CHAPTER XIX.WHAT PORTUGAL HAS DONE IN THE WORLD.Mr. Lowingtonand the two vice-principals had a hearty laugh over the misadventure of poor Bill Stout, and then discussed their plans for the future. The Prince had been in the river five days; and the Josephines and Tritonias were all ready to start for Badajos the next morning. It was Friday night; and if the party left the next morning they would be obliged to remain over Sunday at Badajos; or, if they travelled all the next night, they would arrive at Toledo on Sunday morning, and this was no place for them to be on that day. It was decided that they should remain on board of the Prince till Monday morning, and that the Princes should go on board the next morning to hear Professor’s Mapps’s lecture on Portugal.“Have you heard any thing of Raimundo or Lingall?” asked the principal.“Only what we got out of Stout,” replied Mr. Pelham. “But he was too tipsy to tell a very straight story.”“I don’t see how he got tipsy so quick; for he must have reached the Prince within fifteen or twenty minutesafter he left this hotel,” added Mr. Lowington. “However, he told me all he knew—at least, I suppose he did—about the others who ran away with him. It seems that Raimundo did not leave the Tritonia, and must have stowed himself away in the hold.”“But we searched the hold very thoroughly,” said Mr. Pelham.“Did you look under the dunnage?”“No, sir: he could not have got under that.”“Probably he did,—made a hole in the ballast. He must have had some one to help him,” suggested the principal.“If any one assisted him it must have been Hugo; for, as he is a Spaniard, they were always very thick together.”“I have informed Don Francisco, the lawyer, that Raimundo had gone to Oran; and I suppose he will be on the lookout for him. I have also written to Manuel Raimundo in New York. He must get my letter in a day or two,” continued the principal. “It is a very singular case; and I should as soon have thought of Sheridan running away as Raimundo.”“He must have had a strong reason for doing so,” added the vice-principal of the Tritonia.The next morning Mr. Pelham directed Peaks to bring his prisoner into the cabin. Bill Stout did not remember what he had said the night before; but he had prepared a story for the present occasion.“Good-morning, Stout,” the vice-principal began. “How do you feel after your spree?”“Pretty well, sir; I did not drink but once, and I couldn’t help it then,” replied the culprit, beginningto reel off the explanation he had got up for the occasion.“You couldn’t help it? That’s very odd.”“No, sir. I met a couple of sailors on shore, and asked them if they could tell me where the American Prince lay. They pointed the steamer out to me, and they insisted that I should take a drink with them. They wouldn’t take No for an answer, and I couldn’t get off,” whined Bill; and he always whined when he was in a scrape.“Doubtless you gave them No for an answer,” laughed Mr. Pelham.“I certainly did; for I never take any thing. They made me drink brandy; but I put very little into the glass, and, as I am not used to liquor, it made me very drunk.”“One horn would not have made you as tipsy as you were, Stout. I think you had better tell that story to the other marines.”“I am telling the truth, sir: I wouldn’t lie about it.”“I think it is a bad plan to do so,” added the vice-principal. “Then you were coming on board, were you?”“Yes, sir: I wanted to see you, and own up.”“Oh! that was your plan, was it?” laughed Mr. Pelham, amused at the pickle into which the rascal was putting himself.“Yes, sir: I came from Valencia on purpose to give myself up to you. I’m sorry I ran away. I got sick of it in a day or two.”“This was after Lingall left you, I suppose.”“Yes, sir; but I was sorry for it before he left. We were almost murdered in the felucca; and I had a hard time of it.”“And this made you penitent.”“Yes, sir. I shall never run away again as long as I live.”“I hope you will not. And you came all the way across Spain and Portugal to give yourself up to me,” added Mr. Pelham. “You were so very anxious to surrender to me, that you were not content to stay a single night at the hotel with Mr. Lowington, who is my superior.”“I wanted to see you; and that’s the reason I left the hotel, and came on board last night,” protested the culprit.“That’s a very good story, Stout; but for your sake I am sorry it is only a story,” said the vice-principal.“It is the truth, sir. I hope to”—“No, no; stop!” interposed Mr. Pelham. “Don’t hope any thing, except to be a better fellow. Your story won’t hold water. I was at the gangway when you came on board, and you told me that you wanted to go to England.”“I didn’t know what I was saying,” pleaded Bill, taken aback by this answer.“Yes, you did: you were not as tipsy as you might have been; for, when I told you the steamer was not going to England, you called your boatman back. It is a plain case; and you can stay in the brig till the ship returns to Barcelona.”The lies did not help the case a particle; and somehow every thing seemed to go wrong with Bill Stout, but that was because he went wrong himself.The boats were sent on ashore for the Princes; and when they arrived all hands were called to attend the lecture in the grand saloon.“Young gentlemen, I am glad to meet you again,” the professor began. “I have said all I need say about the geography of the peninsula. Some of you have been through Spain and Portugal, and have seen that the natural features of the two countries are about the same. The lack of industry and enterprise has had the same result in both. The people are alike in one respect, at least: each hates the other intensely. ‘Strip a Spaniard of his virtues, and you have a Portuguese,’ says the Spanish proverb; but I fancy one is as good as the other. There are plenty of minerals in the ground, plenty of excellent soil, and plenty of fish in the waters of Portugal; but none of the sources of wealth and prosperity are used as in England, France, and the United States. The principal productions are wheat, wine, olive-oil, cork, wool, and fruit. Of the forty million dollars’ worth of agricultural products, twelve are in wine, ten in grain, and seven in wool. More than two-thirds of the exports are to England.