumping their brave backs with friendly gratitude 
 and enthusiasm. 
 
 How we English shake our honest sides, seeing 
 for the first time this Portuguese amplexus, with all 
 its queer accompaniments ; yet what a foolish and 
 insular thing it is to laugh — not so very insular 
 indeed, after all, for we used to do the very same 
 thing in this country. ' Come ! Let my bosom touch 
 thee,' says a chief character in one of our old comedies 
 to two other personages in no very affluent circum- 
 stances. How much would I — boasting myself to be 
 somewhat of a citizen of the world — like to see a 
 revival of this good, hearty, old-fashioned custom of 
 the accolade ! How pleasant would it be to see 
 some padded, gouty old general running up in Pall 
 Mall to a half-pay subaltern, the friend and mess- 
 mate of his youth ; or some goodly bishop, sleek with 
 episcopal honours, meeting an old college friend of 
 forty years' standing, still a curate. ' Come ! ' would 
 his lordship exclaim, standing with extended arms in 
 Waterloo Place, ' Come ! Let my bosom touch thee.' 
 
 Except for the trifling circumstance that the bed- 
 
 
\ 
 
 A PORTUGUESE TROY. 303 
 
 rooms of Sr. Escoven's hotel were constructed with 
 such an economy of partition wall that they only 
 reached three parts of the way to the ceiling, nothing 
 could be more satisfactory to the most exacting 
 tourist than the arrangements of his hostelry. Even 
 this peculiarity of mural construction has some advan- 
 tages. The bedded traveller is indeed only screened, 
 not walled off from Sr. Escoven's other guests ; but 
 the Portuguese are essentially a sociable people, and 
 by this simple device the pleasures of conversation 
 may be enjoyed far on into the night. There is also 
 a pleasant flavour of medievalism about it. Exactly in 
 this fashion, as I have read, were the guest chambers 
 disposed in those great semi-ecclesiastical hospices 
 which in the Middle Ages occupied the places now so 
 much more comfortably filled by the modern hotel. 
 
 I do not dwell on this detail of arrangement as 
 blameworthy ; and, on the other hand, the way in 
 which at the Setubal inn the traveller's bill is de- 
 livered to him is, in regard to rapidity of presenta- 
 tion, simplicity of statement, and reasonableness of 
 amount, worthy of all praise. As civilisation goes 
 on, the mauvais quart oVheure of Eabelais has become 
 a more and more disagreeable interval of time. It is 
 not the exorbitance of the amount which irritates us, 
 for we are, I trust, my readers and I, fairly solvent 
 people — so much as the delays in getting our 
 accounts given to us (with a train just starting, 
 perhaps, or an appointment to keep), and their un- 
 necessary complication when they are given. There 
 is also cause for great exasperation in the now too 
 
304 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 common habit of English hotel-keepers of having a 
 printed form on which the plain requirements of a 
 simple traveller are lost amid a multitude of items 
 which he might, could, and — as the bill and its 
 author clearly suggest — should have ordered. So 
 that when a guest pays his bill for a day's and night's 
 lodging, he is positively almost ashamed at finding 
 due registry of his having wanted neither liqueurs, 
 nor stationery, nor warm baths, nor douche baths, 
 nor shower baths, nor pots of jam, nor carriages and 
 pairs, nor draught stout, nor imperial pints of pale 
 ale, nor ginger beer, nor the hotel hairdresser, nor 
 mulled wine at night, nor sherry bitters by day ; and 
 he reflects what a poor shuffling impostor of a guest 
 he is to have had so few requirements. 
 
 What may be called the antipodes of this magni- 
 ficent and pretentious kind of hotel account prevails 
 at some of the remoter inns in Portugal. Here, 
 when the traveller asks for his bill, the landlord 
 pleasantly rubs his hands together and answers, 
 ' Whatever your Excellency pleases to give.' This 
 will not do at all, for the traveller is sure to offer too 
 much or too little, and to be thought either a spend- 
 thrift or a niggard ; so he has to make a speech, 
 thank the landlord for his courteous confidence, and 
 beg for a detailed statement. 
 
 Then the landlord, politely deprecating any-, 
 thing of the kind, is slowly persuaded to check off 
 the various items upon the fingers of his hand, with 
 a long argument before each successive finger is done 
 with and doubled down. 
 
A PORTUGUESE TROY, 305 
 
 ' What does it come to ? ' asks the traveller, taking 
 out his purse at last, when the hand and the account 
 are finally closed. 
 
 8 Diacho ! ' (which is polite for Diabo, which again 
 is contracted from the Latin). ' Did his Excellency 
 not add up ? ' 
 
 His Excellency having been incapable of this act 
 of mental arithmetic, the addition is gone over again, 
 from the little finger backwards, with a finger or two, 
 perhaps, representing forgotten items, brought into 
 account from the other hand ; and the sum total is 
 gladly paid, and host and guest part mutually content 
 — the guest well knowing that he has not been over- 
 charged more than perhaps a thumb and one or two 
 fingers. 
 
 At Sr. Escoven's inn the bill is drawn up and 
 presented in a manner which may be called a com- 
 promise between these two opposite systems of ac- 
 count, and is an improvement on each. As I am 
 writing as a traveller and for travellers, I can do no 
 better than give full particulars. 
 
 At six o'clock a.m., I asked the woman servant, 
 who was bringing my breakfast, for my bill. In less 
 than two minutes it was placed on the table before 
 me, written on a piece of paper two inches square. 
 It contained only the following figures : — 
 
 1.500 
 1.500 
 
 3.000 
 
 The waitress, placing her finger on the second 
 
 x 
 
306 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 1.500, reminded me that this sum had been advanced 
 to me by the landlord the night before to pay my 
 boatmen. The rest, she said, was my inn account. 
 1.500 reis is a milrei and a half, and a milrei and a 
 half is about six shillings and eightpence, this sum 
 representing the whole charge for bread and wine to 
 take with me to Troia, dinner, bed, and breakfast 
 next morning. There was no charge for the conver- 
 sation on both sides of me, which lasted half through 
 the night. 
 
 I have written this account of a thirty-six hours' 
 expedition from Lisbon, made hurriedly between two 
 engagements, because I have often heard it said that 
 little or nothing was to be done or seen from the 
 capital of Portugal. I hope I have shown that a 
 traveller following me in this little expedition need 
 expend neither much time or trouble to find himself 
 among very beautiful scenery and an interesting and 
 courteous people. The Arrabida range, small as it 
 comparatively is, has peaks and recesses which would 
 well repay a visit of days. Setubal itself, of which I 
 have said hardly a word, is in population the third or 
 fourth city in the kingdom, and lias antiquities of its 
 own. The estuaries of the Sado and the Marateca, 
 forming the Bay of Setubal, are a congregation of 
 waters more beautiful than any in Portugal, not ex- 
 cepting the estuary of the Tagus itself ; and upon it, 
 within easy reach by boat, are towns famous in the 
 history of ancient Portugal. 
 
;or 
 
 CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 THE LOST CITY OF CITANIA. 
 
 Ten years ago, locomotion in Portugal was cer- 
 tainly neither easy nor pleasant. Within that period, 
 however, railways have increased, and a multitude of 
 good high-roads have opened up many new and 
 interesting districts which were once only accessible on 
 horseback. In almost all the larger towns excellent 
 inns have taken the place of execrably bad ones. 
 Moreover, a system of transit has been established by 
 a public company, under the name of the Companhia 
 da Viacao do Minho^ which affords great facilities to 
 the traveller. In all the principal cities and towns of 
 Northern Portugal, offices of this company are to be 
 found where, at a moment's notice, any sort of car- 
 riage can be obtained, from a roomy covered caleche 
 to a light phaeton : and the company having a well- 
 organized system of correspondence between their 
 various stations, the traveller can order a carriage to 
 meet him at the most remote point of the Northern 
 Province, with a reasonable expectation of not being 
 disappointed. 
 
 It will be tolerably evident that I am describing 
 what is, when combined with the lovely scenery of 
 
 x 2 
 
308 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 Portugal and numerous points of interest of every 
 kind, nothing less than a paradise of tourists. That 
 it may seem still more one, the country still more 
 accessible and still more civilized, the reader shall 
 learn something about Portuguese railways. 
 
 As regards the railway system of the country, it 
 is as yet very simple, consisting of one direct main 
 line of communication between Lisbon in the South of 
 the Kingdom, and Oporto in the North. From each 
 of these termini, or rather centres, there diverge 
 short branch lines, or feelers, which are still, except 
 at two points in the South, unconnected with the rail- 
 way system of the rest of the Peninsula, and which 
 are for the most part in process of annual extension. 
 
 It is along one of these branch lines, and the 
 newest of them all, the railway opened within the 
 last few months northward to Braga and thence 
 to the Spanish frontier, that I am about to conduct 
 the reader. Though the distance from Lisbon to 
 Oporto is very nearly that between Liverpool and 
 London, the time employed for the journey in Portugal 
 is considerably more than double ; and as competition 
 may be called the soul of brevity in railway matters, 
 and there is quite certain to be no competition in 
 Portugal for the next hundred years, Lisbon and 
 Oporto may, for all intents and purposes, be con- 
 sidered to be, not two hundred, but four hundred 
 miles apart. 
 
 I pass over this journey without comment, for my 
 present purpose is to visit, first Braga, the archiepis- 
 copal city, and afterwards Guimaraens, famous in the 
 
THE LOST CITY OF CITANIA. 309 
 
 history of mediaeval Portugal, and to find, and when 
 found, to explore and make notes of, a mysterious 
 buried town, supposed to lie somewhere between 
 these two cities, and of which a great deal more 
 presently. 
 
 The Minho Province is, as everyone knows who 
 has ever opened a book upon Portugal — even a 
 guide-book (blind enough guides, too often) — is, I 
 say, as everyone knows, the most lovely portion of 
 Portugal. The traveller from Lisbon who crosses 
 the Douro to arrive at Oporto, and, in doing so, gets 
 his first sight of this Northern Province, might almost 
 come to that conclusion then and there for himself, 
 as he sees this fine river running between its lofty, 
 precipitous, fern-clothed cliffs, with the city of Oporto 
 rising amphitheatre-wise from the edge of the river, 
 which here broadens suddenly into a lagoon, reflecting 
 on its still surface the confused, picturesque, multi- 
 coloured architecture steeply piled, terrace over ter- 
 race, to the granite hills beyond. Two miles from 
 the river we reach the station of the Northern Kail- 
 way, situated in the suburbs ; and even as we drive 
 to it, we get a glimpse of very characteristic Minho 
 scenery, which makes us wish for more. In the fore- 
 ground and middle distance pine-covered hills, rich 
 in their endless harmonies of subdued greens of every 
 shade, from the sunlit grey-greens of the common 
 pine to the indigo-green shadows thrown by the 
 solid-looking umbelled heads of the darker-foliaged 
 stone pine. Then the eye travels into immense dis- 
 tances, filled in with great, bare, solid mountains, 
 
310 POKTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 peak upon peak, rosy grey where the sunlight bathes 
 them, purple where the cloud-shadows fall, and fading 
 in the far-off airy perspective into what seems thinner 
 and more unsubstantial than the thin vapour- wreaths 
 of early dawn. 
 
 The thirty miles which separate Oporto from 
 Braga are got over with such an absence of indecent 
 haste, that fully two hours elapse before the journey 
 is accomplished, which is a mistake on several accounts 
 — first, because the traveller is sure to carry away a 
 poor idea of Portuguese railway engineering when he 
 has such leisure to note how wastefully the line has 
 been constructed ; not ballasted with that foresight 
 in making cuttings and embankments and that happy 
 economy of material, which, in an engineer's eyes, 
 have an aesthetic beauty of their own, but with great 
 heaps of earth and stone ' shot ' here upon the way- 
 side, and perhaps, but half a mile further on, a valu- 
 able bit of land dug bodily out for an embankment 
 — all very deplorable in its way, and a very proper 
 subject for disdain to the foreign traveller. Then, 
 again, the traveller — apt as all we travellers are to 
 generalization — might conclude from his experience 
 of this journey that the dogs of Portugal, who may 
 frequently be seen racing, and generally out-racing, 
 the trains, were gifted with an abnormal speed. This 
 conclusion can, as we have seen, be easily corrected, 
 by a reference to the time-table and a knowledge of 
 the mileage. 
 
 The railway takes us through a picturesque 
 country, but by no important towns till we reach 
 
THE LOST CITY OF CITANIA. 311 
 
 Braga. Here I get out. It is nearly nine, a dark, 
 dimly-starlit night late in April ; and I have a drive 
 of four miles before I reach, not Braga, for I disdain 
 its inn and crowded streets, but the great hostelry on 
 the Hill of the Bom Jesus. This hill is one of the two 
 most famous Holy Places in Portugal, and one of great 
 religious resort from all parts of the kingdom, and 
 even from Spain, during the summer months. Up 
 four miles of stiff ascent we drive : for the great inn 
 built here for the pilgrims is near the very top of the 
 hill, and it cannot be less than a thousand feet above the 
 elevated plain on which Braga is situated. As the 
 carriage creeps slowly along the winding road to the 
 summit, I know that the veil of soft night air is hid- 
 ing from me a series of very lovely foreground land- 
 scapes. I know, too, for I have been here before, that 
 at every upward turn of the road there is a grand 
 panoramic extension of the great plain below, and 
 that, but for the darkness, the distant hills should be 
 seen to be rising tumultuously, one above the other, 
 like sea waves or the airy mountains of cloudland. 
 But for the present, all this is for the imagination 
 only ; I shall have to wait till the moon rises, or till 
 to-morrow, for the landscape. Like the famous 
 Spanish fleet, ' it is not yet in sight.' 
 
 Nevertheless, something of the charm of it comes 
 to me through the dimness of the night. I know that 
 we are passing at one time through woodlands ; for 
 now and again the road is overarched by great oak 
 trees, whose half-expanded foliage I catch in outline 
 against the sky : now I know that we are passing 
 
312 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 through fertile, well-tilled farm-lands ; for I hear the 
 soft, continuous ' churr ' of the mole-crickets — a sound 
 as much associated with the early hours of southern 
 nights in spring time as the cicadas' cry with the hours 
 of hot sunshine — and these dainty insects love to dwell 
 in the rich soil of gardens and deep ploughed fields, and 
 I know therefore that we are close to such land. And 
 then again the fresh scent of new-shot vine buds comes 
 to me, and the richer warm fragrance of rye-fields, 
 with the bloom on the ears. And now we are passing 
 by a farmer's cottage, for the heavy perfume of orange- 
 blossom is wafted to me, or the fainter odours of a 
 wall covered with the flowers of the Banksian rose, or 
 the Wistaria. All this is very delightful after the 
 dusty atmosphere of the railway carriage. Then, as 
 we mount higher, we get away from cultivation alto- 
 gether, and pass through successive oak groves, and 
 the banks are overgrown with furze and cystus, and 
 rock-rose and broom, all in flower, and all betraying 
 themselves by the scents they give out on the dewy 
 air of night. 
 
 A church rises against the sky near the hill-top — 
 now the night is lightening a little with the rising 
 moon — and opposite to the church stands a great 
 dreary pile, two storeys high, like a barrack much 
 more than an hotel, and yet one of the best country 
 hotels in the kingdom. Till the middle of May it is' 
 but half occupied, fully crammed then and thereafter, 
 not by guests alone. 
 
