Lisbon and Cintra/Chapter 1
LISBON
AND CINTRA
E tu, nobre Lisboa, que no mundo
facilmente das outras és princeza.
Lus. cant, III, lvii.
CHAPTER I
LIGHT—sunshine—beauty—the atmosphere of these three gifts of Nature is conveyed in every name that has been given to Lisbon from ages so remote as to include its legendary origin to Ulysses.
Its oldest name of "Olisipo" became on Phœnician lips, "Alisubbo," or the friendly bay. The Romans sealed their appreciation of the happy situation of the town by the new name of "Felicitas Julia," which was dropped when the Moors came into possession of the coveted strong position for that of "Al Aschbuna"—merely a variant on the Phœnician title. From this Moorish name and "Alisubbo" seen in conjunction it becomes at once intelligible, whence, by the intermediate way of the later name of "Lissabona," was derived the Lisboa of to-day, which we English have converted into Lisbon.
The same ideas of light and sunshine, the first essentials for an ideal climate, strike one in the classical and poetical name of the country—Lusitania. Ancient geographers declare that the name Lusos united to another word which signifies terra in the Celtic language, form together the word Lusitania. Imagination inclines one to favour the poetic licence of a Camöes, who is allowed to transfigure lus into luz, light, making of Lusitania, the land of light, a licence which emphasizes none too forcibly the wonderful atmosphere of this sunny little land.
Portugal of all countries in Europe is the one towards which English people should feel most intimately drawn. For nearly eight centuries the two countries have been linked together in interests which have at critical junctures compelled the interchange of military aid to resist encroachment upon freedom and the rights of nations. These relations date themselves from the first days of the Monarchy.
An army of the early Crusaders bound for the Holy Land, composed of Englishmen, Normans and Flemings, some 14,000 men in all, who were embarked on two hundred sailing vessels, braved the bar of the Douro, and anchored in the river. Here they had to wait fourteen days for their commander, whose ship had been separated from the Fleet in the tempest. In this interval of waiting negotiations were made through the Bishop of Porto (Oporto) on behalf of D. Affonso Henriques, who was preparing a new attack upon Lisbon, which was even then a strong position fortified by a large army of Moors.
The squadron agreed to set sail for the Tagus, where they arrived on the eve of St Peter and St Paul. They accepted the propositions made by the same D. Affonso Henriques, afterwards proclaimed king by the people; they disembarked and contributed largely to the success of the undertaking. The Moorish spoil they gained by this help was considerable, in addition to privileges and guarantees of great value—a result, say Portuguese historians, which the skilled diplomacy of their "faithful allies," the English, has always been able to bring about. Many of these adventurers profited by the occurrence and the privileges conceded to settle in the kingdom. It is even stated historically that the towns of Almada and Saccavem, to which allusion will be made later, were first peopled by Englishmen of this expedition.
How strange, even remarkable, in these days of fiscal agitation, to glance back to so early a date as February 17, 1294, and read of safe-conducts, or passports granted to Portuguese merchants by Edward I under the heading: Conditions of reciprocity with the English. A dispute followed, on account of the detention of an English ship on the coast of Portugal, which suspended the agreement for fifteen years. Then the government gave satisfactory explanations, a conference was held, and the safe conduct to Portuguese merchants confirmed, upon condition that they obeyed the Law of the Land—of England—to which they would be subject wherever they resided.
In 1344 the Sheriffs of London issued a proclamation ordering that the Portuguese be received everywhere as our friends and allies. Not to be to the rear in generosity D. Affonso IV guaranteed in the July of 1352 the same high protection to English merchants in his dominions. It is commonly stated that British merchants settled in Portugal three centuries ago, but the first mention of their residence in the country is made in a series of grievances brought before D. Joāo II by the Cortes of Evora as early as 1482.