“The population of Portugal is about four millions. It has few large towns, only two having over fifty thousand inhabitants. Lisbon has two hundred and seventy-five thousand, and Oporto about ninety thousand. Coimbra,—which has the only university in the country,—Elvas, Evora, Braga, and Setubal, are important towns. The kingdom has six provinces; and we are now in Estremadura, as we were yesterday morning, though it is not the same one.“The government is a constitutional monarchy, not very different from that of Spain. The present king is Luis II. The army consists of about eighteen thousand men; and the navy, of twenty-two steamersand twenty-five sailing vessels. The colonial possessions of Portugal have a population equal to the kingdom itself.“The money of Portugal will bother you.”At this statement Sheridan and Murray looked at each other, and laughed.“You seem to be pleased, Captain Sheridan,” said the professor. “Perhaps you have had some experience with Portuguese money.”“Yes, sir: I went into a store to buy some photographs; and, when I asked the price of them, the man told me it was one thousand six hundred and fortyreis. I concluded that I should be busted if I bought that dozen pictures.”“It takes about a million of thosereisto make a dollar,” added Murray.“But, when I came to figure up the price, I found it was only a dollar and sixty-four cents,” continued Sheridan.“A naval officer who dined a party of his friends in this very city, when he found the bill was twenty-seven thousand five hundredreis, exclaimed that he was utterly ruined, for he should never be able to pay such a bill; but it was only twenty-seven dollars and a half. You count thereisat the rate of ten to a cent of our money,—a thousand to a dollar. About all the copper and silver money has a number on the coin that indicates its value inreis. For large sums, the count is given inmilreis, which means a thousandreis. The gold most in use is the English sovereign, which passes for forty-five hundredreis. We will now give some attention to the history of the country.“Portugal makes no great figure on the map of Europe. Looking at this narrow strip of territory, one would naturally suppose that its history would not fill a very large volume. But small states have had their history told in voluminous works; and Portugal happens to belong to this class. There are histories and chronicles of this country in the Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, English, and Latin languages, not to mention some Arabic works which I have not had time to examine,” continued the professor, with a smile. “Some of these works consist of from ten to thirty volumes. Even the discoveries and conquests of this people in the East and West require quite a number of large volumes; for there was a time when Portugal filled a large place in the eye of the world, though that time was short, hardly reaching through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.“But the history of this country does not begin at all till the eleventh century. There was, indeed, the old Roman province of Lusitania, which corresponded very nearly in size with modern Portugal, except that the latter extends farther north and not so far east. The ancient Lusitanians were a warlike people; and a hundred and fifty years before our era they gave the Romans a great deal of trouble to conquer them. Under Viriathus, the most famous of all the Lusitanians, they routed several Roman armies; and might have held their ground for many years longer, if their hero had not been treacherously murdered by his own countrymen.“The lines of the old Roman provinces were not preserved after the barbarians, of whom I have spokento you before, entered the peninsula in the fifth century. The Arabs occupied this province with the rest of the peninsula, after the defeat and death of King Roderick, or Don Rodrigo, the last of the Gothic kings of Spain; and held it till near the close of the eleventh century, a part of it somewhat later. In 1095 Alfonso VI., of Castile and Leon, bestowed a part of what is now Portugal upon his son-in-law, Henri of Burgundy, who had fought with Alfonso against the Moors, and seemed to have the ability to protect the country given him from the inroad of the Moslems. The region granted to Henri extended only from the Minho to the Tagus; and its capital was Coimbra, for Lisbon was then a Moorish city. The new ruler was called a count; and he had the privilege of conquering the country as far south as the Guadiana. His son Dom Alfonso defeated the Moors in a great battle near the Tagus, and was proclaimed king of Portugal on the battle-field. This was in the time of the crusades; but Spain and Portugal had infidels enough to fight at home, without going to the Holy Land, where hundreds of thousands were sent to die by other countries of Europe. Other additions were made to the country during the next century; but since the middle of the thirteenth century, when Sancho II. died, no increase has been made in the peninsula. The wealth and power of Portugal at a later period were derived from her colonies in America, Asia, and Africa.“John I.—Dom João, in Portuguese—led an expedition against Ceuta, a Moorish stronghold just across the Strait of Gibraltar, and captured the place. After this began their wonderful series of discoveries, whichbrought the whole world to the knowledge of Europe. But the Portuguese were not the first to carry on commerce by sea. Though merchandise had been mainly transported by land in the East, there was some trade on the Mediterranean and Black Seas, and on the Indian Ocean. It does not appear that the Phœnicians, the Carthaginians, or the Greeks, ever sailed on the Baltic Sea; and, though the Romans explored some parts of it, they never went far enough to ascertain that it was bounded on all sides by land.