Chapter VII: Part 7

The collection of church property contained in the small museum attached to the Jesuit church of São Roque is circumscribed in period to the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries; but as the whole collection is derived from the possessions of a single chapel—that of St. John—in the adjoining church, a vivid idea is gained of the lavishness with which the church in Portugal was endowed in the days of the national prosperity.

The church and district of São Roque have always possessed special interest for me. The monastery, standing upon a bluff overlooking the valley, was the point of attack when the English under Norris and the Earl of Essex tried to capture Lisbon for the Pretender, Dom Antonio, in 1589;[6] and, though the monks were in favour of the English _protégé_, the Spanish musketeers filled the long line of windows commanding the approach from the English camp, on the opposite hill outside the gate of São Antão, and frustrated all attempts to force the position.

Inside the great square church there is an object of interest that first attracted my attention many years ago, and always demands from me a pilgrimage to São Roque, up the hill of the Carmo, as soon as I arrive in Lisbon. Sir Francis Tregian was one of those stout Cornish Catholic recusant gentlemen whose career in the days of Elizabeth I had had occasion to follow in detail; and his persecution and escape were familiar to me, as they are to many students of the religious troubles of the last years of the Tudor queen; but I had never known where he had found a last resting-place. Here in São Roque a large upright slab stands beneath the pulpit on the north side of the church which quaintly tells the story: “_Aqui esta, em pé, o corpo de Dom Francisco Tregian, fidalgo inglés mui illustre, o qual depois de confiscados os seus estados, e grandes trabalhos padecidos em 28 annos de prisam, polla defensa da fe catholica em Inglaterra, na persecuçam da Rainha Isabel, no anno 1608 ao 25 Dezembro morreó nesta cidade de Lisboa, com fama de santidade. Avendo 17 annos que estava sepultado nesta igrega de S. Roque da Companhia de Jesus, no anno de 1625 ao 25 Abril, se achouo seu corpo inteiro e incorrupto, e foe collocado neste lugar pelos ingleses catholicos residentes en esta cidade, ao 25 Abril 1626._” “Here upright stands the body of Sir Francis Tregian, a very illustrious English gentleman, who, after his estates were confiscated and he had suffered great tribulation during twenty-eight years of imprisonment for the defence of the Catholic faith in England, in the persecution of Queen Elizabeth, died on the 25th December 1608 in this city of Lisbon, famed for his saintliness. After he had been entombed for seventeen years in this church of São Roque of the Company of Jesus, in the year 1625, on the 25th April, his body was found intact and uncorrupted, and was placed in this position by the English Catholics resident in this city on the 25th April 1626.”

The chapel on the north side of São Roque nearest the altar is the beautifully decorated chapel of St. John. It had been for centuries the poorest chapel in the sanctuary; but with the advent of King John V., at the dawn of the eighteenth century, the new monarch declared his intention of making the shrine of his patron saint the richest altar in Portugal. And he did so, with gifts both lavish and beautiful, an example naturally followed by his courtiers; so that when the Jesuits were expelled, the treasures of St. John, the property thenceforward of the State, formed a museum of their own. The objects exhibited, monstrances, reliquaries, crosses, altar furniture, banners, frontals, and vestments, are of surpassing magnificence; although they often attract more by their intrinsic worth than by the purity of their taste, as, for instance, the silver-gilt altar candlesticks ten feet high, and the great silver _repousé_ altar front: but as specimens of the decorative art—Italian, French, and Portuguese—of their period, they are well worth study.

Lower down the hill stands the beautiful ruined Gothic-Manueline church of the Carmo, now an archæological museum, filled with many fragments of the older buildings of Lisbon saved from the ruin of the earthquake that wrecked the Carmo itself.

Lisbon abounds in public gardens of almost tropical luxuriance. The fine plantations before the big classical church of the Estrella, the park of the Necessidades palace, the square of the Principe Real, the Avenida itself, and the pretty garden of the Gloria already referred to, might for the vegetation in them almost be in the West Indies; whilst the Botanic Gardens, especially, can show palm groves to be matched nowhere in Europe, except at Elche in the east of Spain. And not palms alone grow here in a way wonderful in the midst of a populous city, but cacti, aloes, daturas, and magnolias bloom with great luxuriance, and huge tropical forest trees from South America thrive in the open as if on their native soil.

The climate of Lisbon, indeed, is extraordinarily soft and mild relatively to its latitude, owing to its sheltered position and to the prevalence of westerly sea breezes. As a winter resort it has unaccountably fallen somewhat out of fashion of late years in favour of the Mediterranean Riviera, where the climate is much less equable and more trying to those in delicate health. The latitude of Lisbon is about the same as that of Palermo, three hundred miles south of that of the Mediterranean Riviera, and the mean winter temperature (December, January, and February) in Lisbon is 10.63° Centigrade (51° Fahrenheit), against 7.79° at Biarritz, and 7.91° at Nice. Not only is Lisbon thus much warmer on an average than the winter resorts now most affected by English visitors, but the climate is more uniform, the diurnal fluctuation in winter being considerably less at Lisbon than at Biarritz, Nice, or even at Palermo in the same latitude. The winter atmospheric humidity of Lisbon slightly exceeds that of Biarritz and Nice, though in summer Lisbon is atmospherically much drier than either: but in the matter of the entire winter rainfall the average of Lisbon is considerably higher, and this it is that to some extent has set English physicians against the place as a winter health resort, although the average rainfall for the whole year is much less at Lisbon[7] than either at Biarritz or Nice. The rains in Lisbon, however, which fall heavily in the months of November, December, and January (a mean of 277 milimetres, as against 254 milimetres at Biarritz and 167 milimetres at Nice), are usually rapid and torrential, and pass away at once.