England's first Treaty with Portugal was signed respectively by Edward III and D. Fernando. These mutual pledges were the precursor of a continuity of relations between the two countries which had their culminating point in the Peninsular War. At a later date British forces supported the partisans of the young queen, D. Maria II, daughter of D. Pedro IV, against the Miguelites. British sailors have won naval victories for Portugal off its Atlantic-bound cliffs, and more than once a British admiral has marched his men inland to capture towns held by Portugal's foes with the same prompt daring that the bluejackets of another day displayed in the relief of Pekin and the Boer War. There are not many acres of the rich soil of Lusitania that have not been tramped over by British soldiers, many of whose descendants still live in the country.
The sentiment engendered by such a retrospect should be tinged with sympathy and magnanimity, the due prerogatives of a country which once outrivalled England as controller of the high seas, and the possessor of vast colonies comprising the fabled wealth of the two Indies. The English traveller who regards Portugal and its people from this point of view will enter readily into the spirit of past and present times in viewing the numerous objects of picturesque, historical and social interest.
Two cities in Portugal dominate the whole country—Lisbon and Oporto. They are the power houses from which emanates the movement carrying life and activity into the provinces. Both of them are seaports, but Lisbon is the seat of government, and possesses the superior advantage of offering navigation one of the finest natural havens of the world, an important bourne of the great Ocean in touch with the seas of the north and the Mediterranean.
Montesquieu, in speaking of the port of Marseilles, said: "Marseille où tous les vents commandent d'aborder." What a Frenchman remarked of the port of Lisbon a century ago can be repeated with even more justice today: "Lisbonne où tous les intérêts invitent à se rendre." He summed up the conditions evoking the enconium in these words: "Agreeable mooring places, sure anchorage, resources of all kinds for the use and convenience of man, for the needs of vessels, for the sale of merchandise, there is no advantage which is not offered by this port situated so happily, besides that it seems to be a natural point of repose on the ocean for ships setting out from Europe to all parts of the world, or returning."
The favourable site of the city is beyond dispute. Its beauty of aspect has been eulogized not only by poets, but by writers little given to fine descriptions. On the north bank of the Tagus, twelve miles from the open sea, Lisbon couched once like ancient Rome upon seven hills, but now overflows the slopes and ridges of eleven. The eye rests upon a succession of amphitheatres, built up with tier upon tier of houses, great and small, which the sorcery of Lusitanian sunlight transfigures into the semblance of a city of palaces and many mansions built up of marbles of delicate and varied hues.
It is a dazzling panorama, recalling to those who have seen both the City of the Golden Horn, which hides close to the water edge when spied from afar, but upon near approach rises with the indolent grace of the Oriental, until all its loveliness of matchless colour, minarets, domes, palaces and cypress trees reveals itself outspread between the blues of sea and sky. The site, colouring and atmosphere of both cities are very similar, but there is one notable distinction. The skyline of the Portuguese capital has few spires or prominent towers to break up the horizontal lines of the buildings. The undulating grounds gives a variety of planes, and the great Cupola of the Estrella Basilica on the western height of Buenos Ayres, and the ancient Cathedral to the east on the slope of St George's hill are distinctive features, but for the minarets of Stamboul are substituted in Lisbon the aerial tops of factory chimneys, for its domes the dwarf belfries of the Jesuit-built churches.
The enchantment of the picture is necessarily disturbed upon near view, for the city front is a long continuation of landing and business wharves, docks, sheds, timber, coaling and tanyards, while a railway runs from the Caes de Sodré along the river margin as far as Cascaes, a watering place on the Atlantic coast. Yet these crowded slopes and hollows, the suggestions of hanging gardens and foliaged spaces all set in the pearly atmosphere against the pure, peerless blue of a Southern sky, still draw imagination like a magnet. Expectation is not deceived, for when the Marine Arsenal, a grim, long edifice of massive structure is passed, there comes a break in the barrier, and a deep, wide square opens out to view.
It is the famous Terreiro do Paço, or place of the palace, familiar to English ears as Black Horse Square, and to others under its modern name of Praça do Commercio. A fine quay, with flights of steps ascending from the water to a broad terrace flanked with parapets, forms the south side of the square. The other three façades are composed of Government buildings, such as the Palace of Justice, the War Office, the Chamber of Commerce, the Custom House, the General Post Office, the Exchange, the House of India, and so forth. The regular line of these fine, high edifices, with their colonnades beneath, give the aspect of a nobly-proportioned caravanserai to the whole area.