“The Eastern Empire of the middle ages, with its capital at Constantinople, carried on a much more extensive commerce than was ever known to the Romans in the days of their universal dominion. At first the goods brought from the East Indies were imported into Europe from Alexandria; but, when Egypt was conquered by the Arabs, a new route had to be found. Merchandise was conveyed up the Indus as far as that great river was navigable, then across the land to the Oxus, now the Amoo, flowing into the Sea of Aral, but then having a channel to the Caspian. From the mouth of this river it was carried over the Caspian Sea, and up the Volga, to about the point where there is now a railroad connecting this river with the Don. Then it was transported by land again to the Don, and taken in vessels by the Black Sea to Constantinople. The Suez Canal, opened this present year, makes an easy and expeditious route by water for steamers, connecting all the ports of Europe with those of India.“During this period another commercial state was growing up. After the fall of the Roman empire, when the Huns under Attila were ravaging Italy, the inhabitantsof Venetia fled for safety to the group of islands near the northern shore of the Adriatic, and laid the foundation of the illustrious city and state of Venice. The people of the city soon began to fit out small merchant fleets, which they sent to all parts of the Mediterranean, and particularly to Syria and Egypt, after spices and other products of Arabia and India. Soon after, the city of Genoa, on the other side of Italy, became a rival of Venice in this trade, and Florence and Pisa followed their example; but the Venetians, having some natural advantages, outstripped their rivals in the end, and became a great military and commercial power. The crusades, in which others wasted life and treasure, were a source of wealth to these Italian cities. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the commerce of Europe was almost wholly confined to the Italians. The merchants of Italy scattered themselves in every kingdom; and the Lombards (for this was the name by which they were known) became the merchants and bankers everywhere. After a time, however, the commercial spirit began to develop itself, and to make progress in other parts of Europe; but, up to the fifteenth century, vessels were accustomed, in their voyages, to creep along the coast; and, though it was known that the magnetic needle points constantly to the North Pole, no use was made of this knowledge for purposes of navigation.“In 1415 the commercial spirit had reached Portugal; and the Ceuta expedition was undertaken quite as much in the interest of trade as of religion, for the place was held by pirates who were daily disturbing Portuguese commerce. Immense treasures fell to the victors as the reward of their enterprise.“Dom Henrique, or Henry, the son of King John, afterwards so famous in the history of his country, had a decided taste for study. He was an able mathematician, and made himself master of all the astronomy known to the Arabians, who were then the best mathematicians of Europe. Henry also studied the works of the ancients. At this period Ptolemy was the highest authority in geography; and he taught that the African Continent reached to the South Pole. But Henry had read the ancient accounts of the circumnavigation of Africa by the Phœnicians and others; and he believed, that, whether these voyages had or had not been made, good ships might sail around the southern point of the continent. If this could be done, the Portuguese would find a way to India by sea, and thus control the entire trade of the East.“The prince had many obstacles to overcome. Vessels in that day were not built for the open sea; and every headland and far-stretching cape seemed to be an impossible barrier. There was a notion that near the equator was a burning zone, where the very waters of the ocean actually boiled under the intolerable heat of the sun. A superstition also prevailed, that whoever doubled Cape Bojador—on the coast of Africa, about a thousand miles south of Lisbon—would never return; and it was feared that the burning zone would change those who entered it into negroes, thus dooming them to wear the black marks of their temerity to the grave.“The first voyage undertaken under the direction of Prince Henry was in 1419, and covered only five degrees of latitude. The expedition was driven out to sea and landed at a small island north-east of Madeira,which they named Porto Santo. The next year three vessels were sent for a longer voyage. This fleet reached the dreaded cape, and discovered Madeira. On the next voyage they doubled Cape Bojador; and, having exploded the superstition, in the course of a few years they advanced four hundred leagues farther, and discovered the Senegal River. Here they found men with woolly hair and skins as black as ebony; and they began to dread a nearer approach to the equator.“When they returned, their countrymen with one voice attempted to dissuade Prince Henry from any further attempts; but he would hear of no delay. He applied to Pope Eugene IV.; and, representing that his chief object was the pious wish to spread a knowledge of the Christian faith among the idolatrous people of Africa, he obtained a bull conferring on the people of Portugal the exclusive right to all the countries they had discovered, or might discover, between Cape Nun—about three hundred miles north of Cape Bojador—and India. Such a donation may appear ridiculous enough to us; but it was never doubted then that the pope had ample right to bestow such a gift; and for a long time all the powers of Europe considered the right of the Portuguese to be good, and acknowledged their title to almost the whole of Africa. About this time Prince Henry died, and little progress was made in discovery for some years. But the Portuguese had begun to push boldly out to sea, and had lost all dread of the burning zone.