Snow is practically unknown at Lisbon, and frost is extremely rare. But, withal, equable and mild as the average hibernal climate of Lisbon is, I do not personally recommend it as a residence for those who are forced in the winter to seek a warm, dry, and bracing atmosphere. The smoke of the numerous factories, and the mist that clings about the river and in the narrow gullies that contain much of the town, make the place somewhat depressing. But within fifteen miles of the city, and free from the objections natural to the valley of the Tagus, there are two resorts which are, in my opinion, and I speak from experience of both of them, ideal places in which the unpleasantness and danger of winter in a northern climate may be escaped. It is, indeed, difficult to overrate the attractions in this respect of Cascaes and Mont’ Estoril, especially the latter. Cascaes stands in a lovely bay surrounded by bold, rocky scenery, and backed by hills which protect it from the north. A fine sheltered promenade facing the sea possesses a grove of palms more luxuriant than any that Nice or Cannes can show, and the walks along the coast are beautiful. Mont’ Estoril, which is within a mile or so of Cascaes, on the point of the Bay, is of more modern reputation, but is in some respects to be preferred to Cascaes as a winter resort. The train from Lisbon, running along the coast for fourteen miles, lands the visitor to Mont’ Estoril in the midst of a beautifully picturesque village of hotels and villas, grouped upon the slope of a hill descending in a semicircle to the sea, with pines and eucalyptus woods above, and palms everywhere below. The high range of Cintra, and the lower hills on the north and east, completely protect the place from inclement winds, whilst the open sea-front on west and south prevents the sweltering stuffiness and relaxing effect of so many shut-in places. There are several excellent hotels specially intended for winter visitors; and for any one to whom a three-days’ voyage at sea in a commodious, well-found steamer has no terrors, this Portuguese Riviera just outside the Tagus forms a winter refuge which it will be difficult to beat in Europe. The climate of Mont’ Estoril is noticeably warmer than Lisbon in the winter, and the diurnal variations of temperature are smaller; whilst the humidity and rainfall, which in Lisbon during the three winter months form its only natural drawback, are very much smaller at Mont’ Estoril. It is, indeed, very rare that mist is seen at the latter place, even when the Tagus valley is full of haze. From personal knowledge of both places I should say that the mean winter rainfall of Mont’ Estoril is much less than that of Biarritz, whilst certainly its temperature is higher and its uniformity greater.

I have dwelt only upon the winter climatic conditions, because it is in this respect that misapprehension usually exists. The spring and autumn climate generally is simply perfect, and from the middle of March onward fine warm weather, with only an occasional heavy shower in April, May, and October, may be counted upon almost with certainty. During the particular tour of which this book is a record, I passed thirty days in Portugal in the month of October. Out of this period I saw rain on four days only—namely, three hours of deluge at Oporto, a portion of the day at Bussaco, and two days at Lisbon; whilst in previous journeys in Portugal I have on more than one occasion seen an even smaller quantity of rain in October, April, and May. November is usually wet, though not so wet as at Biarritz or Nice for the same month (Lisbon, 106 milimetres; Biarritz, 122 milimetres; Nice, 114 milimetres), whilst in December and January Lisbon and Biarritz have about an equal rainfall, Nice being in those months drier than either. From March onward Lisbon has a decided advantage over both places.

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Footnote 5:

Byron, who, much as he loved Cintra, hated Lisbon and the Portuguese
generally, which perhaps is not very surprising when it is considered
that he visited it in 1809, after the first French invasion and before
the Peninsular War, thus wrote of Lisbon:—

“What beauties does Lisboa first unfold;
Her image floating on that noble tide,
Which poets vainly pave with sands of gold,
And now whereon a thousand keels do ride.

But whoso entereth within this town,
That sheening far celestial seems to be,
Disconsolate will wander up and down,
Mid many things unsightly to strange ee.”

Footnote 6:

The story of the expedition is told in full in “The Year after the
Armada,” by the present writer.

Footnote 7:

Lisbon, 738 milimetres; Biarritz, 1067 milimetres; Nice, 766
milimetres.

IX
SETUBAL, TROYA, AND EVORA

Tyneside itself cannot be more disagreeable than Lisbon on the rare occasions when really bad weather comes up the Tagus from the west. Smoke of unusual blackness and abundance is poured without let or hindrance from innumerable industrial chimneys by the water-side, and the heavy sea-mist, clinging and wet, holds the carbon in its embrace until the atmosphere would hardly disgrace a London particular at Blackwall. I had stood it for a day, but as I knew I could get away from it by a short railway journey out of the valley of the Tagus I determined to endure it no longer, but to fly to the other side of the hills. The weather was as bad as ever when I started the next morning by the ferry-boat to cross the four miles or so of river to Barreiro, which is the terminus of the southern system of railways for Lisbon. Through an arid-looking country of vines producing the famous Lavradio wine, but ugly and poor, on the slopes of the Tagus watershed, we gradually rose to the region of pines and eucalyptus. Leaving all the mist and rain behind us we topped the sandy hills and descended towards the south in an atmosphere brilliantly clear and as exhilarating as nitrous oxide gas.