An equestrian statue shows high and important against a section of the old town, climbing the hill behind the north-east corner of the Praça. A triumphal arch forms the entrance to the chief street of the lower town. With isolated exceptions of recent erection the architecture of the government buildings and of the streets behind the square is a style which dates from the reconstruction era of the city after the earthquake of 1755. Lisbon owes her rebirth after the great catastrophe, not only structurally, but in political, commercial, social and religious issues, to the greatest statesman Portugal has possessed, Sebastiāo José de Carvalho e Mello, Marquez de Pombal. There are those who state that the man was as useful to his country as the earthquake was to Lisbon, inasmuch as the violent 
methods of both were productive of happy results. As allusion to the great Pombal and his period is constantly being made, whether one passes through Lisbon superficially or lingers to inquire into the history of things, interest is heightened by acquiring a certain knowledge of facts connected with the man and the terrible event.
Undoubtedly the earthquake of 1755 was the greatest catastrophe that Lisbon had experienced, not because it was more terrible than the earlier one of 1531, but because, say certain politicians, the capital was temporarily the most opulent and rich in all Europe. In 1531 the convulsion was so strong that the waters of the Tagus divided in the middle, showing the sandy bed, breaking up and engulfing the shipping anchored in that busiest and most crowded of contemporary havens. Many churches, palaces and fifteen hundred houses were destroyed. The disasters caused by this great upheaval seem to have disappeared in an extraordinarily short time. Portugal has shown in many extremities an active power of recuperation and the possession of strong sons who appear when the hour of need demands them.
About half-past nine in the morning of November 1, 1755, a subterranean noise was audible throughout Lisbon. The sound increased with a terrifying continuity, and violent earthquake shocks shook the city to its most solid foundations. They lasted for seven minutes. Part of the inhabitants were in their houses and numbers in the churches, for it was one of their chief festivals, All Saints' Day—Todos os Santos. Harrowing scenes akin to those related of recent earthquakes occurred on all sides. The river again rose from its bed, inundated the town, and threatened to submerge the whole of the lower part. The quay of the Terreiro do Paço, noted for its sumptuous construction, and considered the finest landing-stage in the world, was swept away with the two marble columns, eight yards high, which stood at the point of embarkation. Their counterparts have only quite recently been placed in a similar position on the present quay.
People who had fled to the shore ran back to the city and to the suburbs. The abandoning of their houses by wailing, despairing multitudes, gave rise to the outbreak of fire which began three hours after the earthquake, and lasted for four days. The fruit of many centuries of industry disappeared in a few hours. Immense riches and innumerable articles of value were lost in the churches, the houses of the fidalgos, and the dwellings of the merchants; millions in money, and precious stones of great value, the rarest in the world.
No human help could lighten the great disaster at all. The people assembled on the heights and watched their city being converted into a new Troy. "All assisted with terror," said a contemporary writer, "in that agony of a superb city, and saw perishing in cinders, or dispersing in smoke, the magnificencies of D. João V, which he had intended to endure through all the ages." The flames respected the splendid palaces no more than the meanest dwelling.
Among the vanished buildings was the royal palace, which had been admired throughout Europe for its wealth of treasures as well as for being a chef d'œuvre of architecture. The construction was begun in the reign of D. Manuel, and was finished by Philip II, the first of the Spanish kings, who ruled Portugal for sixty years.
It was the palace which gave its name to the Terreiro do Paço, and on that famous terrace in the cool evenings of the warmer months it was the fashion, in the days of D. José and D. Maria, before the great disaster, to fazer a lage—to do the pavement—said in the same way as Lisbon society speaks to-day of going "to do" the Campo Grande.
The opera house, reputed excellent of its kind, was burnt down; also the rich Patriarchal, innumerable churches, monasteries, palaces, the Caza da India, the Alfandega, and the original Government buildings. The Arsenal, with its valuable stores, was destroyed. It was counted one of the most renowned, well-ordered and wealthiest in Europe, and contained other departments with valuable books, manuscripts and important documents. What scholars, far and wide, chiefly lamented was the immense royal library, founded by D. João V, who had collected together the rarest books, richly coloured, at considerable cost and labour from other countries.