“In the reign of John II., from 1481 to 1495, discoveries were pushed with greater vigor than ever before.The Cape de Verde Islands were colonized; and the Portuguese ships, which had advanced to the coast of Guinea, began to return with cargoes of gold-dust, ivory, gums, and other valuable products. It was during the reign of this monarch that Columbus visited Lisbon, and offered his services to Portugal; and it appears that the king was inclined to listen to the plans of the great navigator, but he was dissuaded from doing so by his own courtiers.“The revenue derived at this time from the African coast became so important that John feared the vessels of other nations might be attracted to it. To prevent this, the voyages there were represented as being in the highest degree dangerous, and even impossible except in the peculiar vessels used by the Portuguese. The monarchs of Castile had some idea of what was going on, and were very eager to learn more; and in one case came very near succeeding. A Portuguese captain and two pilots, in the hope of a rich reward, set out for Castile to dispose of the desired information; but they were pursued by the king’s agents. When overtaken, they refused to return; but two of them were killed on the spot, and the other brought back to Evora and quartered. The attempt of a rich Spaniard, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, to build vessels in English ports for the African trade, turned out no better. King John reminded the English king, Edward IV., of the ancient alliance between the two crowns; and so these preparations were prohibited.“In 1497 a Portuguese fleet under Vasco de Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope, or the Cape of Storms as they called it then; and soon the voyagersbegan to hear the Arabian tongue spoken on the other shore of the continent, and found that they had nearly circumnavigated Africa. At length, with the aid of Mohammedan pilots, they passed the mouths of the Arabian and Persian Gulfs, and, stretching along the western coast of India, arrived, after a cruise of thirteen months, at Calicut, on the shore of Malabar, less than three hundred miles from the southern point of the peninsula.“The Court of Lisbon now appointed a viceroy to rule over new countries discovered. Expeditions followed each other in rapid succession; and, in less than half a century more, the Portuguese were masters of the entire trade of the Indian Ocean. Their flag floated triumphantly along the shores of Africa from Morocco to Abyssinia, and on the Asiatic coast from Arabia to Siam; not to mention the vast regions of Brazil, which this nation began to colonize about the same time. These conquests were not made without opposition; but the Portuguese were as remarkable for their valor as for their enterprise, in those days; and, for a time, their prowess was too much for their enemies in Africa, in India, and even in Europe. The Venetians, who had lost the trade between India and Europe, were of course their enemies; and the Sultan of Egypt was hostile when he found that he was about to lose the profitable trade that passed through Alexandria. These two powers joined hands; and the Venetians sent from Italy to the head of the Red Sea, at an immense expense, the materials for building a fleet to meet and destroy the Portuguese vessels on their passage to India. But, as soon as this fleet wasready for active operations, it was attacked and destroyed by the Portuguese navy.“Thus the Portuguese were masters of an empire on which the sun never set. It reached the height of its glory in the reign of John III., from 1521 to 1557. He was succeeded by his son Dom Sebastian, who made several expeditions against the Moors in Africa. In the last of these, he was utterly routed, his army destroyed, and he perished on the battle-field. This disaster seemed to initiate the decline of Portugal; and it continued to run down till it was only the shadow of its former greatness.“Concerning Dom Sebastian, a very remarkable superstition prevails, even at the present time, in Portugal, to the effect that he will return, resume the crown, and restore the realm to its former greatness. For nearly two hundred years this belief has existed, and was almost universal at one time, not among the ignorant only, but in all classes of society. It was claimed that he was not killed in the battle, though his body was recognized by his page, and that he will come back as the temporal Messiah of Portugal. Several persons have appeared who have claimed to be the prince, the most remarkable of whom turned up at Venice twenty years after the prince’s presumed death. He told a very straight story; but the Senate of Venice banished him, and he was afterwards imprisoned in Naples and Florence for insisting upon the truth of his statements. He finally died in Castile; and many believed that he was not an impostor. Several times have been fixed for his coming; but it is not likely that he will be able to put in an appearance, on account of thetwo hundred years that have elapsed since he was in the flesh.“As Sebastian did not come back from Africa, his uncle Henry assumed the crown; and at his death, as he had no direct heirs, Philip II., the Prince of Parma, and the Duchess of Braganza, claimed the throne, as did several others; but Philip settled the question by sending the Duke of Alva into Portugal, and taking forcible possession of the kingdom. In 1580, therefore, the whole of the vast dominions I have described were annexed to the Spanish empire. This connection lasted for sixty years; and the Portuguese call it ‘the sixty years’ captivity.’ During this time the people were never satisfied with their government, and in 1640 got up a revolution, and placed the Duke of Braganza on the throne, under the title of John IV. This was the beginning of the house of Braganza, which has held the throne up to the present time.“Even in the seventeenth century Portugal had fallen from her high estate. She had lost part of her possessions and all her prestige; and from that time till the present she has had no great weight in European politics. Some of her colonial territories returned to the original owners, while others were taken by the Dutch, the English, and the Spaniards. For two centuries the most remarkable events in her history have been misfortunes. In 1755 an earthquake destroyed half the city of Lisbon, and buried thirty thousand people under its ruins. It came in two shocks, the second of which left the city a pile of ruins. Thousands of men and women fled from the falling walls to the quays on the river. Suddenly the ground under themsank with all the crowd upon it; and not one of the bodies ever came up. At the same time all the boats and vessels, loaded down with fugitives from the ruin, were sucked in by a fearful whirlpool; and not a vestige of them returned to the surface.“Fifty-five years later came the French Revolution; in the results of which Portugal was involved. In 1807 she entered into an alliance with Great Britain; and Napoleon decided to wipe off the kingdom from the map of Europe. A French army was sent to Lisbon; and at its approach the Court left for Brazil, where it remained for several years. An English army arrived at Oporto the next year; and with these events began the peninsular war. The struggle lasted till 1812, and many great battles were fought in this kingdom. The country was desolated by the strife, and the sufferings of the people were extremely severe. Subscriptions were raised for them in England and elsewhere; and Sir Walter Scott wrote ‘The Vision of Don Roderick’ in aid of the sufferers.“In 1821 Brazil declared her independence; but it was not acknowledged by Portugal till 1825. After fourteen years of absence, the Court—John VI. was king, having succeeded to the throne while in Brazil—returned to Portugal. During this period the home kingdom was practically a colony of Brazil; and the people were dissatisfied with the arrangement. A constitution was made, and the king accepted it. He had left his son as regent of Brazil, and he was proclaimed emperor of that country as Pedro I. He was the father of the present emperor, Pedro II.“John VI. died in 1826. His legitimate successorwas Pedro of Brazil; but he gave the crown to his daughter Maria. Before she could get possession of it, Dom Miguel, a younger son of John VI., usurped the throne. As he did not pay much deference to the constitution, the people revolted; and civil war raged for several years. Pedro, having abdicated the crown of Brazil in favor of his son, came to Portugal in 1832, to look after the interests of his daughter. He was made regent,—Maria da Gloria was only thirteen years old,—and with the help of England, cleaned out the Miguelists two years later. The little queen was declared of age at fifteen, and took the oath to support the constitution. She died in 1853; and her son, Pedro V., became king when he was fifteen. But he lived only eight years after his accession, and was followed by his brother, Luis I., the present king. There have been several insurrections since the Miguelists were disposed of, but none since 1851. The royal family have secured the affections of the people; for the sons of Maria have proved to be wise and sensible men. The finances are in bad condition; for the expense of the government exceeds the income every year. Now you have heard, and you may go and see for yourselves.”CHAPTER XX.LISBON AND ITS SURROUNDINGS.Theroom in the Hotel Braganza occupied by Sheridan and Murray was an excellent one, so far as the situation was concerned; for it commanded a beautiful view of the Tagus and the surrounding country.“I should think this hotel had been a fort some time,” said Sheridan, when they rose in the morning. “Those windows look like port-holes for cannon.”“It is the house of Braganza, and ought to be a royal hotel; but it is not very elegantly furnished. There are no towels here. Where is the bell?”“I noticed that there was one outside of each room on this floor. Here is the bell-pull. It is an original way to fix the bells,” added Sheridan. “The bell-boys must come up three flights of stairs in order to hear them ring.”“But, if the waiter don’t speak English, what will you ask for?” laughed Murray.“I have a book of four languages that I picked up in Madrid,—French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese,” said the captain, as he took the volume from his bag. “Here it is. ‘Une serviette,’—that’s a napkin, but it will do as well,—‘um guardinapo.’”The bell was rung, and a chambermaid answered it. The word brought the towels, but Sheridan pointed to the wash-stand; and the pantomime would have answered just as well as speech, for the woman could see what was wanting. When they were dressed, Dr. Winstock came to the door, and invited them to visit the top of the house, which commanded a view even more extensive than the window.“The Tagus runs about east and west here,” said he. “It is about a mile wide, but widens out into a broad bay opposite the city. There is no finer harbor in the world. The old part of the city, between the castle and the river, was not destroyed by the earthquake. Between us and the castle is a small region of straight streets; and this is the part that was destroyed. On the river below us are the marine arsenal and the custom-house, with thePraca do Commerciobetween them.”“The what?” asked Murray.