Portuguese railways are slow, and it took an hour and a half to cover the eighteen miles between Barreiro and Setubal—the Saint Ubes of the English geographies. A clean spacious little town, beautifully situated, is this metropolis of sardines and salt. The days of its saline preeminence, it is true, have passed away—the times of humming prosperity at the salt-pans, when the harbours was wont to be crowded by ships loading salt for England and elsewhere; but still the local trade is considerable, and the great extension of the tinned sardine trade in Portugal has made up for everything, there being as many as thirty-four sardine-packing factories at present in full work at Setubal. Five minutes after we had got clear out of the Tagus valley and over the last ridge, the aspect of the land had changed as if by magic. Oranges, lemons, and almond-trees stretch in groves and orchards on all sides; broad tracts of cereal land and dark olive plantations mix with the vineyards, telling of a country of overflowing fertility; whilst long lines of tall eucalyptus trees, with hanging strips of bark, add a strange and exotic note to the scene. This fertile plain descending to the sea on the south is enclosed by high mountain ranges, especially towards the west, upon an outlying spur of which, a great isolated hill, stands aloft Palmella, another of those stupendous fortresses for which Portugal bears the palm. At the foot of the plain, on the edge of the sea, sits the sparkling little town of Setubal, with Palmella, six miles away, looming behind it, but in the marvellous clear air looking as if within reach of one’s hand.

Before the town of Setubal, and three miles away across the estuary, there extends a long sandy spit or island completely enclosing the harbour and river mouth on the south, the only entrance being from the west where a rocky point, an extreme spur of the great Arrabida range, runs out into the Atlantic facing the sandy point. This land-locked haven of clear blue water is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen, especially when entering it from the sea. The climate of Setubal is perhaps the warmest of any in Portugal, and the fertility of the country at the back is remarkable, the hills behind it completely shutting off the winds from the north.

And yet the people in this part of the country present an undefinable trace of poverty and hardship, such as is never seen in North Portugal. They are hard-working and frugal, but they are somehow less upstanding and independent in their bearing, and their conditions of life are evidently inferior. The difference is no doubt to some extent racial; for here the sturdy Teutonic and Celtic stocks left fewer traces than in the north: but the land in the south is mostly owned in large estates, and not by the small cultivators themselves, as it is in North Portugal, and this has probably more to do with it. A population of wage-earners is never so well conditioned as one of independent workers, and in some such direction as this, surely, must be sought the explanation for the marked difference between the people of the north and south of a country so small and so homogeneous as Portugal.

The long sandy island across the bay was my objective, and I lost no time in bargaining with the owner of a sardine-boat to carry me across. The boat was a heavy, clumsy craft, as it needs to be for the sardine fisheries, the shape of a crescent-moon with pointed prow and stern, a high-peaked lateen sail of red canvas stretched on canes, and long sweeps which worked over a pin in the thwarts, fitting into a hole in a mighty block of wood in the centre of the oars instead of between rollocks. If the craft was picturesque the crew was still more so: the owner, a sturdy old seaman, and his son, a bright lad of twenty, wore the universal bag-cap, when they wore any head-covering at all, which was seldom. The old man had boots as well, evidently more for appearance than use, for he took them off for good as soon as the bargain with me was concluded. A flannel shirt and trousers tucked up to the knees, and girded at the waist by a red sash, completed the costume. The other member of the crew, presumably a hired hand, was a striking Levantine or Greek-looking fellow of about seven-and-twenty, far more intelligent than the _patrão_ or his son, brimming over with eager interest in the expedition, an incessant talker, with all sorts of queer lore and information about the strange place we were going to see. He, for all his intelligence and readiness, had but two ragged and scanty cotton garments to cover him, and made no pretence of head or foot covering.

Whilst the boat was being brought round to the stair, I explored the town and found a fine old Manueline door in the church São Julião at the corner of the spacious praça called after the eighteenth-century poet Bocage, who having been born at Setubal is the principal literary glory of the town.

Not a breath of wind was stirring, and the lumbering sardine-boat, with its big sweeps weighing nearly half a hundredweight each, was a heavy pull for two men. But the _patrão_ and his son put their backs into the work cheerfully and with good will, the vivacious, black-eyed tatterdemalion of a crew chattering incessantly whilst he held the tiller; his being by far the easiest job, apparently as a concession to the superiority of mind over matter. No ripple stirred the blue, clear water as we slowly pushed out into the bay and got clear of the town. The air was of exquisite clarity and fineness, with some sort of subtle pungency in it that seemed to blend the freshness of the salt sea with the languor of the lotus land; and as we receded from the shore there gradually opened out behind us, in clear, sharp outline sparkling with colour and brilliancy, one of the most striking coast panoramas I have ever beheld. The bay was almost land-locked, and at the brink of the blue water shone the town as white as snow in the sunlight. Behind, in a great amphitheatre, rose the hills from the deep green masses of the orange groves upon the broad plain at their feet. Bright red earth glowed in big gashes upon the slopes, amidst the varying verdure of olives, cork, and pines; and then above the trees and hills towards the west soared the peaks and crags of the great Arrabida range, tinted in this golden morning from orange to ochre and from ochre to violet, with shadows here and there of deepest indigo. Right behind the town the great stronghold of Palmella, upon its sudden hill six miles away, seemed to stand sentinel over the verdant plain and white houses: and there, in the near distance, on the west, upon a promontory of rock forming the point of the inner bay, was another ancient fortress, that of St. Philip, looking sheer down into the sea. Beyond that as we advanced we saw still another castle on a point; and, farther off, the end of the Arrabida range, whose towering peaks dwarfed all the lower hills, pushes far into the sea its precipitous bluff, bounding the landscape on that side.