 Inns in Portugal are not much after the fashion of 
 inns in England, France, or Germany — not such inns 
 
THE LOST CITY OF CITANIA. 313 
 
 as tourists are used to find on any of the roads they 
 haunt. Comfort, after the ideal of it which we have 
 come to form in England, is not to be found in these 
 inns — the comfort, that is, which consists in neatness, 
 warmth, bright hearths, plenty of carpets and arm- 
 chairs, soft beds, bustling waiters, attentive porters, 
 and smart chambermaids. Not a single one of those 
 qualifications is there which, in travelling bagman's 
 phrase, go to the making of a 4 good house.' The 
 Portuguese inn is rather of the type of the Eastern 
 caravanserai. The house is large, airy, carpetless, 
 with whitewash instead of wall-papers ; an arm-chair 
 is unknown ; there is but one hearth, and that is in 
 the kitchen ; the few waiters do not bustle, the rare 
 chambermaids are barefooted, and by no means smart. 
 In regard to the beds, an Englishman was once heard 
 by me trying, after his first experience of them, to 
 achieve a sorry jest about his host having succeeded 
 in combining ' bed and board.' The beds are, in fact, 
 straw palliasses ; and the inexperienced traveller who 
 makes his first acquaintance with a Portuguese bed- 
 room thinks that, by some mistake, a hard bran-stuffed 
 pincushion has been taken from his dressing-table and 
 laid upon his bed. This, however, is an error. The 
 pincushion in question is the normal Portuguese 
 pillow, and some prudent travellers in this country, 
 having bruised their cheeks and ears against this 
 little instrument of torture, in their struggles to get a 
 night's rest, habitually carry real pillows in their port- 
 manteau. An unworthy piece of Sybaritism ! I set 
 my face against anything so unmanly. I feel as the 
 
314 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 Highland laird did, who, when he and his clan (on a 
 cattle-lifting expedition) were bivouacking in a snow- 
 storm, found that his son had rolled a snowball under 
 his head for a pillow. He kicked it away indignantly, 
 swearing that no son of his should indulge in such 
 effeminate luxury. So do I protest against the effe- 
 minacy of carrying with one the pillow of civilization. 
 It marks a degenerate age. 
 
 The Portuguese hostelry is, as I have said, some- 
 what after the fashion of the Eastern caravanserai. 
 The summer traveller in Portugal — and travellers do 
 mostly travel in summer — is tried, not by any ele- 
 mental rage in the way of wind and rain, hail or snow, 
 but he is fatigued and oppressed by the heat and dust 
 of the long summer day, and often his nerves are 
 singularly over-excited by long exposure to the keen, 
 dry air, and the unblinking glare of the Lusitanian 
 sun. So he finds in the lofty rooms and cool atmo- 
 sphere of the unfurnished inn great refreshment, and 
 its semi-obscurity — for the sun has been kept out all 
 day by thick shutters — is wonderfully soothing to his 
 spirits. Also, he is never over-oppressed by offers of 
 service. According to Charles Dickens the idea of 
 an English inn is, that when a guest has passed its 
 threshold, he should deliver himself over into the 
 hands of the head waiter unreservedly and as if he 
 were a new-born child, with a volition, indeed, but no 
 power of realizing it except through his nurse — the 
 head waiter. Nothing of the kind prevails in Portu- 
 gal. ' Here,' says your Portuguese landlord, ' is 
 shelter, shade, and security — a caravanserai in short 
 
THE LOST CITY OF CITANIA. 315 
 
 — and I have so far conformed to modern ideas as to 
 employ a cook and a bedmaker.' 
 
 The beds we already know about ; the dinner is at 
 a table d'hote. We conform so little to Gallican ideas, 
 always unfashionable in Portugal, as to call it a mesa 
 redonda — a round table — though dinner is invariably 
 laid on a long and narrow one. Now, it is of the 
 convenient nature of Portuguese cookery that the 
 dishes are not appreciably the worse for being kept 
 waiting ; consequently, if one arrives at any hour of 
 the day or night, and says — c Quero jantar, I want 
 dinner, the meal is brought in five minutes, and laid 
 at a corner of the long table. The guest need not 
 trouble himself about ordering it, and if he ordered 
 twenty different bills of fare on twenty different days, 
 he would always get the same dinner, or one with 
 the same generic features. 
 
 As travellers are often as foolishly particular 
 about their dinners as about their pillows, and as I 
 have no wish to inveigle any of my countrymen to 
 Portugal under false pretences, I think it well to let 
 them know what, if they do come, they will have for 
 dinner. 
 
 First, they will have soup, a thin consomme of 
 beef, with rice, cabbages, and probably peas floating 
 in it. This is followed by the piece of beef and the 
 little piece of bacon which have made the soup, and 
 as this soup is served up very hot, so is some degree 
 of variety skilfully obtained by the bouilli always 
 being half cold. Then follow several indescribable 
 stews, very good to eat, but inscrutable as to their 
 
316 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 ingredients. After this, when one has ceased to 
 expect it, comes fish broiled, almost always hake, 
 which in Portuguese waters feeds on sardines, and is 
 therefore a better iish than our British hake, which 
 fares less daintily ; then rice made savoury with gravy 
 and herbs ; after that come ' beefes,' a dish fashionable 
 in all parts of Portugal, and in whose name the Portu- 
 guese desire to do homage to our great nation and 
 one of our national dishes, the word being a corrup- 
 tion of ' beef-steaks,' and the thing itself quite as 
 unlike what it imitates as its name. Then follow, in 
 an order with which I cannot charge my memory, 
 sweet things, chiefly made of rice ; the dinner invari- 
 ably ending with a preserve of quince. 
 
 It will be seen that the Portuguese cuisine is very 
 national in its character, and perhaps the day may 
 come when philosophers, having exhausted com- 
 parative mythology, grammar, and philology, may 
 think it worth their while to extract some of 
 the lost historic life of nations from comparative 
 cookery. The Portuguese cuisine, let us say, Scientia 
 Coquinaria Portugallensis, will certainly be one of 
 the most interesting chapters of this book of the 
 future. 
 
 The archaeology of this subject is simply that the 
 Portuguese people, conservative in their tastes and 
 yet open to new ideas, have borrowed from every 
 nation with whom they have come into contact ; from 
 the Romans their kitchen stoves — I have seen in 
 Pompeii a range of fire-places, each with its blowhole 
 through which to fan the embers, absolutely identical 
 
THE LOST CITY OF CITAN1A. 317 
 
 with the cooking hearths of modern Portuguese 
 houses — from the Moors they have got their earthen- 
 ware stew-pots and the way of using them. From 
 Koman times they have preserved innumerable names 
 of meals, dishes, and cooking vessels ; from the 
 Moors, again, the art of preserving fruits and making 
 them into cakes and jellies, from them, too, come the 
 names and recipes of many sweet dishes, among 
 others the rebanadas, a dish as much eaten in Portu- 
 gal between Christmas and the New Year as mince- 
 pies with us in England. The dish is purely one of 
 Southern lands, of countries ' flowing with milk and 
 honey,' and of pastoral peoples, being composed of 
 thick slices of wheaten bread soaked in new milk, 
 fried in pure olive oil and thickly spread with honey. 
 It is a dish of the nomad tribes from Arabia to 
 Morocco, and is made to this day by the Moors under 
 the name of rabanat or rabanadh. Then again 
 contact with ourselves has given the aforesaid beef is 
 to the Portuguese cuisine, and also initiated the nation 
 into the mysteries of plum and seed cakes, their 
 Portuguese name being still quiqui. All this is 
 surely very instructive and edifying, and I regret 
 exceedingly to have to leave the subject for the 
 present. 
 
 We have wandered a little from the subject of 
 Portuguese inns. In them a traveller need never 
 give orders to be called in the morning ; the tone of 
 voice in which the internal economy of the house is 
 conducted answers all the purposes of an alarum. 
 At an early hour in the morning I get up to, as old 
 
318 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 Indians say, ' eat the morning air.' The balconies of 
 the inn look westward, and command a really magni- 
 ficent view. I have somewhat discounted it over- 
 night, and therefore I need say the less about it now. 
 Some miles below is Braga in its plain, surrounded 
 by grey mountains, on which the mists of morning 
 are still hanging. An hour earlier I should have 
 seen their peaks sharply defined in the transparent 
 air of early dawn ; now the thin mists are in 
 process of absorption by the sun, or tending sky- 
 wards to incorporate themselves into detached clouds 
 which, as the day grows older, shall throw their 
 shade-mantles on the land and make it ten times 
 more lovely than before. The sun glints obliquely 
 on the city of Braga at my feet, and makes a rich 
 colour harmony of the red and green and yellow 
 houses, showing me in clear outline the great square 
 turrets of the castle dominating the other buildings, 
 and bathing in its potent rays the mellow brown walls 
 and towers of the old cathedral. 
 
 At this early hour of the morning, and with the 
 sun thus slanting his light over the great vine- 
 covered plain country below, there is a strange thing 
 to be seen, which never elsewhere have I looked 
 upon; not in France, nor in Spain, nor in Greece, 
 nor even in Italy, though in all these countries there 
 are lands giving in the spring time much promise of • 
 purple wine ; for hereabouts the yield of wine 
 is famous even in Portugal, not of delicate wine that 
 strangers seek after, but of a generous liquor, cool, 
 wholesome, and fortifying after labour, and so 
 
THE LOST CITY OF CITANIA. 319 
 
 plentiful that no man is poor enough to go without it, 
 and the very mouth of the resting horse that has 
 carried the traveller through the day is stained with 
 draughts of red wine. Now, in spring time, when 
 the sun at its rising, or just as it sets, strikes the 
 land slanting wise, this is the strange sight that I see 
 here — that its rays gleam hotly upon and into innu- 
 merable upward-pointing young vine shoots, set with 
 tender, transparent green leaves, and so brightly that 
 veritably it would seem that from the earth were 
 issuing not living foliage, sky pointing, but flames of 
 pale greenish fire, as of burning sulphur, thrust out 
 by some subterranean force — some ' cosmic energy 
 divine ' — and this sight so strikes the fancy that, in 
 an age of faith, a traveller telling of this in other 
 lands, it might easily grow out of his relation that in 
 this favoured region the kindly earth marks this 
 wonderful yield of her great bounty of wine by a 
 mysterious shooting forth of flames of living fire. 
 
 To all which the sceptical and cynical reader will 
 say, ' I don't believe it ! ' and I reply, ' Go to the Bom 
 Jesus at the proper hour and season and see ; ' and if 
 he retorts, ' Anyhow, I don't believe about the horses 
 drinking wine,' I rejoin, ' Travel through the Minho 
 Province, and you will see horses drinking wine and 
 eating maize bread many times in a day.' 
 
 Beaching the top of the hill, we look down west- 
 ward towards Braga, and eastward towards the city 
 of Gruimaraens. The mountain ridges which separate 
 the two cities are those of the Falperra range, and as 
 the eye travels over them it will rest on a white speck 
 
320 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 on an outlying spur of the mountains, about six miles 
 off as the crow flies. This is a tiny chapel, dedicated 
 to San Eomao, and on a certain day in the year a 
 goodly number of pilgrims flock thither. To us, 
 however, the interest of the chapel hill is that it is 
 the site of the buried city of Citania — of the so-called 
 Citania. Now, the city of Citania, if city it be, and 
 Citania it be, is still a puzzle to the antiquary. Till a 
 few years ago there was but a vague rumour of the ex- 
 istence of ruins on the hill of San Eomao ; within that 
 period archaeology owes it to Senhor Francisco Moraes 
 Sarmento, of the neighbouring city of Guimaraens, 
 that certain excavations have been made and explora- 
 tions set on foot ; but the exertions of one antiquary, 
 single-handed, against a mysterious buried city, how- 
 ever energetic and enlightened he be — and Senhor 
 Sarmento is both — can go but a small way to tell us 
 the story of these ruins, and they are still, therefore, 
 an unsolved mystery. 
 
 The hill of San Eomao stands out boldly from the 
 range of which it is a spur, and from its summit a 
 view is commanded of a great level extent of country, 
 through which, amid rich corn-fields and vineyards, 
 wind slowly the full waters of the river Este. The 
 hill itself is treeless ; its summit is some eight hundred 
 feet above the plain, and the ascent is so steep that 
 it takes three-quarters of an hour to climb to the top. 
 Within a few hundred yards of the very highest 
 point the steepness increases ; here vegetation almost 
 ceases, and the surface of the ground is occupied by 
 a thickly lying crop of granite boulders of all sizes 
 
THE LOST CITY OF CITANIA. 321 
 
 and shapes. A very stiff climb of five minutes more 
 over and round these obstructions leads to the sum- 
 mit, and here we find ourselves on a comparatively 
 level bit of turfy ground, fairly clear of stones, two 
 or three hundred yards across. On this table-land, 
 and some little way down the incline, on each side, 
 are the ruins. There is very little indeed to see, and 
 until Senhor Sarmento's excavations were made, an 
 unobservant person might easily have walked up and 
 over the hill without guessing that it had ever been 
 the dwelling-place of man. The ruins have by time 
 or by human hands been all nearly levelled to the 
 ground, and all that was visible, till the digging be- 
 gan, was here and there a portion of circular wall, 
 solidly built of well quoined stone, projecting from 
 the ground. 
 
 The first thing that strikes one is that these wall 
 fragments form parts or segments of complete circles. 
 Wherever one of the bits of wall showed above the 
 surface, Senhor Sarmento has dug, and what he has 
 come upon is this : — At a depth of from two to six 
 feet down, both inside and outside the segment, he 
 reaches a rough pavement. That which is inside the 
 circle is clearly the stone flooring of a building ; that 
 on the outside, the pavement of a street. When this 
 digging has taken place round the whole circle, and 
 the earth and stones are removed, there is left a per- 
 fectly round building about twenty-one feet in diame- 
 ter, of course unroofed, and with a single doorway. 
 The great majority of the remains are of this circular 
 character, but to every eight or nine of the round 
 
 Y 
 
322 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 towers or houses there is a square building of rather 
 larger dimensions, and again there are a few detached 
 walls which seem in most instances to have been built 
 at the slope of the hill, simply to keep the earth and 
 stones from slipping down. 
 
 The first question one asks oneself is how the 
 upper portion of these round houses was finished off, 
 and how roofed in. The answer to both questions is 
 to be got from the rubbish dug out from inside the 
 houses. There is just material enough in the way of 
 quoined stones to carry up the building another three 
 or four feet high, and the fragments of a quantity of 
 earthenware tiles of a curious pattern answer the 
 question as to the roof. Few modern houses are 
 so well roofed as these ancient buildings must have 
 been, for the tiles used were broad and square, with 
 their two opposite edges upturned an inch or so ; and 
 being laid side by side on the roof, and a common 
 convex tile (of which there are fragments also) being 
 placed over the joint, a strong and perfectly water- 
 tight roof would have been formed. Senhor Sarmento 
 has gone to the pains of reconstructing one of the 
 houses, and even of having tiles moulded for its roof 
 of the very size and shape of the ancient ones. The 
 building is almost certainly exact in its resemblance ; 
 a tower about ten feet high to the eaves, and with a 
 conical roof, the inside forming a single chamber of 
 fair size — a beehive-looking structure, singularly unin- 
 viting as a dwelling. Senhor Sarmento, I notice, has 
 carried his tiles only half-way up to the roof apex ; 
 the rest he makes of thatch, and this, I think, is a 
 
THE LOST CITY OF CITANIA. 323 
 
 mistake, because if the place was a stronghold, as its 
 position leads one to suppose, a straw thatch would 
 certainly have invited attack by fire. 
 
 Now, a curious point connected with the ruins is 
 that, as a rule, the buildings are so crowded together 
 that in some cases only three or four inches of space 
 intervene between them — in one case a single finger 
 would fill the space between two buildings ; and this 
 is odd, because one is puzzled to understand why, 
 when the builders had finished one wall, they did 
 not make it serve as a party-wall between two houses. 
 