“Pracais the Portuguese for ‘square;’ ‘Commercial Square’ in English will cover it. This one has several names; and the English, who are in great force in Lisbon, call it Black Horse Square. There is very little to see in Lisbon. Orders have come up for all hands to be on the quay at nine o’clock, to go on board the Prince for the lecture; and we must breakfast first.”After the lecture the Princes went on shore again. The doctor with his pupils took a carriage, and proceeded to “do” the city. Their first point was the square they had seen from the housetop. On one side of it was an arch supporting a clock-tower. In thecentre was an equestrian statue of Joseph I., erected by the inhabitants out of gratitude to the king and the Marquis of Pombal for their efforts to rebuild the city after the great earthquake. On the pedestal is an effigy of the marquis, who was the king’s minister, as powerful as he was unpopular. The populace cut his head out of the statue when the king died, but it was restored fifty years later.“This street,” said the doctor, indicating the one over which the ornamental arch was extended, “is theRua Augusta.”“I think the Commercial is as fine a square as I have seen in Europe,” added Sheridan.“Most people agree with you. Now, if we pass through theRua Augusta, we shall come to thePraca do Rocio, which is also a beautiful square. There are three other streets running parallel with this; on one side is Gold, and on the other Silver Street.”“They build their houses very high for an earthquaky country,” said Murray.“And this is the very spot which was sunk. I suppose they don’t expect to have another convulsion.”The carriage proceeded into the square, and then to another, only a couple of blocks from it, in which was the fruit-market. It was lined with trees, with a fountain in the centre. All around it were men and women selling fruit and other commodities. It was a lively scene. In this square they saw a Portuguese cart of the model that was probably used by the Moors. The wheels do not revolve on the axle, but the axle turns with the wheels, as in a child’s tin wagon, and creak and groan fearfully as they do so.As they passed through the Campo Santa Anna, the doctor pointed out theCirco dos Touros, or bull-ring.“But a bull-fight here is a tame affair compared with those in Spain,” he explained. “They do not kill the bull, nor are any horses gored to death; for the horns of the animal are tipped with large wooden balls. It is a rather lively affair, and will answer very well if you have not seen the real thing. It is said that there are seven hills in Lisbon, as in Rome; but this is a vanity of many other cities. There are many hills in Lisbon, however; and there seems to be a church or a convent on every one of them. This is thePassio Publico; and it is crowded with people on a warm evening,” continued the doctor, as they came to a long and narrow park. “It is thepradoof Lisbon.“I shall ask you to visit only one church in this city, unless you desire to see more; and this is the one,” said the doctor, as the carriage stopped at a plain building. “This is St. Roque. It is said that Dom John V., when he visited this church, was greatly mortified at the mean appearance of the chapel of his patron saint. He ordered one to be prepared in Rome, of the richest materials. When it was done, mass was said in it by the pope, Benedict XIV.; and then it was taken to pieces, and sent to Lisbon, where it was again set up as you will find it.”The party entered the church, and the attendant gave each of them a printed sheet on which was a description of the chapel. It proved to be a rather small recess; but the mosaics of the baptism of Christ in the Jordan by John, and other scriptural designs, are of the highest order of merit. The floor, ceiling, andsides are of the same costly work, the richest marbles and gems being used. The chapel contains eight columns of lapis-lazuli. The whole of this is said to have cost fourteen millioncrusados, over eight million dollars; but others say only one millioncrusados, and probably the last sum is nearer the truth.The next day was Sunday; and in the morning the United States steamer Franklin—the largest in the service—came into the river. There was a Portuguese frigate off the marine arsenal; and what with saluting the flag of Portugal, and the return-salute, saluting Mr. Lewis the American minister, and saluting Mr. Diamond the American consul, when each visited the ship, the guns of the great vessel were blazing away about all the forenoon. But the students were proud of the ship; and they did not object to any amount of gun-firing, even on Sunday. In the afternoon, some of them went to the cathedral, which was formerly a mosque, and to some of the other churches. All hands attended service on board of the American Prince at eleven.The next morning the Josephines and Tritonias started on their tour through the peninsula to Barcelona; and the ship’s company went on board of the steamer. Regular discipline was restored; but the business of sight-seeing was continued for two days more. The doctor conducted his little party to the palace of theNecessidades.“What a name for a palace!” exclaimed Murray. “I suppose that jaw-breaker means ‘necessities.’”“That is just what it means. Circumstances often give names to palaces and other things; and it was soin this case. A weaver brought an image of the Blessed Virgin from a place on the west coast, from which he fled to escape the plague. With money he begged of the pious, he built a small chapel for the image, near this spot. Like so many of these virgins, it wrought the most wonderful miracles, healing the sick, restoring the lame, and opening the eyes of the blind; and many people came to it in their ‘necessities,’ for relief. Dom John V. believed in it, and built a handsome church, with a convent attached to it, for the blessed image. It had restored his health once, and he built this palace near it, that it might be handy for his ‘necessities.’ During the long sickness preceding his death, he had it brought to the palace with royal honors, and kept it there in state, taking it with him wherever he went.