An hour’s hard pull brought us close to the long island. A wild, uninhabited place it looked as we approached it, all blown sand in dunes and hillocks overgrown with coarse rank tussock and esparto. Even before we reached the sandy shore, fragments of walls and broken tiles in abundance could be seen through the pellucid water, half-buried in the soft, sandy bottom; and when I landed upon the beach of pure sand some twenty feet or more wide, a glance sufficed to show that this was the site of a place where many people had dwelt in the long ago. A long sand dune, some fifteen feet high, runs parallel with the sea, and in the face of this dune strong walls, doorways, and ruins of all sorts are embedded. The sand in many places has been removed sufficiently to uncover entire rooms and passages, and the whole beach below is literally covered with broken tiles, apparently Roman, which presumably formed the roofs of the ruined dwellings. The walls are usually formed of undressed stones, with some rubble cement almost as hard, the courses, and sometimes corners, being composed of coarse red bricks or tiles eighteen inches long by twelve broad and two thick.

Mounting the top of the dune I saw beneath me the houses that at various times had been excavated, and partially cleared of sand by the successive adventurers, who, for the sake of profit or curiosity, have undertaken the work. It has been done unsystematically and unscientifically; but in the three-quarters of a century or so that have elapsed since renewed interest has been displayed in the place, an immense number of Roman coins, some of the latest period of the domination, have been found; and numerous relics of Roman, and, as I believe, of a much earlier civilisation have also been discovered, many of the objects being now in the Belem museum. Mr. Oswald Crawford wrote an amusing account of a visit he paid to the place about thirty years ago, and advanced some attractive theories with regard to it; but apparently the excavations that have taken place since his time must have been considerable, as some of the most significant features noticed by me were presumably not uncovered when he was there, as he does not mention them.

The place has been called Troia by the Portuguese from time immemorial; but it agrees in position with, and probably is, the important Roman town of Cetobriga. The name of Cetobriga can hardly be of pure Latin origin, nor is the situation of the place, at the end of a barren, low-lying sandbank, such as Romans usually chose for a settlement. It is known, however, that a people called Bastuli, some of whom Strabo says lived upon a narrow strip of land by the sea in this part of Portugal were of Phœnician origin, and inhabited this coast[8]; and this at once provides a clue to the original founders of the city. The Phœnicians and their successors in the Peninsula, the Carthaginians, were a Semitic people whose trading depôts were carried to the extreme of the then known world. At first, and for many centuries, purely traders and men of peace, they made no attempt to dominate, but established their factories, with defensive stockades and walls around them in places, which, though unadapted for aggression, were capable of easy defence. It is difficult to imagine an easily accessible place, well situated for maritime traffic, better calculated than Troia upon its sandy island opposite a fertile plain for the purposes of such a people as this; and the opinion of antiquarians since the re-discovery of Troia has been in favour of its Phœnician origin.

The later Roman period, it is true, has provided most of the remains unearthed. I saw and measured myself, amongst many other houses, two of undoubted Roman construction, one apparently a temple, to judge by the now empty niches which are constructed round three sides of the inner wall, and the doorway of well-dressed stone in the fourth side. Another house near it, of which the chief apartment was twenty-two feet in diameter, possessed a dressed stone piscina or font in the wall, and what appeared to be a bath of five feet in diameter and nearly six feet deep of rubble and tiles. These houses and practically all the others stood some fifteen feet below the present top of the dune, but in no case has the excavation been completed, sand silting up almost to the door lintels in most cases. On the beach itself near the point, I noticed what appeared to be the base of a hollow tower ten feet in diameter, which may well have been a pharos; and in many places not much above sea-level are square cemented tanks, which some authorities assert were used for fish salting, although its suggestion is not a very convincing one considering the position of the tanks.

The largest house that has been excavated is of undressed rubble for the walls, the angles and doors and window frames being squared with tiles, and the principal doorway topped by a flat arch of brick, the pitch of the roof being evidently angular. On the other side of a sandy peninsula facing the south, and farthest from Setubal, a very large villa has been partially uncovered, presenting the same construction as the rest, but with the base of a round tower at one corner; whilst on the point of the beach there is a house containing four uncovered very large square concreted tanks, sunk in the ground some twenty-five feet deep, apparently reservoirs—perhaps vivaria for edible fish. There is no indication—at least to a layman in the matter like myself—that these buildings are earlier than the Roman occupation, though, of course, some of them may have been, whilst a large building standing high at the very end of the point, which the energetic boatman who constituted himself my companion insisted was “the chapel,” is evidently much later than Roman times, and may probably have been a Christian church.