 When the traveller has seen so much of the ruins, 
 he is no true traveller if he do not begin to form his 
 theories and make his guesses. Who built these 
 ruins ? Who lived in them ? And why and when 
 were they deserted ? 
 
 It is obvious enough that the place was oc- 
 cupied as a stronghold. So much is quite certain, for 
 though there was water, no doubt, to be got by sink- 
 ing a well on the top — springs still gush out in three 
 or four places from among the rocks on the hillside 
 — yet there could have been no other necessary of 
 human life on the hill, neither corn for man, nor 
 pasture for cattle, nor possibility of garden produce. 
 Therefore, the dwellers here could have come but for 
 one necessary, and that perhaps in rude times the 
 most conducive of any to health and longevity — se- 
 curity. A handful of the most unwarlike possible 
 defenders of this hill top could have held it against an 
 army. The tall granite boulders on the crest stand 
 as thick as battlements on a castle wall, and would 
 
 Y 2 
 
324 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 afford full protection to a bowman, or a slinger, or 
 the hurler of a javelin ; smaller stones stand ready to 
 hand, and even a child's or a woman's throw would 
 send them leaping down the precipice to carry de- 
 struction to an advancing host. Then, looking to the 
 great agricultural plain beneath, one fancies how a 
 rural population, the dwellers on it, might have flocked 
 to the hill for safety at the first alarm of danger, 
 using it for occasional refuge only ; but this obvious 
 suggestion has to be abandoned, for the way-worn 
 pavements point to a long and continuous occupation, 
 so also do the many fragments of pottery. It was 
 certainly therefore a dwelling for men, for women 
 and children, as well as a stronghold. We can pick 
 up fragments of the pitcher for water, of the jar made 
 of a finer and less porous earthenware to hold oil ; 
 and, though the shapes of these vessels are not such 
 as the Eomans used, it is all but certain that the men 
 who made them had learned their trade from the 
 Eoman potters. The present writer presumes to 
 speak with some little authority on this point, as 
 being himself not unacquainted practically with the 
 potter's art. 
 
 Then there are women's and children's personal 
 ornaments, baubles of blue and green glass ; they 
 came, we know, in the stream of Phoenician traffic ; 
 and there were smiths at work on the hill, for we find 
 the clinkers of the forge here and there, and scraps 
 of rusted iron innumerable ; and the smiths seem to 
 have been men of peace rather than of war, for Senhor 
 Sarmento tells me he has obtained no single warlike 
 
THE LOST CITY OF CITANIA. 325 
 
 weapon of iron — neither spearhead, nor arrow, nor 
 sword ; and millers ground their corn on the hill, for 
 it is difficult to take two steps where the earth has 
 been disturbed, without seeing the fragments of mill- 
 stones ; and there were artists — or perhaps, as with 
 us at home, idlers only and amateurs in art — for there 
 are rough incised ornamentations on stones, and at 
 least one rude representation of a human group. 
 
 So, then, the problem is narrowing itself somewhat. 
 We are agreed that it was a stronghold and a place 
 of permanent abode ; but for whom, and when ? The 
 when is partly answered by the fact that no single 
 flint or stone implement or weapon has been dis- 
 covered ; but of iron, as we have seen, very many. 
 The place then was occupied in the ' Iron Age,' as 
 antiquaries have it, and if I may frame a new eth- 
 nological term, it was in the later Pottery Age — an 
 age when unglazed pottery with close, smooth texture 
 was made — that is, after the Eomans had come into 
 the country ; but almost certainly the dwellers here 
 were neither Eomans nor a Eomanized people. Not 
 only is there not a single inscription, but the character 
 of the architecture is not at all of the kind used by 
 the Eomans ; the stronghold being, indeed, of that 
 type which Eoman writers called an Oppidum, and 
 describe as being used by the aboriginal tribes of 
 Northern and Western Europe. 
 
 Again, the incised ornamentations on the stone 
 slabs are most markedly non-Christian ; and this is 
 especially the case of one very conspicuous stone 
 which the traveller will find on the very summit of 
 
326 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 the hill. A huge slab of granite, a foot or so in 
 thickness, some seven feet in height and about nine in 
 length, attracts the traveller's attention almost im- 
 mediately. It is pierced near the bottom by a hole 
 through which a boy could creep, and adorned with 
 a complicated incised pattern of small circles and 
 squares intertwined with much quaint artifice, and 
 with straight and scroll-shaped lines. The work, 
 though not strictly Eunic, is more of that character 
 than anything else ; it is certainly pre-Christian, and 
 the stone, from its size and importance, must clearly 
 have been the work not of one man, nor of several, but 
 of many — probably of the whole tribe. It was, no 
 doubt, connected with some religious rite. 
 
 It is obvious what a very important part this stone 
 must play in the construction of any theory which 
 the speculative tourist may form of the lost history of 
 the ruins. I admit that it had its weight with me, 
 and my two learned and ingenious companions, on 
 the occasion of my first visit, were, I know, as much 
 occupied as myself in fitting this singular stone into 
 the edifices of their respective theories ; more diligently, 
 apparently, even than myself, for as we descended the 
 hill in silence, revolving each man the pros and cons 
 of his own hypothesis, they left to me the honour of 
 discovering a rare Portuguese fern, Cheiranthes frag- 
 rans, growing among the boulders of the hill. 
 
 By the time we reached the bottom of the hill our 
 respective theories were fully evolved and developed 
 in all their bearings, and quite ready for publication. 
 What then was our consternation, what was our be- 
 
THE LOST CITY OF CITANIA. 327 
 
 wilderment, what was the utter upsetting of every- 
 thing in the shape of a theory when, arrived at a little 
 roadside inn in the village of San Estevao at the bot- 
 tom of the hill, we learned from a farmer there 
 drinking a cup of wine, that the great stone was no 
 ' native of the rock,' but had been carried thither by 
 the enthusiastic Senhor Sarmento ! 
 
 ' But,' we exclaimed, with the natural irritation 
 and obstinacy of disappointed antiquaries, ' the thing 
 is palpably impossible ; a road must have been made 
 up the hillside on purpose ! ' 
 
 4 A road was made,' said the farmer calmly. 
 
 ' But,' I insisted, ' it would have taken fifty oxen 
 to draw that enormous stone up ! ' 
 
 6 Not so,' said the farmer, c it took only forty- 
 four.' 
 
 The farmer further informed us that it had 
 formerly stood in the porch of the parish church, and 
 that Senhor Sarmento in his apparently misplaced 
 archaeological zeal, had insisted upon carrying up to 
 the site of his excavations this huge slab of granite, 
 which I believe must weigh fully ten or fifteen 
 tons ! 
 
 Our feelings of blank dismay may be imagined : 
 fortunately there was no one to laugh at us but our- 
 selves. Here was a story to match the similar mis- 
 adventure of Sir Walter Scott's 'Antiquary,' and 
 scientific discomfiture quite as ludicrous as that which 
 befel Mr. Pickwick. When should we ever have the 
 heart to build up a theory, again after the ground 
 had thus been so completely cut from beneath our 
 
328 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 feet, and all the probabilities so stupendously vio- 
 lated ? 
 
 The reader may guess that had the matter rested 
 here, he would, perhaps, never have heard this story ; 
 but it turned out, fortunately for our archaeological 
 acumen, that the apparent blunder admitted of easy 
 explanation." On my return from this expedition, I 
 looked at Argote's well-known work upon Braga, 
 published in the last century, and learnt therefrom 
 not without a feeling of relief, that the stone was 
 standing in his day on the hill itself. Senhor Sarmento, 
 has subsequently told me that he knows or knows of 
 the parish priest who brought it down hill for the 
 adornment of his church, and it was Senhor Sarmento, 
 as the farmer had informed us, who, to the lasting 
 honour of all archaeologists, had caused the stone, 
 which the peasantry had long known under the name 
 of Pedra Formosa, to be carried up to its original 
 position. 
 
 Under these altered circumstances, I no longer 
 hesitate to put forward my theory. Citania, — it is 
 convenient to have a name for a place, though it is 
 probable that the ruins have no true title to this one, 1 
 
 1 The Roman historian, Valerius Maxim us, mentions the town 
 of Citania, and some antiquaries have fixed its site on this hill of 
 San Romao, near Braga ; the name Citania has consequently been 
 given to the hill. It is not a popular name, therefore, but an 
 antiquary's name. Valerius Maximus fixes Citania on a moun- 
 tain in Lusitania, and praises the bravery of its inhabitants ; but 
 there are more mountains than one in Portugal, and there is con- 
 tention over Citania, as over the birthplace of Homer. Some six 
 Portuguese antiquaries have chosen six different mountain sites for 
 
 
THE LOST CITY OF CITANIA. 329 
 
 • — was in my opinion a stronghold, built either by the 
 Celtic or by the Celt-Iberian race. It was probably 
 occupied during a long period, perhaps during many 
 centuries, and until after the Eomans were in posses- 
 sion of the country, through Eoman times, and pro- 
 bably until and after the establishment of the 
 Visigoths in Portugal. All this is proved, so far as 
 proof is possible in such cases, first, by the different 
 kinds of masonry shown in the walls, marking differ- 
 ent periods of construction ; that in the western 
 portion of the ruins is of the kind known as Cyclopean, 
 and here the stones are larger, the work coarser, the 
 fittings and quoining less perfect than in the presum- 
 ably more recent portions ; secondly, by the immense 
 quantity of potsherds, their character, the absence of 
 flint implements ; the presence of articles of bronze 
 and iron, and lastly, the absence of Eoman inscriptions 
 and of Christian symbols. It was probably destroyed 
 by the Visigoths, or we should have found some token 
 of the presence of this Christian people ; and that 
 it was never occupied by the Moors is nearly certain, 
 because there is no trace of their very characteristic 
 handiwork. That it was not again occupied on the 
 reappearance of the Christians in the country is 
 certain, because if it had been we should have had 
 some historical record of the fact. 
 
 Now to account for the circular character of the 
 buildings, with their low, thin walls, large doorways, 
 and absence of embrasures — all which would have 
 
 Citania, and a seventh — as good a man as any of them — confesses 
 that he knows not where it was. 
 
330 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 made them quite unfit for military defence — and for 
 the curious fact of their being crowded together in 
 such a way as makes it clear that no sane people 
 would have ventured to stand an attack in them. I 
 should account for all this by supposing that these 
 well-roofed, circular towers were simply granaries 
 for the corn produced in the fertile plain below ; that 
 the place was a depot used by the inhabitants wherein 
 to store their produce, which otherwise would have 
 been at the mercy of every marauding band from the 
 surrounding hills. The low, circular turrets, with 
 their walls uncemented, and therefore affording good 
 ventilation, with their waterproof roofs to keep off 
 rain, and their stone pavements to keep out vermin, 
 would have been ideal granaries. The necessity of 
 ventilation for grain storing would also perfectly ac- 
 count for the small size of the turrets and their 
 complete isolation, while yet so closely crowded to- 
 gether. The square houses or mills where the 
 corn was hand-ground were probably the dwellings 
 of the guardians of the depot, who, no doubt, oc- 
 cupied their leisure in grinding the corn they guarded. 
 None of the buildings, probably, were fortresses, for 
 the hill, with its natural crenelations and battlements, 
 is itself a stronghold ; such as Moirosi and Secocoeni 
 found in their boulder-covered mountains. 
 
 The apparent remains are not numerous enough 
 to have been a large centre of population ; but the 
 spot where the chief wealth of the district was pre- 
 served would, no doubt, be the main place of public 
 resort. Here all the bargaining of the neighbourhood 
 
THE LOST CITY OF CITANIA. 331 
 
 would have been done, all the buying and selling, all 
 the petty traffic of a rude period carried on ; here, in 
 the assurance of security, pedlars would have esta- 
 blished their stores of foreign stuffs and toys ; here 
 artificers would have built their workshops, blacksmiths 
 set up their forges, the potter his wheel and his kiln 
 — it would become, in fact, the bazaar of the district. 
 
 If all these surmises be correct, a wider exploration 
 may be expected to reveal plentiful signs and tokens 
 of the resorting together of men and of women; or- 
 naments for the women, weapons for the men, coins 
 — a few have already been found by Senhor Sarmento, 
 but I attach little weight to such discoveries, work- 
 men are always anxious to find coins for their em- 
 ployers, and in Portugal, spurious ones are only too 
 common. Those which have been found, however, 
 quite support my theory. 1 
 
 So much for the buried city of Citania, one of the 
 most curious and interesting places of its kind in 
 Portugal ; the traveller who desires to reach it from 
 the Bom Jesus, may do so in a delightful two hours' 
 walk along the breezy ridges of the Palperra moun- 
 
 1 One thing at Citania is puzzling — the great number of 
 conical, or rather frustral stones found in the ruins. These stone 
 pillars vary from a foot to three feet in height, and their propor- 
 tions are about those of a common sugar-loaf. They are seen 
 whole or in pieces all over the hill. If such stones were found 
 near a temple in India or Thibet, one would know to what to 
 refer them. They may perhaps denote here too some species of 
 nature worship. The sculptured stone to which I have referred 
 seems to bear out this view. Perhaps after all they were nothing 
 but the upper stones in the querns which are so numerous on the 
 hill. 
 
332 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 tains, part of his road lying beneath the shade of trees, 
 or else he may take a carriage to Braga and proceed 
 thence by road towards Gnimaraens ; a league will 
 bring him to the valley of the river Este, in which 
 are situated the sulphurous baths of Taipas. Thence 
 he can travel two miles further by road to San 
 Estevao, the village at the foot of the hill of San 
 Komao. However Citania be reached the journey is 
 pleasant, and if archaeology do not tempt the tourist, 
 botany or entomology may. He may botanize ad- 
 vantageously on the hill : two rare ferns, Cheiranthes 
 fragrans, already mentioned, and Asplenium marinum 
 grow, the first abundantly and close to Citania itself; 
 and the very site of the ruins is the haunt of a rare 
 and beautiful species of butterfly, Parnassius Apollo, 
 the only spot in all Portugal where I have seen it. 
 
 We return to the Caldas das Taipas, where the re- 
 mains of Soman baths exist, and which are still 
 much frequented by the modern Portuguese, for 
 they inherit all the belief in the virtues of bathing 
 both in the sea water and the waters of warm sulphur 
 springs. The granite hills get loftier and barer of 
 trees and more boulder-covered as we near Gruimaraens, 
 but the geologist who is tempted by their appearance 
 to climb up their steep sides will find little to reward 
 him. The boulders show no trace of having been 
 ' erratic,' the roches moutonnees bear no traces on their 
 surface of glacial action. The loose boulders, the 
 ' tors ' on the hill tops, and the rocking-stones piled 
 often one above the other in magnificent confusion, 
 are, in the rase of the boulders, only the hard nuclei 
 
THE LOST CITY OF CITANIA. 333 
 
 from which the surrounding softer parts have 
 weathered off; the tors and cliffs are only points and 
 ledges which time cannot eat away. 
 
 Though architects do not condescend to class 
 granite as -a stone, and point to the poor architecture 
 in districts where this formation is prevalent, they 
 must allow that for the building of castles or towers, 
 and turrets, where strength and simplicity are the 
 prevailing motives, there is no material like granite. 
 Its very surface, its rough granulation, its sombre 
 greyness, the massive proportions of its blocks — all 
 this gives it an air of grandeur, when worthily em- 
 ployed, which no other stone possesses. 
 