By a phenomenon, though the palaces of so many fidalgos were destroyed, that of Carvalho remained intact. D. José, the king, attributed this singular exemption to the protection of heaven, and retained a superstitious veneration for the incident to the end of his life.
Carvalho remained firm and impassible in the midst of a prostrate populace. The cataclysm to him was fortune spreading her wings to bear him to the heights, writes Luiz Gomes, who like other Portuguese writers, declares that Carvalho would never have become truly great if Lisbon had not been destroyed. But his reputation had already been established for tenacity in pushing his schemes to completion accompanied by an unusual vigour. After representing his court in London and Vienna, he had become Secretary of State to Foreign Affairs. An intrigue at Court banished him for a few weeks, but when the young King, D. José, formed a new Cabinet, he was recalled and made Minister of War and of Foreign Affairs. From that moment he filled his office so well that he governed Portugal as if it had been his heritage instead of the King's, whose personality he entirely eclipsed.
This was the man who saved the people of Lisbon in their extremity, showing a zeal and intrepidity in grappling the gigantic task that is beyond comparison. His colleagues no longer disputed his supremacy. The King placed entire confidence in him, the people obeyed him as if he were a god. He assigned separate districts to the magistrates, putting all the troops in the city and the whole of the police at their disposition, to succour the victims and extinguish the fires. For this purpose also he ordered the commanding officers at Evora, Setubal, Peniche and Cascaes to bring up their regiments without delay.
By these prompt measures many streets escaped the general conflagration, the dead were buried and hospitals established in various points. Every one helped his neighbour; nobles worked like simple burghers, the priests and monks were indefatigable, the royal princesses prepared lint and bandages with their own hands. Disorders necessarily followed the ruin of all conditions of life. The rogues of the city set fire to buildings that had remained intact. Theft, assault, in a word, brigandage, spread in hideous shape amidst the dying and dead, as amidst the living.
Carvalho arrested these horrors by severe measures. Thirty thieves taken in the act were hung in the environs of the town. The evils were checked promptly. Stringent penalties were published for the crime of leaving Lisbon at this juncture. The commandants of the forts at the river mouth were given special orders to hinder vessels from quitting the port. The flight of the inhabitants, the basis of a capital's prosperity, would have created irreparable loss to the country. To a debate in the Council on the subject of transferring the seat of Government to Coimbra, Carvalho made vigorous opposition, and happily for Lisbon his will prevailed.
Famine was the next foe to resist. The barns were all opened, provisions brought in from the provinces, and all was distributed equally by the State. Stalls and sheds were erected in the Praça do Commercio, whence the famishing people fetched their food. Duty was exempt on all articles necessary to life; ships were all unladen of their provisions.
The English Parliament voted unanimously no less a sum than £40,000 for the relief of her old ally. This generosity is a pleasing incident to recall in contrast to the attitude of the Parliament of to-day in the matter of Kingston's great catastrophe.
When the earthquake shocks, which repeated themselves at intervals for six months, had ceased, the Minister occupied himself with clearing the streets and then with rebuilding a city more beautiful than the one which had vanished. Building was encouraged by a crowd of new measures, privileges and special guarantees for loans made to that end. A perusal of the letters of the Marquis de Pombal—the title given later to Carvalho, by which he is ordinarily known—shows the exactitude and method with which he took infinite pains in every detail connected with the reconstruction of Lisbon.
Plans were made from his own draughts for the regulation and alignment of the streets. The new houses were to be uniform in symmetry and height, on a scale which he considered advantageous for the safety and pleasing aspect of the town. He demonstrated how the declivity of a thoroughfare like the Chiado could be lessened by utilizing the debris for levelling purposes. To resist the effects of future earthquake a method of construction was adopted that is law to this day. A stone of a strong, white aspect was used for raising the walls of a house to the first story. Upon these was erected a wooden skeleton of the remaining stories. The interspaces of this framework were built up with mortar or rough-cast, as required. Lisbon houses, built even now with certain modifications and improvements upon similar methods, have the reputation of being earthquake proof. It is certainly true that at various intervals they have successfully weathered many severe shocks.
