ing upon this matter, fell in with an old man, who said, that if they wanted a good situation for a desart, he would shew them one. Accordingly he led them to the Serra de Busaco; "here is the place, (said he,) here the convent should be, and the garden yonder, and water may be brought there from the fountain of S. Sylvester. By putting this story into the ordinary stile of monastic history, and saying that the man appeared to them on their road, and disappeared, after he had said what he wished to say, the reader was prepared for the conclusion which the fathers drew, that he was either an angel, or the Patriarch St. Joseph, who is an especial friend to the order. As it happened to be about night-fail, they slept upon the spot, and having reported their tale in a proper manner to their superiors, Busaco was preferred to Cintra, and a grant of the land obtained from D. Joam Manoel, the Bishop of Coimbra. This was in 1628.