Mr. Crawford advances a theory to account for the foundation of a populous settlement upon a mere sandbank. He is of opinion that when the town was originated the sand did not exist there, but has been blown or cast up since. Although the dune facing the beach has doubtless accumulated greatly since the city was finally abandoned, I cannot believe, after looking well at the buildings, that the level has changed more than perhaps a dozen or fifteen feet since the town was inhabited; and there must, I think, have been hills of sand here from Roman times at least. Still it is possible that a thorough excavation would establish that the remains of the Phœnician town on solid earth underlie the Roman buildings now existing amidst the sand. The most interesting object that I saw at Troia is not mentioned by Mr. Crawford, though as it stands at the highest point of the sand dune (though perhaps with a base of solid earth beneath the sand) it is curious if it was not uncovered when he visited the place. In any case, there it is now, the most convincing proof possible that the city was Phœnician, notwithstanding the extensive Roman remains of a later time. Upon a square base or plinth there rises a smooth conical column, some ten feet high, four feet in diameter at base and tapering conically to a diameter of less than two at its apex. There is no mistaking the shape of this column or its significance by any one who has studied the beliefs of the ancient peoples and the symbols of their worship. The column is apparently composed of red tiles smoothly covered with fine white cement; and standing, as it does, in the most conspicuous position over the settlement, it seems to prove that the Nature-worshippers, Phœnicians, Carthaginians, or those who inherited their traditions, must have been the constructors of this column supporting nothing. It may be advanced that this sign of ancient paganism would not have been allowed to remain by the Romans for four hundred years after the Christian era; but it is possible that even then the ritual symbolism of the column had been lost sight of or forgotten, and that it remained as a landmark.

I was glad to embark in my sardine boat again, for the glare and heat of the sun beating down upon the shadeless sand was almost intolerable, and the treacherous black sandflies, so harmless looking and so venomous, in the three hours I had been at Troia had rendered my face unrecognisable by my nearest friends, and turned my hands to agonised dumplings. So, with a slight puff of breeze now and again to help us, we slowly crossed the blue bay to Setubal where much needed refreshment awaited me.

I was bound for the ancient city of Evora, and I could have gone by train to Pinhal Novo junction, where the train to the south was to receive me. But the plain over which Palmella lords it had captivated me, and I decided to traverse by road the ten miles to the junction. As I drove out of Setubal, with its clean white houses, and gaily decked women in a long kneeling row washing their linen in the river, the glamour of the south was over all. Cactus hedges lined the way, the glistening green of the orange trees with the abundant fruit already showing, the bronzed vines and the grey olive orchards chequered the light red earth; the rolling slopes were thickly wooded to the summits, and nestling amidst the verdure on many hill-tops were glistening white houses, abandoned cloisters, or shrines of pilgrimage. The aspect was Andalusian, as were the traits of the people, and North Portugal seemed very far away. Before us always towered the huge castle of Palmella, with its tremendous stretches of battlements and square towers, seen first from one side and then from another, as we gradually wound round and round the base of the eminence upon which it stands. The way is always upward, and on all sides spread below us, growing more extensive as we round each successive rising turn of the hill, is the fertile plain and the sea beyond. Wheat, maize, olives, and oranges grow here luxuriantly, the lower folds of the sandy hillsides are covered with vines, and the rich brown velvet trunks of the stripped cork-trees are all along the way.

My coachman is one of the talkative type of south Portuguese, almost oriental in the voluble vehemence of his manner, and his eagerness to impart information. Ah! yes Troia, Setubal, and Palmella were all very well in their way: but Evora! That indeed is a place. What a pity his Excellency was not going to see Evora. His Excellency replied that Evora was his present destination, and the patriotic Eborense, for, of course, the voluble coachman came from Evora, broke out into unrestrained panegyric of his native city. Lisbon was nothing, Oporto was nothing, to Evora; why, Evora was a great city and a capital when they were villages: Evora made Portugal what it is—and much more to the same effect the wild-eyed coachman rattled off with much gesticulation, whilst the patient horses, left to themselves, slowly toiled up the winding road to the town of Palmella, now to the right now to the left, and anon straight overhead, apparently inaccessible.

At length we entered the town, a poor squalid looking place upon the steep slope; and whilst the tired horses rested I climbed the top of the hill to the castle. The tremendous outer defences covered with yellow lichen, and the round bastions of the inner circumvallation, are evidently of Moorish origin, whilst the great square battlemented towers inside appear to be mediæval. The whole of the top of the hill is occupied by the fortress; the outer walls following the contour, with corner bastions on the spurs of the summit. The views obtained from the battlements of the salient bastions are tremendous. The central keep, standing high above the rest, is veiled with mist, though where I stand upon the battlements is clear and bright. Over the vast plain spread below me bathed in sunlight dark patches of cloud wander, and, on the south side beyond it, is Setubal and the sea; whilst on the other, towards the north, far away stretches the broad estuary of the Tagus, and the distant mountains loom upon the west. Ancient as the castle is, it shows signs of more recent habitation than is usual, indeed a row of humble dependencies within the walls are still occupied by poor people. The roofs of the principal buildings are everywhere destroyed; and upon the very ancient walls of one portion there rises the ruin of a sixteenth-century palace; whilst by the side of the great mediæval keep is the shell of a beautiful chapel of Romanesque Gothic. The inner gateway of the fortress bears upon it a tablet with the arms of Portugal and the date of 1689; and I was informed by one of the residents in the row of dwellings that the place had only been entirely dismantled in living memory. All is silent and abandoned now; and the great Moorish stronghold which Affonso Henriques captured from the Moors in 1147, the royal fortress of the Commandery of the Order of Santiago, and the seat of the powerful Dukes of Palmella, as the place successively has been, has now become what for all future time it will remain, a worthy compeer with the rest of the proud old Portuguese hill-top fortresses, whose sturdy walls dismantled though they be, refuse to crumble into dust. Long may they rear their noble towers intact from man’s destroying hand, and tell their silent lesson of heroic times to a generation that sorely needs it.