The story of the great earthquake and the reconstruction period throws a new light on the Praça do Commercio and the lay-out of the lower town. The general style of architecture seen in the square, and in the high houses with dormer wdndows of the streets beyond, is known as the Pombaline. In going over the city it is surprising to note the number of public buildings, institutions, open spaces, quays and markets that owe their existence to the Marquis de Pombal. The finest monument in the city was due to his desire to raise one that would worthily transmit his name to posterity. To bronze and not to man he wished to entrust his fame.
The statue was to be erected to the King, and Pombal's portrait in a medallion placed somewhere upon the monument. No foreigner was to put his hand to the work. Bartholomeu da Costa was given the work to do after the model of another Portuguese artist named Joaquim Machado de Castro. The casting of the statue was finished in eight minutes, and so successfully that it was reckoned a triumph for Bartholomeu da Costa by opinions abroad as well as at home. He was awarded military honours for his success, and became in due time Brigadier-General, Governor of the Arsenal, and director of the iron and coal mines, a rare example, says a noted commentator, of a great fortune founded upon the recognition of talents.
The transport of the statue, when finished, to the great square of the Commercio, lasted several days, so great was the difficulty of moving it. Poised on a marble pedestal with an elliptical base the bronze effigy of King José on horseback still faces the Tagus. On the side turned to the city is an allegorical bas-relief symbolizing Virtue, Commerce, Agriculture and a humane Providence guiding the city of Lisbon, supported by the figure of the State. Fame and Triumph are symbolized in groups, sculptured in stone on the sides of the pedestal.
It was a great day for Lisbon when that statue was unveiled by the Marquis de Pombal. The inauguration took place on the King's birthday with great pomp. The people knelt and saluted their King's image with shouts of wonder and delight. Public rejoicings lasted for three days, illuminations, fire-works and triumphal arches making the city gay, while a feast was held for the nobility and diplomatic corps, in which the Marquis took prominent part.
Sunset approached as I tried to picture in imagination that festive day of the great Statesman's triumph. The vast square was half in shadow, the horse and rider of bronze showed a pallid grey-green colour. The remainder of the houses were flushed from the brilliant reflection of sunset as though built of pink marble. The piled buildings on the hill above showed strongly contrasted colouring of deep blue shadows surmounted by rose. The river was a broad lake of milky blue, with bands of white light edging both shores. The hills across the water were veiled in gold and rosy haze.
The shadows dropped quickly, as they always do in this Southern city after the culminating glory of the day. So after that heydey of acknowledged fame the deep shadow of royal disfavour dropped swiftly upon Carvalho, Marquis de Pombal. The King died, and the Queen, D. Maria I, ordered the Minister's portrait to be removed from the front of the pedestal. The void remained until the reign of D. Pedro IV, who recognized that the medallion was as much the complement of the statue as the statesman had been of the reign of D. José. There are tardy subscriptions being raised to-day to erect a monument worthy of the great man's memory.
According to Pombal's scheme for the commercial area of the new town, every trade or craft was to be restricted to a separate street. The names survive popularly to remind one where once hung out the signs of the gold and silversmiths, the linen drapers, the gilders, the silk mercers and shoemakers. Such fine-sounding names as Rua da Princeza, Bella da Rainha and Rua Augusta have in several cases ousted the older significant names.
The Triumphal Arch was planned as an additional beauty to the square in 1775 on a more important scale than it was finally finished in about forty years ago. The group ornamenting the arch represents Glory crowning Virtue and Valour. The statues below and at the sides are of Viriato, Nuno Alvares Pereira, Vasco da Gama, and the Marquis of Pombal.