“This square is theFraca Alcantara,” continued the doctor, when they came from the palace. “There are plenty of fountains in the city, nearly every public square being supplied with one. When I was here before, there were more water-carriers than now; and they were all men of Gallicia, as in Madrid. Three thousand of them used to be employed in supplying the inhabitants with water; but now it is probably conveyed into most of the houses in pipes. You can tell these men from the native Portuguese, because they carry their burden, whatever it may be, on their shoulders instead of their heads. A proverb here is to the effect that God made the Portuguese first, and then the Gallego to wait upon him. Most of the male servants in houses come from Gallicia. They are largely the porters and laborers, for the natives are too proud to carry burdens: it is too near like the workof a mule or a donkey. It is said, that when the French approached Coimbra in the peninsular war, and the people deserted the city, the men would not carry their valuables with them, so great was their prejudice against bundles; and every thing was lost except what the women could take with them. They could not disgrace themselves to save their property.”“No wonder the country is poor,” added Sheridan.“Now we will cross the bridge, and ride through Buenos Ayres, where many of the wealthy people live, and some of the ambassadors,” continued the doctor.They had a pleasant ride, passing the English cemetery in which Henry Fielding and Dr. Doddridge were buried. On the return, they passed the principal cemetery of the city. It is called thePrazeres, which means “pleasures;” a name it obtained by accident, and not because it was considered appropriate.The following day was set apart for an excursion to Cintra and Mafra, and a sufficient number of omnibuses were sent to a point on the north-west road; for the students were to walk over the aqueduct in order to see that wonderful work. The party ascended some stone steps to a large hall which contains the reservoir. It is near thePraca do Rato, and not far from the centre of the city. The party then entered the arched gallery, eight feet high and five feet wide, through which the water-ways are led. In the middle is a paved pathway for foot-passengers. On either side of it is a channel in the masonry, nine inches wide and a foot deep in the centre, rounded at the bottom. It looked like a small affair for the supply of a great city. The aqueduct is carried on a range of archesover the valley of the Alcantara, which is the name of the little stream that flows into the Tagus near theNecessidades. The highest of these arches are two hundred and sixty-three feet above the river. A causeway was built on each side of it, forming a bridge to the villages in the suburbs; but its use was discontinued because so many people committed suicide by throwing themselves from the dizzy height, or were possibly murdered by robbers. This aqueduct was erected by Dom John V., and it is the pride of the city. The water comes from springs six miles away.“Why did we have those water-jars in the hotel if they have spring-water?” asked Sheridan, as they walked along the gallery.“They think the water is better kept in those jars,” replied Dr. Winstock; “and I believe they are right; at least, they would be if they would keep the ants out of them.”On the other side of the valley the excursionists loaded themselves into the omnibuses, and were soon on their way to Cintra, which is fourteen miles from Lisbon. It is a sort of Versailles, Potsdam, or Windsor, where the court resides during a part of the year, and where all the wealthy and fashionable people spend their summers. It is a beautiful drive, with many pleasant villages, palaces, country-seats, groves, and gardens by the way.“Here we are,” said the doctor to his young companions, when the carriage in which they had come stopped before Victor’s Hotel. “Southey said this was the most blessed spot in the habitable world. Byron sang with equal enthusiasm; and the words of thesepoets have made the place famous in England. Our American guide-book does not even mention it.”Cintra is a town of forty-five hundred inhabitants. It is built on the southern end of the Estrella Mountains, at an elevation of from eighteen hundred to three thousand feet. It is only a few miles from the seashore, and the Atlantic may be seen from its hills. The party of the doctor first went to the royal palace. It was the Alhambra of the Moorish monarchs, and has been a favorite residence of the Christian kings. Dom Sebastian held his last court here when he left for Africa. The students wandered through its numerous apartments, laughed at its magpie saloon, and thought of the kings who had dwelt within its walls. They were more pleased with the gardens, though it was winter; for there was a great deal in them that was curious and interesting.The Pena Convent was the next attraction. All convents have been suppressed in Portugal, as in Spain; but the Gothic building has been repaired, and it looks more like a castle than a religious house. Its garden and grounds must be magnificent in the proper season. The view from the highest point presents an almost boundless panorama of country, river, and ocean. The Moorish castle that commands the town was examined; and the next thing was the Cork Convent. It is an edifice built in and on the rock, and contains twenty cells, each of which is lined with cork to keep out the dampness of the rock on which it is founded. These cells are dungeons five feet square, with doors so low that even the shortest of the students had to stoop to enter them.A country-house in Portugal is aquinta; and that of Dom John de Castro, the great navigator and the viceroy of the Indies, is calledPenha Verda, and is still in the hands of his descendants. The gardens are very pretty; and the first orange-trees set out in Europe were on this estate. In the garden is the chapel built by him on his return from the Indies, in 1542, and the