 In Guimaraens the traveller will have an excellent 
 opportunity of judging whether this be so. Guima- 
 raens is the oldest city of purely Portuguese origin in 
 the kingdom. I have told in a previous chapter how, 
 when the Leonese monarch sent his Viceroy Count 
 Henry of Burgundy to rule in Portugal in the 
 eleventh century, it was at Guimaraens that the 
 Viceregal Court was held. Here the Count's son, 
 Affonso Henriquez, the true founder of the Portuguese 
 Monarchy, was born ; here he spent his early youth ; 
 and in the wild country round Guimaraens he first 
 learned the art of war, and in his very boyhood be- 
 came a trusted leader of his troops in their yearly 
 forays against Moor and Spaniard. 
 
 Here, as was natural, the first great Christian for- 
 tress was built, and I think that a man might travel 
 from the Northern frontier river Minho to the mouth 
 of the Guadiana in the furthest south of Portugal, 
 
334 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 and find nowhere a nobler monument of a people 
 destined from the very first to great fortunes, than this 
 grand, granite-built castle of their earliest king. 
 
 The castle is simple in its structure. A thick 
 curtain wall heavily battlemented, and set in each 
 of its angles with turrets, surrounds a level area from 
 whose centre a huge square keep rises straight as an 
 arrow from the living granite rock — the very earth- 
 crust itself — on which its foundations are built ; and 
 so deft were the early masons, so tractable was the 
 rugged granite in their hands, so perfectly squared 
 and fitted in is each enormous block, that looking 
 down to-day from its giddy height the traveller won- 
 ders to think that eight centuries have not thrown 
 the ashlar stones an inch beyond the plumb line that 
 the first mason dropped. All that time has done is 
 to deepen the grey of the stone, and to redden its 
 surface here and there with a thin sheathing of lichen ; 
 each block is still in its place, every corner sharp, 
 every chisel mark, struck probably while our first 
 King Henry was yet on his throne, is as fresh nearly 
 as if it had touched the stone only yesterday. It is 
 still not a ruin, though it has withstood the siege of 
 human enemies as well as of time ; and it tells the 
 story of the strong spirit of the race of men who built 
 it, far more eloquently than I have read it in any 
 page of native chronicler or historian. The huge, 
 pointed granite blocks, each taller than a man, which 
 form the battlements, still stand erect and immovable, 
 giving evidence of such immense power and energy 
 in the very piling up to this height of these huge 
 
THE LOST CITY OF CITANIA. 335 
 
 stones, that the coldest imagination cannot, I should 
 suppose, fail to be affected by it, and to reach by a 
 sort of intuition at the true meaning and history of 
 this fortress. It is not the story of rapine, of wrong, 
 of selfish isolation and oppression of the weak, so often 
 told by the ruined feudal strongholds of Northern 
 Europe, but that of a united and loyal people, free 
 and warlike, under congenial rulers, working out 
 by the strong hand their independence against the 
 oppressors of their liberty and their faith. 
 
 In evidence of what can be made of granite, 
 treated in a more purely art spirit, there is in 
 Guimaraens the belfry tower of Nossa Senhora 
 d'Oliveira. This fine tower is one of a kind which 
 is not rare in Portugal, and which, as a rule, the very 
 Vandalism of the church-restorers of the last two 
 hundred years has respected. Under the evil art- 
 influences which prevailed during this whole period, 
 everything Gothic was denounced and, where 
 possible, destroyed. That which has saved so many 
 a fine building in Northern countries — the poverty 
 of the restorers — did not protect the fine art work 
 of older times in Portugal. From about 1600 to 
 1750, or later, immense wealth was poured into the 
 country from India and from South America. Much 
 of it was spent in iconoclasm, and now in the larger 
 and richer towns of the kingdom hardly a Gothic 
 building remains. In Lisbon only one or two 
 churches of a good period are to be found ; in Oporto 
 but two, and those maimed of their beauties. But 
 when the iconoclasts destroyed an old building, and 
 
336 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 built up in its stead a monstrous erection, in the 
 later Renaissance style, or the Italian, or the pseudo- 
 classical, or, worse than all and commonest of all 
 in Portugal, in that mixture of the classical and the 
 rococo which I have christened the Jesuit style — 
 when they set about doing this, it fortunately either 
 happened that their funds ran short, or their destruc- 
 tive propensities a little failed them ; or, perhaps, the 
 love of the people for the old place wherein they 
 and their forefathers had worshipped found a tongue 
 in indignant remonstrance. Sometimes they would 
 let an old arched doorway, with its deep romanesque 
 mouldings, stand uninjured ; sometimes it seemed a 
 sacrilege even to them to destroy the elaborate tracery 
 of a fine flamboyant window. Often they left the 
 outside of some grand building, and only assailed 
 the more exquisite work of the interior — as the white 
 ants of tropical countries eat out the whole inside of 
 valuable articles, and leave a thin outer crust, a 
 mere hollow simulacrum of that which they have 
 consumed. 
 
 At Braga they have gone only so far with the 
 Cathedral, and left much fine exterior work ; at 
 Gruimaraens it is the same ; while in both cases the 
 traveller's expectations are completely disappointed 
 when he enters the building to find the heavy, 
 tasteless, Italianized interior. In both these cases, 
 however, and in many others, the cloisters are 
 standing — though carefully whitewashed ! — and at 
 Guimaraens the typical granite belfry tower is wholly 
 intact — a beautiful building, graceful and stately, 
 
THE LOST CITY OF CITANIA. 337 
 
 and well worth dwelling upon for an instant. It 
 is a square tower on the west of the church, so 
 admirably proportioned, and with ornamentation in 
 such true artistic subjection to its construction, that 
 the least architectural tourist in the world must stop 
 to admire it, and try to understand why it is so 
 beautiful. Its height is divided by three horizontal 
 string-courses, and on the summit are set pinnacled 
 crenelations. The upper string-course, running 
 along the second course of ashlar from the top, is 
 set with gargoyles ; the other two are plain. 
 Between the two upper string-courses is the belfry, 
 containing a peal of eight bells, two showing through 
 the double-pointed arched window openings on each 
 side of the tower. Each corner of the tower is 
 carved in a twisted cable ornament, running per- 
 pendicularly, and giving a singular air of finish and 
 relief to the whole. This moulding is relieved by a 
 carved grotesque head between the two upper 
 string-courses, and a gargoyle half way between the 
 two lower ones. Later additions to the tower are 
 an outrageous little conical spire, now whitewashed, 
 and an ecclesiastical coat of arms between the two 
 lower string-courses, of a date not much later than 
 the tower, and contemporary probably with the 
 crenelated work on its summit. 
 
 Guimaraeris is a delightful old town, full of 
 rarely picturesque ' bits ' for an artist — old ' Azimel ' 
 windows, telliug of Moorish influences ; narrow alleys, 
 with the eaves of opposite houses all but meeting 
 overhead ; colonnaded streets ; old doorways, with 
 
 z 
 
338 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 queerly carved mouldings ; lights and shadows every- 
 where to delight a Kembrandt, and some of the 
 street vistas terminating in a grand view of the 
 mountain-side, white in places with the bloom of 
 fruit-trees, green with waving patches of rye and 
 clover among the grey boulders ; and here and there 
 the waters of rills and rivulets are seen tumbling in 
 foaming cascades down the steep hillside. 
 
 The tourist or traveller might do worse than 
 make Guimaraens his headquarters for a while. 
 There is now at Guimaraens an excellent hotel — 
 where there used to be only very bad ones — I forget its 
 name, but it is in a square nearly opposite the church 
 already described, and will be known to all drivers 
 and others as the Hosjjedaria Nova — the New Inn. 
 There are high roads from the city in all directions, all 
 leading through lovely scenery, mostly mountainous, 
 to interesting cities ; and these roads are so uniformly 
 good that there is not the slightest temptation to do 
 what a driver in Ireland of old days once proposed 
 to his fare when at last he had come to a tolerable 
 mile of road, 4 Won't I drive your honour back over 
 this last bit again, just for the delight of it ? ' There 
 used to be, and for that matter still are, roads in 
 Portugal which make this story intelligible, but in 
 those about Guimaraens there is now a positive 
 monotony of excellence. 
 
 Go where he will in Portugal, the traveller should 
 be provided with Murray's Hand-Book. To be sure 
 there are great omissions in it, and some tilings to 
 which omissions would have been far preferable — 
 
THE LOST CITY OF C1TANIA. 
 
 339 
 
 but as a guide book it is facile princeps among such 
 biblia abiblia, whether English, French or German. 
 It is comparatively far more useful and more trust- 
 worthy than the others. I lay claim to some gene- 
 rosity for saying this, for in an enlarged and amended 
 edition Mr. Murray has called me some very unkind 
 names, simply because I set him right in a most as- 
 tounding blunder about Lucius Junius Brutus and the 
 historian Livy. Mr. Murray, after correcting the blun- 
 der (without acknowledgment), adventured a dreadful 
 insinuation to the effect that he did not believe I 
 was myself very thoroughly conversant with the works 
 of Livy. Although there was nothing in my text to 
 ground this very grave charge upon, I am ashamed to 
 say it is well founded. I am not well read in Livy. 
 
 CHUECH PLATE IN BEAGA CATHEDEAL. 
 
 z 2 
 
340 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW, 
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 A PORTUGUESE COLONY. 
 
 The ship that leaves the shores of Great Britain in 
 October or November, and steers due south, does not 
 leave fog and leaden skies, and cold winds, and 
 driving rain and sleet well behind her until she has 
 crossed the storm-vexed Bay of Biscay, and passed 
 Cape Finisterre, the Land's End of Spaim Then, as 
 a rule, the sky clears, the wind dies, and the sea, no 
 longer lashed into surge and foam, reflects the 
 serenity of the heavens in its own darker bosom. 
 
 Travelling on south through these summer seas for 
 nearly a thousand miles after leaving the Bay, we sight 
 the land of our destination, the Purple Islands, as the 
 ancients are fabled to have named them — Madeira 
 and the islets adjacent. The first to rise from the 
 sea is Porto Santo ; then, some forty miles further 
 west, Madeira itself, and the Desertas Islands. 
 
 It has been disputed whether these islands were 
 indeed those anciently known as the Purple Islands, 
 and it has been further questioned whether the 
 epithet 'purple' is applicable to their appearance, 
 or to the fact that a purple dye can be obtained 
 from a lichen which still grows in great abundance 
 
A PORTUGUESE COLONY. 341 
 
 at Madeira, and is known in commerce as Orchilla 
 Weed. 
 
 It requires no little exercise of faitli to believe 
 that the ancients ever had discovered these islands, 
 and a good deal more to accept the theory of this 
 anticipation by 2,000 years of our comparatively 
 modern invention of the purple orchil dye. 
 
 If they knew the islands at all, and knew them 
 as the Purple Islands, it is probable that they applied 
 this name to Madeira on account of the dark and 
 almost purple colour of the volcanic cliffs which 
 border the sea shore, towering in places into peaks 
 which mimic the turrets of a castle, in others rising 
 sheer up for hundreds of feet from the water's edge 
 like huge walls of masonry, or forming quaint jut- 
 ting pinnacles and bosses of dark stone : so dark, 
 indeed, that if, as the traveller comes near, a cloud 
 happens to intercept the sun's rays, these sea-facing 
 rocks look as if they had been washed with an inky 
 rain. Only when the sun shines upon them do their 
 true colours show — here a jasper-like red, there 
 a green vivid with moss and weeds, there with 
 the tones of burnished bronze, and again through 
 infinite gradations of greys and violets, to where 
 the line of white foam divides them from the blue 
 sea. 
 
 The ship which steers for Madeira passes the last 
 promontory, the Brazen Head, and enters the little 
 Bay of Funchal, safe lying for ships in all winds 
 except when it blows from the south, for the hills 
 behind the town rise in an amphitheatre to a height 
 
342 TORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 nearly as great as that of Snowdon, and keep off the 
 north, the east, and the west wind not from the town 
 alone, but from the whole bay. A curious sight is 
 often seen from the houses of the town — a tempest- 
 tossed vessel two or three miles out in the offing, 
 where the billows are raised by a strong north wind, 
 and the waters of the bay, meanwhile, placid as a 
 mill pool. 
 
 Landing in this sheltered spot — it is sheltered for 
 nine months out of the twelve — the traveller finds 
 himself in a balmy, delicious, soft and perfumed air, 
 full of the sweet scents of flowers, a perpetual spring, 
 an atmosphere not to be recommended perhaps for 
 those who want a bracing climate, not a country 
 where the late Charles Kingsley would have found 
 materials or inspiration for his Ode to the East Wind, 
 but a spot where the Laureate might have placed 
 his Lotus Eaters, a land ' in which it seemed always 
 afternoon.' 
 
 To one newly arrived from England, the town of 
 Funchal would, no doubt, present much attractive 
 novelty in its non-English aspect, but to the present 
 writer, not unacquainted with ' men and cities ' in 
 the south of Europe, the chief attraction of the town 
 is its singular cleanness. There is, of course, no 
 building earlier than the end of the 15th century, 
 the island only having been discovered by the Portu- 
 guese in 1419 ; and regular streets, plain buildings, 
 and abundant whitewash, combined with the entire 
 absence of a respectable antiquity and of any his- 
 
A POKTTIGUESE COLONY. 343 
 
 torical associations, make Funchal comparatively un- 
 picturesque and uninteresting. 
 
 The most experienced traveller, however, if he is 
 unprepared for it, is likely to be taken aback at the 
 extraordinary mode in which he is landed. Calm as 
 the waters of the bay appear to be, some amount of 
 surf for ever breaks upon the stony beach, responsive 
 to the never-ending surge of the great ocean outside ; 
 and the boatmen, as they come near the shore, turn 
 the boat's stern beachwards, and, watching for a strong 
 wave, let themselves be carried in by it. As the 
 boat gets into the broken water, and before the re- 
 ceding wave can carry her out again, they jump 
 into the water and make fast the boat to a chain 
 attached to a yoke of oxen, who drag the boat and 
 its occupants up the somewhat steep shore and 
 several yards over the shingle. This singular mode 
 of disembarkation is, of course, not accomplished 
 without an immense amount of splashing of water, 
 vociferation, and general wrangling of every islander 
 within shouting distance. 
 
 A queer race of men are these natives of Madeira. 
 Mainly of Portuguese origin, they clearly are a nation 
 of half-castes, and the Negro cross is conspicuous 
 in their good-natured, ugly faces, in their stature — 
 they average two or three inches more than the 
 Portuguese of the continent — in their shambling 
 gait, and in their ill-knit frames. Their morality, 
 too, is said somewhat to partake of Negro laxity. 
 They are, however, by no means flagrant offenders, 
 and practise only the lesser vices of pilfering and 
 
344 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 story-telling, compounding, as it were, for their in- 
 dulgence in petty larceny and white lies by a rigid 
 economy in the greater crimes. Perhaps they 
 derive their standard of morality from the fact of 
 their living on a very small island — Madeira is only 
 forty miles long by about ten or twelve in breadth — 
 for it is a noticeable fact that the dwellers on small 
 islands are seldom given to marked enormity of 
 criminality : a man's Nemesis being, it is to be pre- 
 sumed, too certain to overtake him, in a confined 
 space, to make it convenient to perpetrate any very 
 great wickedness. So, it is related, the late Mr. 
 Smith, proprietor and virtual king of the Scilly 
 Islands, banished all the more serious offences from 
 among his tenants and subjects by the simple threat 
 of exiling those who should commit them, carrying 
 a Draconian code so far as to make the pulling of a 
 feather from his peacock's tail punishable with instant 
 banishment. A code as stringent would go some 
 way to depopulate the island of Madeira. 
 