Straight as a line the streets run back from the Praça to the heart of the city. Through the streets which cut across them at an equal regularity are seen at both ends bright vistas of sunlit houses in terraces and blocks piled up at every conceivable angle on the steep hill sides and cliffs. The pavements are pleasant to walk upon and pretty to look at, composed as they are of a mosaic of black and grey stones carefully laid down. The value of time in Portugal can be measured by watching the repairing process of a piece of side walk. The workman—and perhaps a companion or two—squats on the ground, mallet in hand, a pile of stones beside him. From these he selects now a black, now a grey stone with deliberation, and hammers each separately into the pattern for which, like an Eastern weaver, he seems to need no guide nor measurement.
The roads, on the other hand, are badly laid with cobble stones unevenly distributed, and with so many hollows and ridges that a drive in any part but the fashionable "Corso" of the city is an adventure to be remembered. At first sight of the hills mounting so closely from both sides of the lower town, the difficulty of exploring, or of penetrating to the suburbs, seems appalling. Here it is that Lisbon may be compared at every turn with the San Francisco of other days. Just as the famous cable-cars skimmed gaily up and down Nob Hill, and other famous hills of the Californian Paris, so the electric cars of Lisbon bring all parts of the city into touch with the centre and one another. The elaborate system of lines and wires spreading web-like in all directions seems to control the capital. How the Lisbon citizen contrived to exist before it was organized one is puzzled to imagine. The small omnibuses drawn by mules were apt to make unexpected halts on the long hills, halts which only ceased when the passengers alighted and literally put their shoulders to the wheel. The only survival of those days runs now for a few miles along the city front. It possesses the proud name of "Eduardo Jorge," and has a predilection for swaying perilously near the nose—otherwise cow-catcher—of the electric cars with the swagger of an Irish jaunting car, its two rows of high chairs placed back to back, filled with the most picturesque figures of the town—the market and fisher folk.
In every direction the electricos penetrate, bearing life into the sleepy suburbs and beyond. Through leafy boulevards, up and down hill, or along the water front, they glide in straight or diagonal lines, now meandering through a tortuous web of narrow streets between high, quaint houses, with painted shutters and balconies, showing a trailing plant, or a parrot cage, or the gay-tinted garments of an inmate's washing; now emerging on a square or rotunda where stands an ancient monastery, or a church, a palace or a theatre, a fountain or an open garden planted out with trees and flower beds; now entering a straight street in some hollow, whence streets mount up on either side so steep that, as in San Francisco, steps breaks the declivity at intervals, and the houses are seen piled on the hills in severe yet irregular outlines, and masses of soft, tender colours, that give a curiously mediæval effect.
Back again by another route equally striking, equally novel, the same car bears one to the chief starting place of all, the Rocio, or Praça de Dom Pedro, the liveliest square in Lisbon. English sailors gave it the name of Turkey square after the flocks of turkeys congregated there for sale in days when, instead of the imposing monument erected as recently as 1870, there stood in the centre an ancient pile of cubiform stones, humorously nicknamed the Galheteiro, or Cruet-stand of the Rocio. Figures of every type and class are for ever strolling about, or crossing the bewildering waves of its mosaic pavement, or lounging on the seats under the trees which line the borders. The handsome fountains, one at each end, are brimming with the play of water over the upper basins into the spacious ones below, where bronze mermaids curled up on their tails, hold up tapering conches to catch the spray.
The sparkle of sunlight on the water, the colour and simple gaiety of the changing pictures on every side of the busy square tempt one to linger. The eye again notes the regularity of the Pombaline buildings, glances to the southern end of the Rocio, and is arrested by the remarkable sight of the broken arches and shell of the once-beautiful church of the Carmo rising high above the houses. To the left in abrupt contrast to the stately ruins appears what, at first sight, looks like a square steel scaffolding mounting tower-like into the void.
It is one of the Ascensores, or giant lifts, another means by which the difficulties of high and low levels have been conquered in this city of many hills. This particular ascensore is entered from the Rua Santa Justa, just off the Rua do Ouro. From the lift you step out on an iron bridge, which conducts to the Largo do Carmo. It spans the gay Chiado, the Regent Street of Lisbon, and from a terrifying height affords an enchanting prospect over a great part of the city, looking across to the eastern heights, towards the river, and inland. The roofs of houses six and four stories high spread out below the eye; we can almost peer into the nearest dormer windows. An old-world, picturesque character these Lisbon roofs possess. They look as if they had been made with old oak tiles that time had first polished, then dimmed with grey, and touched up from a palette of russet browns and olive greens. The general effect imparts a more ancient aspect to the buildings than is warranted by the date of the earthquake.