As we wind down the hill again from the poverty-stricken town beneath the castle walls, carts of little black grapes meet us winding up the hill for the belated vintage, and through the open doors of granges we see the wide shallow tubs being filled with grapes trodden under the feet of swarthy lads. The air is soft and close as the sun sets red and orange behind the tree-clad hills, and I pass the hour waiting for the train at Pinhal Novo under a grove of lofty eucalyptus trees, whilst the shrill twittering of millions of cicadas, and the languorous perfume in the air tell me that I have left the strenuous land behind, and am in a clime where to strive is folly.

The next morning Evora revealed its quaint charms to me, for in the night when I arrived all seemed gloomy and threatening in its narrow tortuous ways. Under a glowing blue sky and the fierce sun the place was charming, and few cities in Portugal, if any, present so many attractions to the archæologist, the antiquarian, or the simple seeker after the picturesque. The long irregular space of the principal praça is lined by ancient arcades like the plazas in Spanish towns, and the people who flock hither and thither under the covered ways are purely Andalusian in appearance, the men wearing sheepskin _zamarras_ over gaudy waistcoats, and upon their heads wide-brimmed velvet _calañeses_ surmount bright-coloured kerchiefs. We have almost lost sight now of the ox as a draught animal, and big mules, drawing a somewhat light waggon, are universal.

At unexpected corners and unlikely angles relics of unfathomed antiquity meet you: a Roman tower built into a sixteenth-century wall, a Moorish arch, a low-browed doorway that may go back to the time of the Goths, though the house to which it gives entrance may be comparatively modern, fragments of palaces and beautiful bits of Manueline are everywhere. For this city of Evora is an epitome of the historical vicissitudes of Portugal, and under each successive régime has played a principal part. Ebora of the Phœnicians and Iberians, Liberalitas Julia of the Romans, seat of government of the patriot rebel Sertorius, who here defied the legions of the Cæsars (80 B.C.), Gothic capital of Lusitania, Yebora of the Moslems for four hundred years, and now chief city of Alemtejo and the south—the walls and towers of its Latin and Gothic masters are still clearly traceable, and the mediæval defences still surround the ancient city.

Its modern Portuguese history dates from its capture from the Moors in 1165 by the freebooter Gerald and his band of desperadoes, who surrendered the place to King Affonso Henriques in exchange for pardon and reward; and from that time its archbishops have vied with those of Braga in the north in wealth and dignity. Infantes of Portugal have often worn its mitre, and one of them, Cardinal Henry, the last of his race, became king. It is difficult to realise, looking at this crumbling old city of fifteen thousand inhabitants, the magnificence of which it was the scene in times when the population must have been much smaller than at present. I have before me as I write an account written at the time by an Italian ecclesiastic in the train of the papal Legate, who came to Portugal in 1571, of the reception of the embassy by the Archbishop of Evora (João de Mello), on which occasion lavishness seems to have outdone itself. The king’s lieutenant, with five hundred followers and ten thousand armed militia of the province, had met the Legate some miles outside the city, and at the gates the governor and magistracy awaited the visitors in full panoply, with several bands of trumpeters dressed in cloth of gold and scarlet caps, many companies of halberdiers smartly garbed in various uniforms, black drummers and cymbal players on velvet-draped mules, the mayor and aldermen and civic officers with their respective armed escorts, followed by—

“Ten boys dressed in green, dancing a Morris-dance to the sound of
tambourines, and then ten more dressed in yellow with fife and drum,
also dancing, each one carrying an arch which they intertwined and
disentangled with great rapidity and dexterity. Then came ten boys
dressed as pilgrims dancing round a drum, and singing the praises of
the Legate. Then came ten women gipsies dancing their usual dance to
the sound of the drum, and performing dexterous tricks with wands
and scarfs. Following them came ten gipsy men with a drum, and
placing themselves alternately with the women, they made a very
pretty chain. Finally at the gate of the city there were ten boys
dressed in white with branches in their hands, dancing round a
carrying chair of red velvet striped with gold, which was carried by
eight little boys with white kilts, and golden haloes round their
heads. They bowed low to the Legate as the rest did separately when
they danced their measure, and then all together, the dances
continuing all the while before the Legate. The archbishop of Evora
entertained the Legate and prelates sumptuously at his palace, and
the _fidalgos_ splendidly received the rest in their houses. The
apartments were lined with the finest Flanders hangings, and the
floors were covered with green sprigs and rushes, which is the
custom here at weddings and feasts. They usually remain at table two
or three hours. Each person has a separate cup, and when dinner is
half through the tablecloth is changed. The roast meats are placed
upon the table already cut up and covered, and they are wont to put
into these dishes and others, eggs, many spices, and sugar. The
viands are not sumptuous, but are abundant, and they say most of the
dishes are Moorish. They only serve one dish at a time, and this it
is that makes their dinners last so long, whilst they pass the time
chatting, drinking healths, and helping each other to what is
brought to table, they being very gay the while.”[9]

Of this splendour in the Evora of the past little is now apparent to the visitor, though the modern Barahona palace, of which, and its wealthy owner, the Eborenses seem very proud, could probably furnish forth a good twentieth-century equivalent for it; and behind the closed doors and frowning walls of many ancient noble palaces, now mostly in the hands of rich landowners and cultivators of the district, are doubtless luxurious interiors.