 The native Madeirans have retained few of the 
 characteristics traits, either of dress or habits, which 
 are still prevalent in the mother country. They 
 speak a broken-down Portuguese, not immediately 
 intelligible, as I have myself had occasion to observe, 
 to a native of continental Portugal ; they have few 
 of those traces of Moorish ways and customs, which 
 are so evident to one who has observed the habits of 
 the Portuguese peasantry ; and, altogether, I am in- 
 clined to doubt what is generally asserted— that 
 there is a large admixture of Moorish blood in the 
 
A POKTUGUESE COLONY. 345 
 
 inhabitants of the island. I see, as I have said, no 
 sign of it in the people's faces, and I can find no 
 historical confirmation whatever of the fact. 
 
 Throughout the sixteenth century, the period 
 
 when Madeira was peopled by Portuguese colonists, 
 
 and when sugar began to be extensively cultivated, 
 
 the tillage of the land was effected by Portuguese 
 
 labourers brought over by the large proprietors, among 
 
 whom the island had at once been parcelled out. These 
 
 labourers were nominally free men, whose condition, 
 
 however, was probably very little better than that of 
 
 Indian or Chinese coolies on tropical sugar plantations ; 
 
 and they were supplemented by negro slaves, whose 
 
 numbers in the seventeenth century are asserted to 
 
 have amounted to several thousands. The hardy, 
 
 easy-going Negro would, no doubt, quickly assimilate 
 
 in habits and religion to the superior race, and, in 
 
 time, intermingle ; not so the Moors, if any of that 
 
 nationality were, indeed, at that time in slavery on 
 
 the island. Between Moor and Christian the faith feud 
 
 in the Peninsula was at this time more bitter than 
 
 at any other, and any commingling of the races was 
 
 out of the question. If there ever were Moorish 
 
 slaves in Madeira, and I see no evidence even of 
 
 that, there would have been too much of mutual 
 
 repulsion between them and the Portuguese to admit 
 
 of the two races co-existing, except as lord and 
 
 serf, far less of their mixing their blood. 
 
 The Madeirans, as a rule, wear no peculiar 
 costume. The women, indeed, cover their heads 
 with a handkerchief, but in other respects their dress 
 
346 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 might pass without observation in an English village. 
 The men also dress like English peasants, showing 
 a tendency to white ' ducks,' in imitation, no doubt, 
 of sailors, and adopting the hideous ' wide-awake ' 
 hat, a head covering which, originating among the 
 plantation slaves of the United States, promises in 
 time to spread over the whole civilised earth. Two 
 eccentricities of dress, however, the Macleirans in- 
 dulge in. The men, when they do not wear ; wide- 
 awake ' hats, use, perhaps, the most singular head 
 covering worn by any race of Christian men. In 
 shape and size it exactly resembles a common tea 
 saucer ; it is made of black cloth, and fits on to the 
 very point of the back of the head, covering, of 
 course, only about a hand's breadth of its surface, 
 and being kept in place, as a resident tried to ex- 
 plain to me, simply by the force of suction. This 
 ' carapucaj or skull cap, is put on and taken off 
 by a handle made of rolled cloth, which projects 
 from its centre, and stands up from the wearer's 
 head ; this handle is as thin and half as long as the 
 stem of a long clay pipe, and the general appearance 
 of the islander with one of these caps is indescribably 
 ludicrous. The Madeirans may boast of having 
 evolved this remarkable head-gear within the last 
 hundred years, for no notice is made of it by 
 travellers visiting the island until the year 1782. 
 
 Another peculiarity of dress is the universal 
 wearing of top-boots of yellow goat's leather by 
 persons of both sexes and all ages. The use of the 
 Moorish slipper by the peasantry of so many parts of 
 
A PORTUGUESE COLONY. 347 
 
 Spain and Portugal, is a marked vestige of Oriental- 
 ism, and the abandonment by their descendants of a 
 chaussure in which a man can neither run on level 
 ground, nor walk up a steep hill, is, no doubt, due to 
 the mountainous nature of the island, and perhaps 
 to the extensive growth of the prickly pear, which 
 would make walking barefoot quite impossible. The 
 use of high boots is therefore sensible enough, but the 
 appearance of a little girl of ten or twelve in a pair 
 of top-boots is apt to strike the conventional stranger 
 as singular. 
 
 The chief interest of Madeira, however, lies 
 neither in its inhabitants nor in its history, but in 
 the extraordinary beauty of its scenery and the 
 delicious mildness of its climate. 
 
 In Madeira, as a health resort, I desire to express 
 my strong belief. True it is that for many years 
 past it has been denounced by certain medical 
 authors ; every doctor who has wanted to write up a 
 new winter health resort begins by attempting to 
 write down Madeira, as likely to prove its most 
 formidable competitor. I venture to think that 
 few non-medical persons have read more about 
 European health resorts or read with stronger 
 interest in arriving at the strict truth in the matter 
 than myself. The result of my investigations was to 
 go to Madeira, and inquiries on the spot, among per- 
 sons who can have had no object in misrepresentation, 
 strongly confirmed my choice. The chief charges 
 against Madeira, I found, as I expected, quite untenable. 
 These charges are three in number : first, the preva- 
 
348 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 lence of the scorching Leste or Sirocco, the east wind 
 
 which blows from Africa and comes to Madeira 
 
 charged with the heat and dryness which reign over 
 
 the Sahara desert ; secondly, the damp of the climate ; 
 
 and thirdly, the frequency of rain. But it turns out 
 
 that the Leste is never disagreeable and never 
 
 frequent except in summer; in winter it blows but 
 
 once or twice, and its effect at that season upon 
 
 human beings is rather pleasant and exhilarating 
 
 than otherwise. The dampness, so evident to the 
 
 perceptions of those who recommend rival health 
 
 resorts, is certainly not appreciable to the senses of 
 
 an invalid, nor is it even cognizable to science, 
 
 inasmuch as the hygrometer notes 72 degrees as the 
 
 average amount of humidity in Funchal, and the 
 
 best medical authorities give from 70 to 80 degrees 
 
 of relative humidity as that which is most agreeable 
 
 to human beings. As regards rain, there fall on an 
 
 average but 29 inches in the year ; and even this 
 
 does not represent the full freedom from rainy 
 
 weather enjoyed by Madeira, for when rain falls in 
 
 the island, it falls quickly and heavily, and while in 
 
 Torquay — our very best English winter climate — 
 
 about the same annual amount of rain descends, they 
 
 have in Madeira but 88 days of rain in the whole 
 
 year, while the people of Torquay have to endure no 
 
 fewer than 155. 
 
 This is all the foundation possessed by the three 
 indictments commonly preferred against Madeira. 
 On the other hand, no European climate has so mild 
 ;ii id equable a winter, is so free from chilling winds, 
 
A PORTUGUESE COLONY. 349 
 
 sudden and excessive cold and dryness ; in no 
 European station are the nights so warm, the noonday 
 sun so little scorching. No European town is so free 
 as Funchal from endemic or epidemic diseases — those 
 diseases, that is, which range from ague and marsh 
 fever to scarlet fever and typhus. At no European 
 station is vegetation of all kinds so luxuriant and so 
 lovely ; in no other health resort is such varied 
 scenery to be enjoyed ; and in no climate, probably 
 in the whole world, is it possible for an invalid to take 
 so much out-door exercise in the course of the year ; 
 in none is dust on the roads so absolutely unknown ; 
 and, what is perhaps of more importance than any- 
 thing else, in none is locomotion, by means of ponies, 
 palanquins, and sleighs, so easy and so suitable to sick 
 persons. 
 
 These excellences in the Madeira climate have 
 recommended it, and continue to recommend it, as a 
 special resort for consumptive patients ; but it is, 
 perhaps, quite as beneficial in a great variety of other 
 complaints, such as renal affections, asthma, bron- 
 chitis, gout, and certain forms of rheumatism, and, 
 above all, in convalescence from fevers. Madeira is 
 still resorted to annually by about three hundred 
 English visitors ; and their number in future years 
 will probably suffer no diminution, though a variety 
 of circumstances have, to some extent, tended to 
 diminish the repute of Madeira as a desirable and 
 accessible health resort. 
 
 Among these, the stringency of the quarantine 
 laws, which are now relaxed, was at one time enough 
 
350 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 to deter many intending visitors ; moreover, for .some 
 years, the steam communication with England was 
 irregular ; and, added to all this, was the circum- 
 stance I have above spoken of, the adverse and not dis- 
 interested criticism of writers on some other European 
 climates. To these several causes may be ascribed 
 the non-increase in the number of English arrivals, 
 but it is noteworthy that with foreigners of nearly 
 every nationality, Madeira is in increasing esteem. 
 Americans, Russians, Spaniards, and especially 
 Germans, now resort to the island every year in 
 increasing numbers. 
 
 That a comparatively large island like Madeira, 
 not lowly and unobtrusive, like the coral-formed 
 islets of southern seas, which barely lift their soil 
 above the tides, but an island composed of a moun- 
 tain range, with peaks as lofty as many not disdained 
 by Alpine climbers — that such an island, visible for 
 scores of miles on the surrounding seas, should for so 
 many centuries have remained 
 
 'In the ocean's bosom unespied,' 
 
 is a fact sufficiently suggestive of the timorous navi- 
 gation of the ancients, and the dearth of enterprise in 
 the Middle Ages. When at last the Portuguese 
 found it, the exploit had become magnified into 
 absolute heroism by the very fact of so little having 
 previously been achieved in the field of Western dis- 
 covery. Men's ignorance and their fears had peopled 
 these great unknown seas with supernatural terrors. 
 The discoverers braved not only the dangers of an 
 
A PORTUGUESE COLONY. 351 
 
 untried navigation, but the perils of the unseen world, 
 — doubly terrible to men of their age and creed. 
 True, imagination had painted many delights to 
 lure them on, as well as horrors to daunt them. In 
 the vast expanse of this mysterious ocean were — 
 
 ' Dire chimeras and enchanted isles.' 
 
 There was the fabulous Island of Bimini, with its 
 fountain of perpetual youth, in quest of which the 
 Spanish navigator, Juan Ponce De Leon sailed over 
 many a weary league of sea. There was the flying 
 island of St. Brandaran, where the last King of Gothic 
 Spain was fabled to have found a home, and which 
 was believed in and even searched for so late as the 
 eighteenth century ; and there was the great 
 mysterious Island of Cipango, tenanted by the ghosts 
 of captive Christians, which Columbus himself did not 
 despair of finding. All these might reward the navi- 
 gator who should tempt fortune on the ocean which 
 washes the western shores of Europe ; but before 
 they could be reached, there was the terrible ' Sea of 
 Darkness ' to be passed through, and this sea was 
 held to extend over the very spot where the Madeira 
 islands lie. Imagination had been busy in peopling 
 these unknown waters with 
 
 ' Deformed monsters, 
 Spring-headed hydras, sea-shouldering whales, 
 Great whirlpools.' 
 
 If there was much, therefore, to impel a brave man 
 to a brave venture, there was more still to daunt 
 him. 
 
352 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 The man who was bold enough to disregard these 
 various terrors of the deep, was the Portuguese 
 navigator, Da Camara, known to his comrades, and 
 since to fame, as Zargo, the one-eyed or squint-eyed, 
 and it was only by a kind of accident that Zargo, en- 
 gaged on a voyage of discovery on the Western 
 Coast, was carried by a tempest to Porto Santo. 
 Leaving some of his men on this small and nearly 
 barren island, Zargo betook himself to Lisbon with 
 the news of his good fortune, and in the following 
 year returned with two small vessels bearing colonists 
 for the new discovered land. 
 
 On his return, Zargo learned from his men that 
 certain supernatural phenomena had been observed on 
 the western horizon. A singular darkness constantly 
 dimmed the outlook towards the setting sun ; strange 
 noises from the same quarter seemed to suggest the 
 existence, not far off, of some huge whir pool. The 
 men began to fancy that at Porto Santo they were at 
 the verge of the habitable world ; beyond it, they 
 imagined, was some abysmal vortex, hidden by a 
 mysterious veil of cloud and mist. When Zargo 
 announced his intention of sailing westward, it is 
 reported that he was advised to abstain from rashly 
 attempting to penetrate a mystery which the Almighty 
 had not seen fit to reveal to his creatures. Disregard- 
 ing these timorous counsels, the adventurer set sail, 
 and in a few hours had discovered the lovely island 
 of Madeira lying in these silent seas, in all the 
 magnificent luxuriance of its virgin vegetation. No 
 Portuguese mariner had, as yet, seen so fair a land, 
 
A PORTUGUESE COLONY. 353 
 
 or one so rich in the products of southern climes, 
 whose surface was so broken and diversified with hill 
 and dell, and enriched with such copious streams ; 
 for the Azores and the Cape Verds were later dis- 
 coveries, and Portuguese navigators only penetrated 
 to Cape Nun — the southernmost limit of the present 
 kingdom of Morocco — nearly twenty years afterwards. 
 The island was uninhabited and densely wooded. 
 Struck probably by its contrast with the treeless 
 slopes of Porto Santo and the barren shores of Africa, 
 they named it Madeira — the Isle of Woods. Landing 
 on its south eastern shore, they set up a cross ; and 
 the place is still known as Santa Cruz — Holy Cross. 
 Passing westward, by the bold headland which our 
 sailors call the ' Brazen Head,' from its yellow colour, 
 they gave it the name, which it still bears on the 
 maps, of Cape Garajao, after the sea-birds of that 
 name which then tenanted the cliffs. Each point 
 and cove is still known by the name which the sailors 
 gave it on their first landing. Funchal and its bay 
 were so called from the fennel plant — fnncho — which 
 grew on its shores. At one spot, some of the men 
 in wading a stream were carried off by the current, 
 and with difficulty rescued by their fellows, and the 
 river is known to this day as Rio dos Soccorridos, the 
 Stream of the Rescued Men. A black, isolated rock 
 seemed to them to stand up from the water like a 
 huge beetle, and is still called the Beetle Pock, o 
 Gorgulho. A little further they startled some seals, 
 which rushed by them into the sea — sea-wolves they 
 believed them to be — and they christened the site, 
 
 A A 
 
0£ 
 
 54 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 which now gives its name to a village, ' Camara de 
 LobosJ the Wolves' Lair. 
 
 Thus did the rocks and hills, which till then had 
 perhaps heard no sound but of the wind, the wave or 
 the torrent, the note of song bird or the scream of 
 gull or kite, first get their baptism in human speech, 
 and for the first time echo to human voices. Prob- 
 ably, but not certainly, for the first time, for, passing 
 over the possible fact, to which I have alluded, of 
 their ancient discovery, there is a persistent tradition 
 that the first actual discoverer of Madeira was one 
 Eobert Machin, a native of Bristol, who, eloping with 
 Anne Darfet, a young English lady of good family, 
 fled by sea with his bride from her father's anger, 
 intending to seek a refuge in some French harbour. 
 The ship which conveyed them is related to have 
 been caught in a storm and carried to Madeira, in the 
 year 1346, where the lovers died. The crew, taking 
 ship again, made for the mainland, and were captured 
 and carried into slavery by the Moors. In Morocco 
 they found a Christian fellow-captive, one Morales, to 
 whom they told their story. This Morales was, long 
 afterwards, delivered from captivity, and eventually 
 found himself — so the tradition runs — in the service 
 of the Portuguese navigator Zargo, to whom he of 
 course imparted the strange history which had come 
 to his knowledge. 
 