The Rocio lies almost at our feet. The statue of D. Pedro stands out from this height as the distinguishing feature. The figure is of bronze standing on a half globe at the summit of a high, fluted column of marble. Justice, Temperance, Valour and Prudence, cardinal virtues most appropriate to the rule of the Liberating King, are symbolized in massive figures of feminine type which decorate the four corners of the pedestal.
D. Pedro IV had a short but brilliant career, marked by romantic contrasts that are unique even in the history of kings. Upon the death of his father, João VI in 1826, D. Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, found himself at the head of two nations of rival ambitions and opposed interests, and distant from each other three thousand miles. In despair of reconciling them, he resigned Portugal in favour of his daughter, D. Maria da Gloria, and anticipated her arrival in that country by a gift of the Constitutional Charter to the nation, by which the two Chambers of the representative government were established though later developments have introduced various changes. After renouncing a kingdom in the old world, D. Pedro's subjects in Brazil obliged him to abdicate the throne to his son, still a minor. He came back to Portugal, and devoted himself to fighting for the freedom of his country, and establishing the claims of D. Maria against her uncle, D. Miguel. A few months after he had restored the crown to the young Queen, D. Pedro died at the early age of thirty-five. It is no small debt of gratitude that Portugal owes to her Liberating King, but without the help of British soldiers and sailors he could not have released her from the despotic rule of D. Miguel.
A delightful feature of Lisbon is seen in the numerous fountains to be found everywhere. Here are figures of Neptunes or marble obelisks, there a sculptured Venus and Adonis, again as on the Largo do Carmo an original erection in the form of a temple, and elsewhere simply the hollowed shell and a facet with chained cup. Some of them are beautiful, and all interesting, by reason of the picturesque groups which collect around them to fetch and draw water. The women have as free and graceful a carriage in balancing their huge water-jars sideways on the head as the women of the East. In fact the same love of the Olhos d'aguæ—eyes or springs of water—prevails in this country as in Egypt or Syria, and the old Moorish name for fountain still survives in the pretty word, Chafariz. To watch the unstinting flow of these public springs it might readily be imagined that water in Lisbon is never less plentiful than it is to-day. But that is a matter depending on the rainfall, and if a few dry seasons come in succession, alarm is raised lest the supply should become too limited for the needs of the city. The municipal authorities have been blamed for improvidence and for allowing the waters of several springs to run away unused into the Tagus. The Chafariz do Rei, a public fountain on the east city front was closed because the poor people washed their clothes in it and the stationary water instead of being cleared away, was declared insanitary, the outlet was stopped up, and the water allowed to flow into the river. There has lately been an agitation to procure the unseating of this and other springs, and for the storing of the precious water instead of its continual waste. Every drop has become valuable in the nation's eyes owing to a lack of sufficient rain for several seasons.
The lavish use of the water of Lisbon is also seen in the perfection of growth to which gardeners bring their plants and flowers. Few, if any, capitals can show such a number of public gardens and open spaces planted out with such a wealth of trees and shrubs as Lisbon. The nearness of Africa is brought constantly to mind. The tropical luxuriance of Brazil, the exotic flora of Madeira and the Azores are reproduced in the beauty of the palms, acacias, aloes and flowering trees and plants innumerable. The sites of these delicious oases of greenery and rare colour have been chiefly chosen on the high places of the city, whence the eye can feast on a variety of pictures in which the colours of the massed houses blend into an imitable, delicate harmony, through graduating tones of rose to pale salmon, of buff to cream, of grey to lavender and dazzling white; where the wonderful purity of the atmosphere, the limpid azure, and at times the blue of the Tagus and beckoning hills of Alemtejo on the opposite shore, are a perpetual delight.
Verily this is still Felicitas Julia! The old Romans—travellers too experienced to misapply names of meaning—knew well that they had come to a fair spot.