From the Hotel Eborense, with its sixteenth-century outside staircase and trellised balcony-landing, looking upon a quaint, tree-shaded, little praça, I descend through narrow streets, that remind me of Toledo—streets that for the most part still bear historic names, though of course the inevitable “Serpa Pinto” has modernised one of them. Peace and stillness reign over all, for the sun stings shrewdly; and those who are obliged to be out linger drowsily under white walls and the frequent shade of acacias, cork-trees, and vine-trellises. A ruined church and a vast monastery attached, and now used as a barrack, first attract my attention, for the edifice shows signs of past magnificence, and the white, roofless walls and façade against the indigo sky form a beautiful picture even in their decay. An Augustinian monastery-church, that of Our Lady of Grace, I am told it is; and over the broken portico I read that it was built “_sub imp. Divi Joannis III., Patris Patriæ._” This John III. was the son of the “Fortunate” Manuel, and was one of the principal builders of Belem; so that we are justified in expecting something good from him in architecture. The expectation is not disappointed, for the work is a gem in its uncommon way. It is, indeed, but little touched with the Manueline taste of the time it was built (1524); and has more affinity with the fine cloister of John III. at Thomar, built by the same monarch. It is, in fact, almost the only specimen I have seen in Portugal of the pure Italian Renaissance in the style of Michael Angelo. Columns, trophies, shields, and decorative statuary, all tell the same story of direct Florentine influence, as apart from the less virile Raphaelesque tendency of the French Renaissance, which is much more common in Portugal, and, indeed, elsewhere. Even in the later decorations of this very church of Graça the graved medallions, festoons, and delicate panel carving in low relief, show that, even a few years after the church was built, the French style was preferred.

It is but a step from the Graça to a splendid church which is deservedly one of the boasts of Evora, and, for skilful solidity of construction, one of the most extraordinary churches in Portugal, if not in Europe. Situated in a wide praça, and flanked on one side by shady groves of cork-trees, stands the great square church of S. Francisco, all that remains intact of an important Franciscan monastery of immense antiquity. Adjoining it, until recent times, stood a royal palace, of which this church and monastery were privileged to form a part; and the Franciscans of Evora were altogether very lordly monks indeed. Without a tower, as is usual with monastery churches, the big square building, with its rows of battlemented roof ridges, looks more like a fortress than a church; and from the peculiarity of its construction, it is safe to say that, unless the hand of man or some great natural convulsion destroys it, the next four centuries will have as little effect upon it as the last four have had since its construction at the end of the fifteenth century.

The great west porch extends the whole width of the building in fine Romanesque-Gothic. The arches of this porch are almost Moorish in form, with elaborated twisted-cord capitals; and the peculiar arrangement of supports noticed in the nave at Alcobaça is also seen here, where the great inner supports of the arches do not reach the ground, but start suddenly three-quarters up the pillar, producing the effect of the lower portion having been cut away. The double doorway itself is fine early Manueline marble, surmounted by the pelican and young, the device of John II., and the armillary sphere, which was that of his son, King Manuel the Fortunate. The inside of the church is very striking. The immense width of nave (42 feet) is unbroken by pillars or aisles, the side chapels being apparently embedded in the walls and separated from each other by fine pure Gothic pillars on the wall surface, each pillar being carried right up to the spring of the roof and its uninterrupted arch carried over to the corresponding pillar on the other side, the effect being one of great width and spaciousness, as the length of the nave to the chancel arch is no less than eighty-eight feet.

The chapels, some of which are very beautiful with carved figures of the good sixteenth and seventeenth century Spanish period, are separated from the nave by a handsome black and white marble balustrade of the same period. The transepts are exceptionally majestic, and, like the nave, of good unadorned Romanesque-Gothic, but the tiled walls and overloaded altars—the latter still greatly venerated by the faithful—sadly mar the simple grandeur of their main plan. The chancel is magnificent, with its elaborately bossed and groined roof, and fine carved choir-stalls, the work of the Fleming, Oliver of Ghent, who carved the now plundered stalls for the Templars’ church at Thomar; and over the noble chancel arch again the devices of John II. and Manuel, with the arms of Portugal, are carved.

In the chapels, and especially in one of the transepts, are some paintings of the highest interest; but the light is so bad that it is impossible to inspect them carefully. They can, however, be seen sufficiently well—notwithstanding their deplorable condition—to prove that some of the great mysterious Flemish-Portuguese masters of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries must have painted them. One representing St. Anthony preaching to the fishes is perfectly exquisite in its minute conscientiousness. I was informed that in the bishop’s palace twelve fine paintings of the same school, attributed to the brothers Van Eyck, are kept in similar semi-darkness and neglect; but these I could not see. It is a thousand pities that these art treasures and others of the same sort which I have mentioned,[10] should not be rescued and reverently kept.