 This is the rather romantic story which lias been 
 repeated with every account of Madeira. There is 
 nothing improbable in the fact of a ship being blown 
 out of its course, and coming upon the Island of 
 
 
A PORTUGUESE COLONY. 355 
 
 Madeira, or that such a vessel should have contained 
 a pair of English lovers ; the improbabilities are in 
 the rest of the narration. Assuming the tradition to 
 have remained in its original form for sixty or seventy 
 years — which is of itself not likely — it is highly im- 
 probable that it should have reached the ears of 
 Zargo in a credible shape, seeing that if that enter- 
 prising navigator had even suspected that so fair 
 an island lay within three or four days' sail of 
 Portugal, he would certainly straightway have made 
 his way thither, whereas he was himself blown to 
 the neighbouring Porto Santo by a tempest. More- 
 over, even had the account come to him as the 
 vaguest tradition, he would have satisfied himself of 
 its truth as soon as he had reached Port Santo, which 
 lies actually within sight of Madeira on a clear day ; 
 yet he did nothing of the kind, but as I have related, 
 sailed homewards and postponed the actual discovery 
 for a whole year, when it was all but in his grasp. 
 The whole story has the flavour of a myth ; and as, 
 in some sort, depriving a brave man of the credit of 
 a brave deed, I reject it utterly. 1 
 
 1 It is a fact which is singularly illustrative of the almost 
 abject ignorance and even incuriosity of the most learned and 
 scientific men of the century, in regard to foreign travel and 
 geographical discoveries, that fifty years after the discovery of 
 Madeira, an Italian poet, the friend of the ablest contemporary 
 men of science, seems to have been quite ignorant that the Straits of 
 Gibraltar had ever been passed. 
 
 It is often quoted as evidence of the philosophical foresight of 
 Pulci, that he makes one of his characters in the famous ' Mor~ 
 gante Maggiore ' seem actually to presage the discovery of the 
 New World. ' The ocean,' says the poet, ' is level through its 
 whole extent, although, like the earth, it has the form of a globe. 
 
 a a 2 
 
356 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 The island of Madeira is volcanic in its formation : 
 sea -cliffs and rocks, inland peaks and precipices, the 
 lofty mountains over 6000 feet in height and the 
 smallest pebble in the brooks, have all the same 
 igneous origin ; and all bear traces of having been 
 cast forth, incandescent and liquid, from the great 
 subaqueous furnace, and of having cooled and 
 solidified in the spot where the upheaving force had 
 thrown them. An idea of the natural configuration 
 of the surface of the island may best be given by the 
 illustration said to have been employed by Columbus 
 when asked for a description of Jamaica. Crumpling 
 up a piece of paper in his hands, he laid it upon a 
 table as some representation of the variations of that 
 island's surface — of the sharp hill ridges, of the 
 sudden declivities, of the gullies and narrow valleys, 
 and the innumerable and indescribable inequalities 
 of the land. Such as Jamaica is, such is Madeira, 
 and such are most islands of similar volcanic origin. 
 
 This irregular contortion of the land might seem 
 to possess all the elements of the picturesque, but it 
 is only at first sight that its strangeness is attractive. 
 
 Mankind in former ages were much more ignorant than now. 
 Hercules would blush at this day, at having fixed his columns 
 where he did. Vessels will soon pass far beyond them, and may 
 perhaps reach an unknown hemisphere.' 
 
 If we consider that Prince Henry, the Navigator, had long 
 before despatched his exploring squadrons far south and far west 
 of the Pillars of Hercules, and made the last of his great geo- 
 graphical discoveries twenty or thirty years before Pulci wrote, 
 the poet's ignorance of past maritime achievements will seem far 
 more wonderful than his fortuitous anticipation of the exploits of 
 Columbus. 
 
A PORTUGUESE COLONY. 357 
 
 There is quite wanting in the bare volcanic rocks of 
 Madeira that which constitutes true artistic pic- 
 turesqueness ; that is, the alternation of a manifested 
 law or order, with interruptions of it. In the out- 
 bursts of lava torrents there is law indeed, but it is 
 not apparent to most observers of it any more than in 
 the forms of the huge clinkers that are shot out from 
 an iron furnace. It is all seemingly accidental ; and 
 is, indeed, as anomalous and as hideous, aesthetically 
 speaking, as the distorted limbs of a monster. 
 
 That this is so is shown by the fact that whenever 
 these lava currents cease to be amorphous and begin 
 to crystallize — that is, where they follow their natural 
 law and take, for instance, the form of columnar 
 basalt — they go to make up exquisitely lovely 
 scenery, such, for example, as that of the Giant's 
 Causeway in Ireland. Among the many hundred 
 pictures and drawings from the master hand of 
 Turner. I do not remember a single one where naked, 
 amorphous, volcanic rock is represented ; it is always 
 either stratified or crystalline rocks which make the 
 \ bones ' of his works. But when these same 
 Madeiran rocks are covered with the luxuriant 
 vegetation which a volcanic soil produces, the barren 
 ugliness disappears, the nakedness is clothed with 
 rich and novel forms of plant-growth, so dense that 
 we are only occasionally reminded that underneath 
 there lies nothing better than a huge cinder-heap. 
 The beauties of the island scenery are, therefore, but 
 skin deep, so to say — they are on the surface and in the 
 air, for there is a particular charm of aerial distance, 
 
358 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 and a singular richness and variety of colouring on 
 the woods, the hill-sides and the shores of Madeira 
 which I have seen nowhere else. 
 
 The nature and the number of the plants which 
 clothe the surface of this small island, lying as it does 
 nearly three hundred miles from the nearest point of 
 Africa, and more than five hundred from the nearest 
 European land ; and of the birds, beasts and insects 
 which find shelter upon it — in other words, the Flora 
 and Fauna of Madeira — have come to acquire a fresh 
 interest when regarded from the point of view of re- 
 cent developments in the science of Natural History. 
 It is, therefore, not a little fortunate that a botanist 
 and natural historian of established European reputa- 
 tion should have made Madeira his occasional residence 
 for many years past. The ordinary foreign visitor to 
 the island is little apt to interest himself in the more 
 abstruse points involved in the partly European and 
 partly African natural history of this semi-tropical 
 island, upon which Mr. Lowe has written so much 
 and so well. 
 
 When it is considered that Madeira is a very 
 small island, and that the visitor is more or less con- 
 fined to one corner of it, the wonder is that the 
 many invalids who pass the winter there do not tire 
 of what is virtually an imprisonment. Yet life in 
 Madeira is by no means wearisome to the chance 
 visitor or to the invalid. The situation of Funchal 
 upon the sea, from which the town and the highlands 
 behind it rise amphitheatrewise ; the view of the 
 blue waters of the bay, always lively with boats and 
 
A PORTUGUESE COLONY. 
 
 359 
 
 fishing-smacks ; the daily arrival of great ocean- 
 going steamers ; the fine mountain scenery, with 
 fresh vistas of jagged peaks and ravine chasms from 
 every point of view, and varying hourly with every 
 change of cloud and shadow ; the charming seaside 
 ride and drive, known as the Caminho Novo ; the 
 excellent English club and reading-room ; and, above 
 all, the hospitality of the English residents ; — all these 
 things help to make the visitor's time pass pleasantly. 
 
 A MADEIRA FISHERMAN. 
 
GO PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 CUSTOMS OF THE PORTUGUESE PEOPLE. 
 
 Thoughtful travellers in the Peninsula are generally 
 curious to find traces of the old Moorish culture in 
 the land, and this curiosity is no doubt partly due to 
 that Orientalism and sympathy with things Semitic, 
 which is latent in all of us of northern blood who have 
 read the Arabian Nights in our childhood, and have 
 dreamed of genii, and calenders, and enchanted 
 palaces. In the Peninsula, however, the interest and 
 the curiosity in things eastern come not alone from 
 any such false glamour of the fancy as this, which 
 vanishes (except in a few well-noted cases) in those 
 who come face to face with eastern life. Here, in 
 this south-western corner of Europe, we know we 
 are on the very footsteps of the vanished race who 
 first, in the night of the Dark Ages, woke all the 
 dormant arts of culture, who revived the long-dead 
 sciences ; among whom chivalry was born, humanity 
 was practised, the 'point of honour' made almost a 
 point of law, and the intercourse of man with man 
 softened and refined by fixed ceremonial usage. We 
 are here in the land through which mainly all this 
 passed to the rest of Europe, and among the very 
 
CUSTOMS OF THE PORTUGUESE PEOPLE. 361 
 
 people who were the first pupils of the cultured and 
 generous Saracens, who imbibed something of their 
 learning, their chivalry, and their civilization, and 
 overthrew them at last by the practice of some of 
 the very arts they had learnt from them. It is not 
 strange, then, that knowing this, strangers coming 
 to the Peninsula follow out with the deepest interest 
 the traces which so many hundred years have not 
 nearly effaced among southern Spaniards and among 
 Portuguese, and which traces are, in my observation, 
 far fresher in Portugal than in Spain. 
 
 It is interesting enough to observe how this cul- 
 ture and superiority of intellectual training and 
 accomplishment gave the Arabs (as we have recent 
 very good reason to know these qualities always 
 will give their possessors) military as well as social 
 and political ascendency, and how their lessons were 
 slowly imparted to the races they encountered ; how 
 through the Saracens of the period of the Crusades, 
 not only the whole science of the attack and the 
 defence of strong places was taught to the more back- 
 ward Europeans, but what was far more important, 
 the peaked saddle and firm stirrup-hold, the curb 
 and curb chain, the use of the lance, and the swift 
 evolutions of the Oriental horsemen became known to 
 the slow and unwieldy cavalry of the Peninsular kings 
 and princes. This invaluable knowledge had for 
 centuries settled the tenure of empire upon the 
 Saracens, and when it was imparted to the conquered 
 Goths, it helped mainly to turn the tide in their 
 favour. 
 
362 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 It is not, however, upon these great causes of 
 the making or the marring of empires that I wish 
 now to dwell, but upon lessons taught in Saracen 
 times in the domain of domestic and social life — the 
 songs, the dances, the legends, the daily usages of the 
 people. The Saracens had no doubt themselves much 
 to learn at first from the Eomanized Goths and Semi- 
 Gothic tribes of the Peninsula ; but when the tide of 
 conquest rolled back those of the Christians who 
 kept their independence to the fastnesses and back- 
 woods of the country, culture and civilization went 
 back too among them, while all the arts of peace ad- 
 vanced among the Saracens in a manner which is still 
 a marvel to the historian. Those of the Christians 
 who remained in the country under Saracen dominion 
 became semi-Saracenized, and the existence of the 
 Mocarabes is proof enough how the Christians were 
 won by the superior culture of the conquering race. 
 In time came the long and final struggle for existence 
 between the two faiths and the two races — the 
 Peninsular Crusade which I have described in a pre- 
 vious chapter. It was in the course of it that Chris- 
 tian and Infidel came into close contact, and an 
 incident of it was that the Saracens taught the un- 
 couth Portuguese Cymons 4 all the sweet civilities of 
 life.' 
 
 The graver historical student may not care to 
 consider whether, among other social customs, the 
 Serenade is a Saracen introduction into Europe. I am 
 convinced that it is, and, in spite of its name, I believe 
 
CUSTOMS OF THE PORTUGUESE PEOPLE. 363 
 
 the guitar on which it is accompanied to be a modifi- 
 cation of a Saracen instrument. 1 I defy any critic to 
 prove that any such nightly love-song as the true 
 Peninsular serenade, so accompanied, was ever 
 poured forth under the windows of any lady what- 
 ever, till the Saracens invaded Europe. The Greeks 
 knew of nothing of the sort, their domestic institu- 
 tions were quite opposed to such proceedings ; so 
 indeed were, and still are, those of the Moslems them- 
 selves ; but the Moslems of Spain and Portugal were 
 never very strict observers of their own institutions. 
 The ancient Eomans knew not of any night-sung 
 passion-song, nor, to the best of my belief, did any 
 barbarian nation. Again, the serenade has never 
 thriven in any land beyond those countries in which 
 the Arabs first taught it ; in Provence, in troubadour 
 times, it was a custom ; in Italy, in Spain, and in 
 Portugal it has never died out. 
 
 The serenade in these southern countries of course 
 has none of that foolish flavour of romance which we, 
 who frequent the opera and have heard the serenade 
 in Don Giovanni a dozen times, connect with it. It is 
 nothing more than a delicate compliment to the 
 
 1 The older-fashioned lute is, I suspect, the origin of the guitar, 
 though the lute, in its latest form, was a more complicated instru- 
 ment ; and the name guitar is no doubt a Romance word, and 
 was coined later than the instrument was first used in Europe. 
 I do not think it can be found mentioned before the Roman de 
 la Rose, and there it is called guiterne. If etymology could 
 quite be trusted, it was the Portuguese who first taught the 
 name and use of the Arabic lute to the rest of Europe, for they 
 only of European nations have preserved in Alaude its full Arabic 
 name, Al ud. Even in Spanish it is shortened to laucle. 
 
364 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 object of a man's affections, and means no more than 
 when an Englishman gives his future bride an en- 
 gaged ring, a Frenchman a box of bonbons or a 
 bouquet, or than when a German sends his betrothed 
 a pound of knodels or a Strasburg sausage. 
 
 Not but that the serenade is a rare thing even in 
 Andalusia. The people there are not all young and 
 impulsive, or incautiously trustful of themselves to 
 the air of night. Even in Seville itself the guitar 
 tinkles chiefly to less romantic strains than those of 
 love. 
 
 The guitar is certainly, in our critical northern 
 eyes, an effeminate instrument, and a man who plays 
 upon it in an English drawing-room can no more 
 hope to preserve any appearance of manly dignity 
 than if he were piping upon a flageolet, or blowing 
 into that most ludicrous of all instruments, the flute. 
 That a man should be, as well as look, sentimentally 
 emotional under the painful circumstances of being 
 tied by a silk ribbon to such an instrument is, 
 however, clearly a matter of conventionality. In many 
 parts of Portugal, men play upon the guitar naturally 
 and as a matter of course : they strum as we English- 
 men whistle. The peasants are universally given to 
 play upon this instrument, not often, however, 
 achieving more than a simple accompaniment to the 
 voice, of chords and arpeggios. In the towns the 
 artisans are often guitar players, and as they walk to 
 and from their work in twos and threes, they lighten 
 the journey with an accompanied chant or song. 
 My carpenter always brings his guitar with his tools 
 
CUSTOMS OF THE PORTUGUESE PEOPLE. 365 
 
 when he comes on a job. He is a fair performer, but 
 my blacksmith, I think, has the lighter touch of the 
 two on the instrument, and his tones are certainly 
 fuller. 
 
 When the Portuguese workman or day-labourer 
 has clone his long day's work, he does not lean 
 against a post and smoke a pipe — he does not favour 
 any such ' contemplative man's recreation ' — nor 
 does he linger in the wine-shop ; but, if it be a 
 holiday or a Sunday, and in a rural district, he puts 
 on a clean shirt, with a large gold or silver stud as a 
 neck-fastening, and his newest hat, varying in shape 
 according to locality, but always of black felt, and 
 of the kind which we see in pictures of Spanish 
 life. He throws over his shoulders a black cloth 
 cloak, with a real gold or silver clasp. He takes his 
 favourite ox-goad in his hand, as tall as himself, 
 straight as an arrow, well rounded and polished, and 
 bound with brass. He slings his guitar round 
 his neck, and makes his way to the nearest fashion- 
 able threshing-floor — the peasant's drawing-room. 
 Here are gathered old and young of both sexes, 
 come together for gossip, song, and dance. If it is 
 the time of the Ceifa — the reaping of the maize — or 
 the vintage, or, above all, the Decamisadas — the 
 husking of the ears of maize — and if corn or wine 
 have yielded well, then are the peasants' hearts glad 
 within them, and song and dance are more than ever 
 joyous. 
 
 I cannot say that the dancing is particularly 
 graceful. It is certainly chiefiy, though not entirely, 
 
366 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 Oriental in character, as dancing is over all the 
 southern Peninsula; that is, it is slow and firm in 
 movement, accentuated in time, and depends almost 
 wholly upon the motions of the body and the arms. 
 It has commonly been asserted that it was the Gipsies 
 (who are far the best dancers in Spain or Portugal) 
 who brought these dances with them from the East ; 
 but I am of opinion that this is a mistake, and that 
 this wandering tribe of low-caste Indians, as we must 
 now take them to be proved to be, never have, in 
 spite of their apologists, remembered anything worth 
 the memory, for the four hundred years they have 
 been among us. They have forgotten, in this com- 
 paratively short period, their origin, the story of their 
 own wanderings, their customs, their language and 
 their religion. Why should they have remembered 
 only their dances ? Besides, I have seen Gipsies dance 
 in England, in France, and in Tyrol : in none of 
 these countries do they dance as they do in the 
 Peninsula. We may conclude that they have every- 
 where adopted the national dances, and that in Spain 
 and Portugal they dance not Indian but Moorish 
 dances. They dance them better than the natives 
 because, being by nature lazy and effeminate, their 
 bodies are never stiffened by continuous labour, and 
 perhaps also because they possess by race more of 
 the artistic temperament. It is the same with that 
 wonderful instrumental music of the Gipsies of 
 Hungary, the Tsiganes. It is, according to Monsieur 
 de .Bertha, beyond all doubt, not of Gipsy, but of pure 
 Hungarian origin. The Gipsies, coming to Portugal 
 
CUSTOMS OF THE PORTUGUESE PEOPLE. 367 
 
 long after the Moors had gone, evidently shaped into 
 an art what had been till then only a diversion of the 
 people. They are almost the only professional dancers 
 in the Peninsula, and all that the world at large 
 knows of Peninsular dancing, in the theatres of London 
 and Paris, came at first from the tinkers and beggars, 
 the bull-fighters and fortune-tellers of Andalusia, 
 who help, with members of other less respectable 
 trades, to make up the half-bred Gritano community 
 — a community composed chiefly of roughs and 
 idlers, swindlers and thieves. 
 
 Oriental dancing and the dancing of northern 
 peoples are as much opposed as two modes of doing 
 something of the same sort can well be. One is a 
 jig, the other a bolero ; one only the ebullition of 
 high spirits, the other, the expression of all the emotion 
 and poetry in the nature of the dancer. The Celts 
 and the northern Teutons have taught the world to 
 shuffle with their feet in time to lively . music ; and 
 the impartial philosopher (if such a being exist) 
 who sees the Scotsman, the Irishman and the English- 
 man, the Dutchman, and, above all, the northern 
 German, dancing their various jigs, reels, and horn- 
 pipes, must always find it to be the cause of a struggle 
 for gravity to behold individuals of these nationalities, 
 rigid in body, grave in expression, and with no 
 life and movement in them but from the knees down- 
 ward. 
 
 The Portuguese are neither an Oriental people 
 nor a purely northern, nor a purely southern nation, 
 but a race blending; the character with the blood of 
 
368 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 the North and of the South ; a nation educated in 
 its youth by Moors and Arabs. Their dances par- 
 take of their lineage and of their training. They 
 dance a jig, and are a little absurd — they dance a 
 bolero and are interesting. 
 
 In Portuguese dancing there is nothing cold and 
 conventional like the modern quadrille, or formal like 
 the minuet, or at all silly like the polka of the Hun- 
 garians, or in any way grotesque and offensive like 
 that which has almost become the national dance of 
 Frenchmen. The Portuguese are only, as I have 
 said, a little ridiculous, from our point of view, 
 when they stand in a circle, and dance something 
 between a jig and a reel. 
 
 Their bolero dances are simple, natural, and ex- 
 pressive — expressive of youthfulness and health, and 
 the exuberance of gaiety which goes with youthful- 
 ness and health, and the reaction coming from rest 
 after labour. That they are not always, or even often, 
 graceful I admit, for we (miserable fault-seekino- 
 critics that we all are who write or read books) have 
 come to set up far too high a standard of graceful- 
 ness of motion, getting it in theatres and where there 
 are trained dancers, and these poor people are hard- 
 working peasants, their muscles cramped by labour, 
 their backs bowed with the carrying of burdens. 
 Hard held work and good dancing are quite incom- 
 patible things. 
 
 With the dance goes the song. Though there is 
 a kind of singing in parts of Portugal which has an 
 undoubted Roman origin, — the melancholy, long- 
 
 
CUSTOMS OF THE PORTUGUESE PEOPLE. 369 
 
 drawn, often unrhymed chaunting which is to be 
 heard in the fields, and which often takes the form of 
 a rude hexameter, — the singing at feasts and pleasure- 
 gatherings is not generally of this kind. Each district 
 has songs peculiar to itself, as it has costumes and 
 manners and legends more or less peculiar, so slow 
 and difficult was locomotion till recent times, and so 
 rare the traffic and exchange of ideas in Portugal in 
 its long-enduring condition of roadlessness. The 
 national songs and airs of Portugal will stand com- 
 parison with those of any country, and have so much 
 charm in their originality, their variety and their 
 sweetness, that it is a marvel to me that they are not 
 as well known as those of Spain and Italy. How 
 much the origin of such songs, and indeed of modern 
 passion-verse generally in its lyric form, is derived 
 from Arab sources, is now an old and, more or less, a 
 settled question. I need not dwell upon it. Every 
 good singer at a rural festival will have in his 
 repertory several of such songs as these I have 
 mentioned ; but if he is to become a performer of 
 any local repute, he must be something more than a 
 singer with a good ear and a memory. He must be 
 an extempore song-maker, and it is for this depart- 
 ment of song, quite distinct from Italian improvisa- 
 tion, that I claim an undoubted Saracen origin. The 
 irregular quatrain in use by the Portuguese improvis- 
 ator e, the curious unfamiliar accompaniment, monoto- 
 nous but not unmelodious, the style of the sentiments, 
 ranging from passionate emotion to a gay and rather 
 downright humour, the frequent reference to natural 
 
 B B 
 
370 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 objects — so rare in the popular verse of other European 
 countries, so common in the poetry of Semitic races — 
 and above all the constant use of figurative speech 
 and a certain extravagance in imagery, — all this 
 points most unmistakably to the Oriental origin 
 of the Portuguese peasant songs. 
 
 Here is the lament of a girl-singer whose lover is 
 a sailor. It might be a translation from Persian or 
 Arabic. ' Evil be,' she sings, ' to the man who first 
 invented sea-going in ships, for he is the cause that 
 my eyes are rivers of tears : ' — 
 
 Mai haja quern inventou 
 No mar andarem navios, 
 Que esse foi o causador 
 Dos meus olhos serem rios. 
 
 Here, again, is a quaint fancy that might occur to 
 an Oriental. ' If,' says a lover, 'I had but paper 
 made of gold I would buy a silver pen, I would polish 
 my style, and write you a letter : ' — 
 
 Se eu tivera papel de ouro 
 Comprava penna de prata, 
 Apurava os meus sentidos, 
 Escrevia te uma carta. 
 
 It was the same singer who, apparently from 
 want of scholarship, gave up letter-writing, and, 
 extravagantly enough, makes believe that his spoken 
 declaration is really in letter form. The paper, he 
 tells his mistress, on which he writes is the palm of 
 his hand, his tears are his only ink, and his pen is 
 taken from his heart itself : — 
 
CUSTOMS OF THE PORTUGUESE PEOPLE. 371 
 
 papel em que eu escrevo 
 Tii'O-o da palnia da mao, 
 A tinta sae-nie dos olhos, 
 A penna do coracao. 
 
 These quatrains and those which follow are not 
 literature in any sense that should be criticized by rule 
 and line. They have simply been taken down from 
 the mouths of the peasant singers who were thinking 
 of nothing less than of being reported. A thousand 
 verses as good as or better than these are sung every 
 summer night in Portugal. 
 
 The song is not always complimentary. ' When 
 the cork-tree,' remarks a disdainful young lady, 
 6 shall yield berries, and the bay-tree cork, then I may 
 fall in love with you — if I can take the trouble : ' — - 
 
 Quando o sovreiro der baga 
 E o loureiro der cortiga, 
 Entao te amarei, meu bem, 
 Se nao me der a preguiga. 
 
 I have noticed that among the Portuguese peasant 
 class, women hold a very independent position. They 
 work very hard, they are active and cheerful, very 
 helpful in any trouble, very genial and sympathetic, 
 and yet full of quick answers and mother wit. They 
 know well their value in the economy of life, and 
 without any clamour for impossible rights, take their 
 full share of all that is attainable in that way. Their 
 suitors in love are very humble and persevering, but 
 the women know well what is due to their dignity. 
 Here is the petition of a lover who has too much 
 failed in constancy to be well received. * Let us,' he 
 
 B B 2 
 
372 POKTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 asks, ' be friends again as we used to be. People 
 who care for each other always forgive, not one — or 
 two — but three offences : ' — 
 
 Facamos, meu bem, as pazes 
 Como foi da outra vez, 
 Quern quer bem sempre perdoa 
 Uma .... dims .... ate tres. 
 
 And the girl answers, ' No, I will not be friends with 
 you, as we used to be. Those who truly love commit 
 neither one, nor two — far less three offences : ' — 
 
 Nao quero fazer as pazes 
 Como foi da outra vez, 
 Quern quer bem nunca offeude 
 Nem uma .... quando mais tres. 
 
 The women assume a certain freedom in Portugal — 
 as, for the matter of that, they often do elsewhere — 
 and it is well for their lovers if they can always 
 believe what is told them for their own good. ' I 
 have,' says one very frank maiden, ' five lovers — three 
 for the morning, two for the afternoon ; to all of 
 these I tell falsehoods, to you alone I speak the 
 
 truth : '— 
 
 Eu tenho cinco namoros, 
 Tres de manha, dois de tarde : 
 A todos elles eu minto, 
 So a ti fallo a verdade. 
 
 An obviously plain girl recommends herself ingeni- 
 ously : ' From the clefts on the mountain side grow 
 out wild herbs and flowers. Hold fast to the herb 
 as you climb up — it is strong ; leave the flower — it 
 will break away : ' — 
 
CUSTOMS OF THE PORTUGUESE PEOPLE. 373 
 
 Entre pedras e pedrinhas 
 Nascem raminhos de salsa : 
 Pega-te a feia que e firme, 
 Deixa a bonita que e falsa. 
 
 If it were not for the charges of inconstancy so 
 frequently brought by the poets, love-songs would 
 make duller reading even than they do. The peasant 
 poets of Portugal have evidently as good reason as 
 any others to inveigh against their mistresses' fickle- 
 ness. In the following quatrain the disappointed 
 lover attains in his bitterness almost to real epigram. 
 Like most epigrams it is untranslatable : — 
 
 Os teus olhos, 6 menina, 
 
 Sao gentios da Guine, 
 
 Da Guine por serem pretos, 
 
 Gentios por nao terem fe. 
 
 The last example I will give has bitterness in it of 
 
 a graver sort, and wit too of still higher alloy. ' For 
 
 love of thee,' says the singer, ' I have lost Heaven ; 
 
 for love of thee I have lost myself — now I find myself 
 
 left alone without God, without love, without 
 
 thee : '— 
 
 Por te amar perdi a Deus, 
 Por teu amor me perdi. 
 Agora vejo me so 
 Sem Deus, sem amor, sem ti. 
 
 It is in the centre and north of the country that I 
 
 have chiefly heard this extempore singing and seen 
 
 peasants dancing and singing at their desgarradas a 
 
 viola — their village balls and concerts. It is not easy 
 
 to give the reader an idea of the delight which these 
 
 gatherings afford the people, of their gaiety, their 
 
 quickness, and their ready appreciation of a jest, a 
 
 local allusion, or the neat turning of a phrase. 
 
374 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 The tinkle of the guitar in the night air, the pizzicato 
 of the violin, have a marvellous attraction for them, 
 as I have often seen, and these simple pleasures seem 
 to be quite enough to redeem the monotony of their 
 long laborious days. They ask nothing better of 
 life than such distraction, and, in truth, rather shame 
 a looker-on who may, perhaps, foolishly ambition 
 some hardly attainable object, valueless or bitter 
 when he reaches it. For the thorough-going He- 
 donist, who, with Mr. Pater, counts the thrills of 
 pleasurable sensation in life as that which chiefly tells 
 on the right side of man's account, the lines of a 
 Portuguese peasant might seem to be cast upon not 
 unpleasant times or places. He has, indeed, to work 
 hard in a climate which is not altogether a perfect 
 one. Hot suns and cold winds too often come 
 together. The narrow strip of land which lies 
 between the Spanish mountains and the Atlantic, and 
 constitutes Portugal, is subject to fogs, and to rain 
 which is almost tropical. It is an Atlantic climate, 
 and our English winter sojourners in the South know 
 little except of Mediterranean ones. There is a 
 difference, and it is not altogether in favour of the 
 climates of the Mediterranean shores. If the day 
 climate of Algiers, Naples, or Messina, is better than 
 that of Portugal, the evening, about sunset time, and 
 the early morning, and above all, the air of night in 
 this country, have a clearness and pleasantness which 
 are not to be found elsewhere in Europe, and which 
 are, no doubt, due to the modifying influence of the 
 great ocean. The night air of summer is especially 
 
CUSTOMS OF THE PORTUGUESE PEOPLE. 375 
 
 delightful — warm, soft, and genial. However hot 
 and sultry the day may have been, amends are made 
 at night. Once I was riding with a peasant guide, 
 on a fearfully hot day, through the plain country of 
 Estremadura. The afternoon sun glared into our 
 faces as we rode westward, and the heat was as if a 
 furnace door was being kept open above our heads. 
 ' When night falls,' said my guide, breaking a long 
 silence, ' I shall lie out in the fields to feel the air cool 
 upon me and the dew.' The very prospect seemed 
 to bring refreshment to him. He did as he said he 
 would, and as do many Portuguese in the hot summer 
 time, and the practice speaks well of the wholesome- 
 ness of the nights. So then, to sum up the good and 
 bad in the Portuguese field labourer's lot — if he has 
 a hot summer to toil through, he has no great severity 
 of winter weather to endure ; if his summer day bring 
 more than a common heat and burden, in the pleasant 
 night he finds a constant respite and solace. Then 
 again, there is abiding peace in the land. Hardly can 
 the grandfathers in the hamlet remember the story of 
 the time when men were pressed for civil war, and 
 fields were ravaged, and rumours of war did, as they 
 always do, more evil than even war itself; and it 
 would take men of a generation further back still to 
 tell the story of anything approaching the horrors of 
 real warfare. ' Turtle-footed peace ! ' 6 Peace with 
 her wheaten crown ! ' and so forth. When one has 
 had the horrors of war brought, as we all have had 
 lately, so vividly before us, one is almost tempted to 
 quote these old phrases of the poets, and to approve 
 
376 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 their enthusiasm for Peace and Plenty. ' Ceres and 
 her sheaves ! ' ' Bacchus and his attendant train ! ' it 
 sounds stale and common-place, but one begins at 
 last to see the sense there was in what seemed the 
 sham classicalism of our schoolboy verses. Anyhow, 
 Peace and her blessings are here for the benefit of 
 the Portuguese land-worker. There is emigration to 
 Brazil too for him if population presses ; wages also 
 are rising ; so that altogether he is well off politically 
 and socially. But what the Hedonist would count 
 his chief good fortune is that he is blessed with a 
 cheerfulness and a power of enjoying simple things, 
 which no philosophy that was ever invented can 
 bestow. 
 