A peculiarity of this church of St. Francisco, as of the cathedral of Evora, which I shall mention presently, is that the brown granite blocks of which it is constructed are clearly marked out with staring white divisions of cement, either real or simulated. The effect is one of very questionable taste, but the peculiarity is not a modern innovation, and the series of white transverse lines traced upon the brown background has some attraction from its very strangeness. The story goes that this monastery-church, founded originally in 1224, twice fell down, and when, after the second disaster late in the fifteenth century, the famous architect, Martin Lourenço, was commissioned to construct a new church, he swore that his building, at least, should never share the fate of its predecessors. Instead of a single main outer wall he built two on each side of the church, all of similar height, the space between the inner and outer walls being about five feet or less, and in the lower portion of this space the side chapels are accommodated. The two walls were tied together by transverse walls of similar strength and height between the chapels, and upon each of these transverse walls, which are carried over the roof to the opposite pair of walls, similarly constructed, the roof arches rest. The roof is, therefore, divided into six independent sections, each one supported by its own separate walls and arch. As if this were not enough, a similar arrangement was made below the ground, where corresponding sets of transverse walls were carried across to the other side, and thus the whole nave consisted of six complete and self-supporting bodies joined together. Even this did not satisfy Martin Lourenço. He built yet another wall longitudinally along the central ridge of the roof, and a similar one underground along the same axis binding together both above and below the transverse sections from end to end, and increasing the stability of the building by the added weight. All this it is, of course, impossible to see from the inside, but from the praça the top battlements of the four long lines of wall and the roof-ridge are discernible, and the skeleton of the church, so to speak, can be understood.

A door in the transept leads to an extraordinary chapel of considerable size (58 feet long by 34 broad), divided into a nave and two aisles, the whole of the walls, pillars, and ceiling of which are lined or constructed of skulls and other human bones, arranged in symmetrical patterns. The remains of many thousands of human beings are contained in this ghastly chamber, probably constructed by the monks in the seventeenth century from the contents of ancient crypts and charnel-houses. The specially venerated figure of our Lord, of which this was formerly the chapel, has now been transferred to an adjoining apartment better adapted for modern worship.

Evora stands upon a gentle eminence in the midst of a vast fertile plain, surrounded by distant mountains, and upon the very summit of the hill, hidden away between narrow, winding streets leading up from the main arcaded praça, stands the venerable Sé—the cathedral of the archbishopric. In a quiet little open space it rears its two solid, square, granite Romanesque towers of the twelfth century, flanked by the whitewashed, monastic-looking palace of the archbishop, the two towers being united by a pure Gothic doorway porch which fills the space between them. The inner doorway pillars are adorned by early Gothic statues of the disciples, all so direct and vivid as to put to shame the affected elaborations of a later time. Slabs in the porch over ancient sarcophagi in Gothic niches tell that all this has been restored in recent years; but it is easy to see that here, at least, the restorer has been reverent and has spoilt nothing.

Like most of the Portuguese cathedrals of the period the first effect produced by the interior is that of grave massiveness. The narrow nave and aisles separated by clustered Romanesque pillars, supporting early Gothic arches, very slightly pointed, and a graceful triforium, have all the beauty of serene severity.[11] Here again, the clustered pillars shoot sheer up to the spring of the roof, and carry an arch over to the other side, and the cimborio or lantern at the intersection of the transepts and the nave is especially striking. The pillars that support it on four sides, chancel, nave, and two transepts, are as bold and aspiring as those of Ely, and seem to cry out aloud in exalted triumphant devotion. To gaze up at this cimborio with its lovely groining and its graceful spandrils carried to a prodigious height at one sweep is a sensation worth coming from England to experience.

High up on the wall of the nave there is roughly sculptured the life-sized figure of a man, bearing upon his breast a cartouche with the Gothic letters C. C. E. cut upon it, representing, as local antiquarians insist, the figure of the twelfth-century architect of the building, Martin Dominguez, and the coats-of-arms and sepulchral figures in chapels and on walls are many. One florid Gothic sarcophagus in the south transept is that of André de Resende, a relative of Garcia de Resende, the earliest Portuguese historian, whose house, with its beautiful Manueline windows, still stands in Evora. The chapels on each side of the cathedral are much disfigured by tawdry decorations and curly gilt wood carvings, but several have finely painted altar-pieces, badly lit and uncared for; and one altar, Our Lady of the Angel, against a pillar in the nave, evidently much venerated, for it is hung all over with votive offerings, is grotesquely hideous, with its ill-carved, big, staring doll upon a gilt monstrosity of a stand.

The little choir loft over the west end of the nave, like that at Braga, is filled with finely carved oaken choir-stalls, and the episcopal throne, with Scripture scenes in high relief carved upon the panelling, probably French or Italian work of the Renaissance period. The Eborenses complain that the French plundered the cathedral of most of its valuable treasures; but the church plate and vestments are still of very great richness, and I was much struck by a great jewelled altar cross said to contain a fragment of the True Cross. The precious stones upon it amount altogether to 1425, of which 840 are diamonds; and a chalice of enamel and gold of the sixteenth century is a veritable thing of beauty. The chancel and high altar of the eighteenth century, though of precious marbles, are quite out of keeping with the church, and I was glad to turn away from them and linger in the pretty little ruined cloister of the monks, of simple devotional Gothic.