 The celebrated and benevolent John Howard, the 
 prime mover in the reform of our then abominable 
 English prison system, and whose successors have, 
 in the opinion of some thoughtful persons, sometimes 
 carried the humane influence of the first reformer 
 into humanitarian excesses good neither for criminals 
 nor for honest men, clearly knew nothing of the 
 prisons and the prison system of Portugal. 1 It is 
 not a good system at all points, or perhaps at many 
 points, but it has this of singular and of interesting 
 
 1 It is curious that Howard left England on his first journey 
 to the Continent with the intention of visiting Portugal, a country 
 which he was fated not to see till quite late in life, for he was 
 captured on his way to Lisbon by a French privateer. He did 
 not see Portugal and its gaols till long after he had visited those 
 of nearly every European country, had made his published reports, 
 and had helped to bring about the great reforms of our English 
 prison system and discipline. 
 
CUSTOMS OF THE PORTUGUESE PEOPLE. 377 
 
 in it, that such as it is now it has been, with not 
 many changes, for hundreds of years. The great chari- 
 table establishments of Portugal, which have taken 
 the place of the lazar-houses of the Middle Ages, — 
 models, like those of Spain, of good and liberal 
 management, are more or less recent in their origin, 
 and are either the work of priests, or of those 
 strongly under priestly influence. The greatest of 
 them, the Misericordia Hospital, which has branches 
 throughout the kingdom, was founded in about 1510 
 by the pious King Emmanuel. With the prisons, 
 however, the priests have never much meddled, 
 beyond carrying the consolations of religion to the 
 sick and dying. Such as the prison is to this day 
 in Morocco or Tunis, such it is in Portugal, with only 
 such differences as might be expected in the appli- 
 cation of a system and principles between a retro- 
 grade and Moslem people, and a Christian, a humane 
 and highly civilized one. As it was when Howard 
 lived, so it is now with little change, and had he 
 crossed the Pyrenees during his Continental travels, 
 he would have found, I think, much food for reflection, 
 and, not improbably, something to modify his own 
 opinions. 
 
 There is something to be said against the prison 
 system established in Portugal, but there is certainly 
 a good deal to be said in its favour. I do not pretend 
 to decide either way, but I could heartily wish that 
 some of the more hardened of our habitual rogues 
 in Great Britain could be committed to a Portuguese 
 gaol for at least some portion of their terms. It would 
 
378 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 warm the loyalty of the influential class who spend 
 a portion of their lives in gaol to learn, by the con- 
 trast that would be forced upon them, how well 
 their comforts are looked after at home. The Portu- 
 guese are as humane, if not as humanitarian, a people 
 as we are — more so even, for they have combined 
 humanity with logic in abolishing capital punish- 
 ment, holding it to be against their consciences to let 
 an irrevocable punishment follow the sentence of a 
 fallible tribunal. They substitute transportation to 
 the coast of Africa for hanging, though, if he had 
 his choice, it may be doubted if any rational mur- 
 derer would not rather elect to be hanged at once 
 than to be so banished. The Portuguese, like us, 
 are wishful that the lot of victims of the criminal 
 law should not be too hard a one, but they do not 
 set about attaining their end as we do. They do not 
 warm, and feed up, and carefully clothe, and separate, 
 and classify as we clo. There is, nevertheless, more 
 of thought for many urgent wants of poor human 
 nature in the Portuguese gaol management than in 
 ours — more kindness and less comfort, more freedom 
 and less system ; and yet the kindness is, perhaps, a 
 mistaken kindness too. The rogue and thief in every 
 country has always something of the beggar about 
 him, and in Portugal, even in prison, his liberty is not 
 so abridged but that he still has liberty to beg : dang- 
 ling his line and basket into the stream of the outer 
 world, and fishing up bread and meat and coj)per 
 coins from his dungeon windows. 
 
 There is often not a pane of glass in all a Portu-. 
 
CUSTOMS OF THE POKTUGUESE PEOPLE. 379 
 
 guese prison, and every iron-grated window has its 
 four or five haggard faces pressed close to the crossed 
 bars — pale prison flowers turning to the light of day 
 and freedom. A wholesome example to evil-doers, 
 no doubt think those who manage these things ; but 
 as all the main business of the convicts' lives can be 
 carried on through their grated windows, as they can 
 and do wrangle with their wives, court their sweet- 
 hearts, borrow of their friends, libel their enemies, 
 and beg of everyone — living in careless idleness, and 
 making life one long game of ' prison bars ' — it may 
 be doubted whether the publicity is not rather a 
 familiarizer and diminisher than otherwise of the 
 terrors of imprisonment. To the convict anyhow the 
 weariness of confinement is lessened, and his lot can 
 certainly not appear a very hard one when he is 
 visibly idle and not the poorer, made a public show 
 and yet not disgraced. The feeling of the outer 
 world is with him rather than not. With them he is 
 not for very long the rascal who robbed their orchard 
 or their hen-roost, or the villain who murdered their 
 grandmother, but the simpleton who was guileless 
 enough to get caught. Coitadinho ! a poor devil ! 
 who will come out of the gates a sadder and a wiser 
 man, and be in future a more cautious criminal. 
 
 In consequence of all this, the criminal is not so 
 much held aloof from by the virtuous members of 
 society as the keen moralist might desire, of which a 
 striking proof came under my own observation ; for 
 happening once to find myself in the chief square of 
 a remote country town in company with a Portuguese 
 
o8U . PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 acquaintance of some social standing, we passed by 
 the gaol, at one of the ground-floor windows of which 
 was visible one particularly villaneous countenance. 
 
 My companion advanced smilingly to the window, 
 gave a small coin to the owner of the scowling face, 
 inquired kindly after his health and that of his family, 
 and after a few more friendly and genial common- 
 places, shook hands with the convict and rejoined 
 me. 
 
 4 Pray, who is your friend ? ' I asked, as we walked 
 on, not without a certain amount of irony, provoked 
 by some lingering British prejudice in favour of a 
 sterner prison discipline. 
 
 4 Oh ! poor fellow,' said my acquaintance, 4 he is a 
 man well known in these parts — a popular character ; 
 has a good deal of influence.' 
 
 ' Wrongly imprisoned, no doubt,' I suggested ; 
 4 or perhaps debt or some such trifle ? ' 
 
 4 Well, no — in fact, he shot a man ; some dispute 
 about land — a sudden thing — a quarrel — strong 
 words and hot blood : it was either his uncle or his 
 brother. ) 
 
 4 And is this all he gets for murdering his blood 
 relation ? ' 
 
 4 Not at all — the murder was never quite brought 
 home to him. He is not here for that, but for steal- 
 ing ducks — a cat — a sheep ; I really don't remember 
 what. Perhaps he is innocent of any of these 
 animals — one can never tell ; but, knowing what one 
 does about the man, one really can't altogether pity 
 him.' 
 
CUSTOMS OF THE PORTUGUESE PEOPLE. 381 
 
 4 One certainly cannot,' I answered. 
 
 If I recollect rightly, my friend was at about this 
 time intending to do the Portuguese equivalent of 
 ' standing for the county,' and some experiences of my 
 own as to the condescension of English candidates to- 
 wards English ruffians quite as great as this beetle- 
 browed and hot-blooded person did something to 
 assuage my insular prejudices. 
 
 If it was not for the fresh air they get, and the 
 unceasing charity of the outer world, the lot of the 
 inmates of Portuguese gaols would be exceedingly 
 disagreeable, for the management is thrifty in the 
 extreme as regards bed and board, and fire and 
 lighting. So that British sailors of the occasionally 
 disorderly and criminal class coining to Portuguese 
 ports with their pleasant memories of the comforts 
 and luxury, and even dignity, of prison life in England, 
 who have incautiously found their way into Portu- 
 guese gaols, have been really quite glad to get out 
 again. 
 
382 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 It is beginning to weigh a little on my conscience 
 that I may have caused some offence to the excellent 
 people who are the subject of the foregoing chapters. 
 Once before, I made free in print with what seemed 
 to me to be certain shortcomings in the Portuguese, 
 and I was taken to task pretty severely for doing 
 so. I had said that modern Portuguese poetry was, 
 in comparison with the nation's own great achieve- 
 ments in that line of past days, a dead thing. I might 
 have said as much of certain national literatures 
 nearer home, with as much truth and far less danger. 
 
 When my observations came under the Portu- 
 guese reviewer's lash, he was scornfully indignant : — 
 ; What ! ' was the tenor of his remark, ' is this malig- 
 nant foreigner not aware that the great poet Costa, 
 the immortal Silva, Pinto, — that ornament of his 
 country ' — (here followed a list of some score more of 
 contemporary immortals), 'still draw the breath 'of 
 life in Portugal ? ' 
 
 We English have ourselves so outgrown this sort 
 of sensitiveness, and mind so little what foreigners 
 say of us, that this bitterness and indignation came to 
 
CONCLUSION. 383 
 
 me with a certain freshness in it. A Portuguese 
 writer who had stated his opinion that Milton and 
 Shakespeare had no living representatives in modern 
 England might perhaps feel as I did if an English 
 weekly review answered his imputation by giving a 
 list of the minor poets whom it massacres weekly, 
 and a catalogue raisonne of the immortal Smiths, 
 Browns and Jenkinsons of modern English song. 
 
 People who are thin-skinned about censure are 
 not, unfortunately, correspondingly mollified by ap- 
 probation, and hear the hint of a fault with an indig- 
 nation that is none the less strong that such a hint 
 is accompanied by a hundred compliments. Else I 
 should be at my ease. If I have blamed, I have 
 praised much oftener ; but there is no pleading a set 
 off in this kind of suit. It arrests all flow of soul in a 
 writer to have to think of these things while he is 
 writing, and, for my part, I do habitually not think of 
 them. It never struck me till just now what a scrape 
 I had probably got into ; and now it is too late and 
 no use to do anything but try and get out of it with 
 the best grace possible. 
 
 If I have offended my Portuguese friends by 
 plain speaking, I must make my justification for it 
 in certain heterodox and unscientific opinions which I 
 hold upon the races of mankind — a confession of which 
 opinions nothing but the present emergency should 
 draw from me. The reader shall perceive at once how 
 it is my ethnology that shall excuse my plain speaking. 
 
 There are a certain number of plain men, of 
 whom I am one, who refuse to entangle our under- 
 

 384 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 standings with prevailing dogmas on ethnology, and 
 are so little in the fashion that we commit ourselves 
 thoroughly to none of the many conflicting theories 
 on this subject to which the last twenty years have 
 given birth. I know enough of such theories to 
 know that not two of them fit into each other, and 
 that the advocates of" each theory wrangle more and 
 more as they get further back into antiquity. Scep- 
 ticism which would come very badly from an 
 ethnologist of any of the advanced schools is no 
 offence at all from me, who am an ethnologist (if I 
 deserve so learned a name) of no school at all. 
 
 I have listened to a great deal of profound and 
 complicated talk of Aryans and Caucasians and 
 Indo-Europeans, and of course as an unprejudiced 
 person I see that ' there is a good deal in it ;' but to 
 be frank, an ethnology which teaches me that I am 
 first cousin to the ' mild Hindoo ' finds me but a cold 
 believer. Better at once embrace the whole human 
 race and be that impossible being — a citizen of the 
 world. For my own part I am altogether wanting in 
 the tolerance necessary for this breadth of view, and 
 my sympathies have not latitude enough to make me 
 feel quite like a man and a brother towards Negroes, 
 and shock-headed Papuans, and skew-eyed Chinamen, 
 It is very narrow and uncharitable, but I hereby dis- 
 own all my poor and distant relations, and I utterly 
 disbelieve in the title of many who claim my cousin- 
 ship. I am an anthropological nonconformist, and am 
 not going to pin my faith to any new-fangled genea- 
 logical tree found for me, as heralds find coats of 
 
CONCLUSION. 385 
 
 arms for parvenus, by the last- fashionable number of 
 a learned Society. 
 
 Until things are made a good deal clearer to me, I 
 refuse to trace my lineage direct to the Caucasus or 
 the Himalayas. All that I can be quite sure of at 
 present is, that I am a European : that is the world of 
 which I constitute myself a citizen, and Europe is 
 bounded for me by the nearest frontiers of Eussia and 
 of Turkey, for I will admit neither Turks nor Eussians 
 into my family party. 
 
 With these limitations, I find a sufficient family 
 likeness to myself wherever I go in Europe, and 
 Greeks and Italians, Dutchmen, Germans and French- 
 men, Spaniards and Portuguese, are all my friends 
 and my kinsmen. Their ideas are my ideas, their 
 logic is mine, I sympathize with their weaknesses, for I 
 share them, and as often as not I agree in their pre- 
 judices. In what family do the members hesitate to 
 point out a relation's foibles ? Why should I then be 
 shy of telling home truths to the Portuguese ? I am 
 of the family party myself, and have a family right 
 to speak out my mind. If we were perfectly wise at 
 home, it might be a point of generosity to hold one's 
 tongue, but I know of no such cause for silence. I 
 confess that I like the Portuguese all the better every 
 time I discover the reflection among them of some 
 fine old British prejudice, and my heart warms to 
 them when I find that there are, — numbers for 
 numbers, — almost as many fools in Portugal as in 
 Great Britain. Every discovery like this is a new 
 evidence of consanguinity. 
 
 c c 
 
386 PORTUGAL : OLD AND NEW. 
 
 Here then is my apology and sufficient excuse. 
 Of course there is another side of the question for 
 those who hold these old-fashioned views of the 
 families of nations, and so far as Portugal is concerned 
 it is, to speak quite seriously, a very pleasant side, 
 and no Englishman can observe without a strong 
 sympathy many qualities and aspirations in the 
 Portuguese akin to his own ; their loyalty to 
 their king and their ancient liberties ; the constant 
 ardour of independence that has marked every page 
 of their history ; and their faith in good hard blpws 
 for the maintenance of their national existence against 
 all comers. These things are recognized as desirable 
 even if they are not always attained, wherever men of 
 true European blood reside ; and for my part, I 
 am proud of, and claim kinship with, the nation where 
 I find them : — 
 
 TavTt)Q tol yfveijg re teal a'i/xaroc sv^ojjlul elvai. 
 
 THE EJS T D. 
 
 LONDON : riUNTED BY 
 
 SPOTTIS'.VOODH AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE 
 
 AND PARLIAMENT STREET 
 
• . .'^^^^mmmmtmrnm^mm 
 
386 PORTUGAL: OLD AND NEW. 
 
 Here then is my apology and sufficient excuse. 
 Of course there is another side of the question for 
 those who hold these old-fashioned views of the 
 families of nations, and so far as Portugal is concerned 
 it is, to speak quite seriously, a very pleasant side, 
 and no Englishman can observe without a strong 
 sympathy many qualities and aspirations in the 
 Portuguese akin to his own ; their loyalty to 
 their king and their ancient liberties ; the constant 
 ardour of independence that has marked every page 
 of their history ; and their faith in good hard blpws 
 for the maintenance of their national existence against 
 all comers. These things are recognized as desirable 
 even if they are not always attained, wherever men of 
 true European blood reside ; and for my part, I 
 am proud of, and claim kinship with, the nation where 
 I find them : — 
 
 TavrrjQ toi yf.veijg re. teal cdfiaroQ ev\Ofxai eivai. . 
 
 THE END, 
 
 LONDON : ntlNTED BY 
 
 BFOTTIS'.VOODB AND CO., NKW-8TREKT HyUABE 
 
 AND PARLIAMENT STREET 
 

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