rock with six trees on it, which was the only reward he desired for the conquest of the Island of Diu, in Hindostan. He died in the arms of St. Francis Xavier, in 1548, protesting that he had spent every thing he had in supplying the wants of his comrades in arms. He declared that he had not a change of linen, or money enough to buy him a chicken for his dinner. Most of the enormous wealth of the Indies had passed through his hands; and he had not stolen avintemof it. What an example for modern office-holders! When he was dead, only onevintem—about two cents—was found in his coffers. His descendants were prohibited from deriving any profit from the cultivation of this property.The rest of the time was given to wandering about among the estates of the wealthy men, including some of the foreign ministers, who havequintasin Cintra.After a lunch, the excursionists proceeded to Mafra, about ten miles from Cintra. This place contains an enormous pile of buildings on the plan of the Escurial, and rather larger, if any thing. It was erected by John V. to carry out his vow to change the poorest monastery into the most magnificent one when Heaven would give him a son. It contains eight hundred and sixty-six apartments; but the only one of interest tothe students was the audience-chamber, preserved as it was when the palace was inhabited by Dom John.It was late in the evening when the Princes returned to Lisbon; and they were rather glad to learn that the ship was to sail for Barcelona after breakfast the next morning.“I am rather sorry that we do not go to Oporto,” said the doctor, when the captain informed him of the order. “It is an old city set on a hillside; but it would not interest the students any more than Lisbon has.”“By the way, doctor, we have not seen any port wine,” added Sheridan.“It is not a great sight to look at the casks that contain port wine. In Porto, not Oporto in Portugal, it is not the black, logwood decoction which passes under the name of port in the United States, though it is darker than ordinary wines. It gets its color and flavor from the peculiarity of the grapes that grow in the vicinity of Porto.”The officers were tired enough to turn in. Early the next morning the fires were roaring in the furnaces of the Prince; at a later hour the pipe of the boatswain was heard; and at half-past eight the steamer was standing down the river. As the students had not come to Lisbon from the sea, they all gathered on the deck and in the rigging to see the surroundings.“That building on the height is the palace of Ajuda, where the present king ordinarily resides,” said the surgeon, when the captain pointed it out to one of the officers. “A temporary wooden house was built on that hill for the royal family after the earthquake. Itis very large for this little kingdom, but is only one-third of the size it was intended to be. It was erected by John VI.; or, rather, it was begun by him, for it is not finished.”“You can see the buildings on the Cintra hills,” added Murray.“Yes; and you can see them better from the ocean.”“That is Belem Castle,” said Sheridan, as the ship approached the mouth of the river. “I saw a picture of it in an illustrated paper at home.”“It is called the Tower of Belem; and there is a palace with the same name on the shore. This is half Gothic and half Moorish. It is round, and the style is unique. What it was built for, no one knows. I suppose you are not aware how Columbus ascertained that there was a Western Continent,” added the doctor, smiling.“I know what the books say,—that he reasoned it out in his own mind,” replied the captain.“You see that town on the north: it is Cascaes, in which Sanchez, the renowned pilot, was born,” continued the doctor. “In 1486 Sanchez was blown off in a storm; and, before he could bring up, he was carried to an unknown land somewhere in North America. On his way back he stopped at Madeira, where he was the guest of Columbus. Somehow the log-book of the pilot fell into the hands of the great navigator, and from it he learned that there was an American Continent.”“Do you believe that story?” asked Sheridan seriously.“I do not. There are too many difficulties in the way of it; but it was told me by a Portuguese pilot.”When the ship had passed the bar, the pilot was discharged, and the course laid to the south. Just at dark she was in sight of Cape St. Vincent. The doctor related the story of its name, which was given to it because the body of St. Vincent, martyred in Rome, found its way to this cape, where it was watched over for a long period by crows. The ship that conveyed it to Lisbon was followed by these birds; and tame crows were afterwards kept in the cathedral, where the remains were deposited, in memory of the miraculous care of these birds. Three great naval victories have been won by the English Navy off this cape. Rodney defeated the Spanish fleet in 1780; Nelson, with fifteen small vessels, beat twenty-seven Spanish men-of-war, in 1797; and Sir Charles Napier, in 1833, with six vessels, only one of them a frigate, defeated ten Portuguese ships, thus putting an end to the Miguel war, and placing Maria I. on the throne of Portugal. The next day the Prince passed Cape Trafalgar, where, in 1805, Nelson gained his great naval victory over the combined fleets of France and Spain.On Sunday morning the Prince arrived at Barcelona.
CHAPTER XIX.WHAT PORTUGAL HAS DONE IN THE WORLD.Mr. Lowingtonand the two vice-principals had a hearty laugh over the misadventure of poor Bill Stout, and then discussed their plans for the future. The Prince had been in the river five days; and the Josephines and Tritonias were all ready to start for Badajos the next morning. It was Friday night; and if the party left the next morning they would be obliged to remain over Sunday at Badajos; or, if they travelled all the next night, they would arrive at Toledo on Sunday morning, and this was no place for them to be on that day. It was decided that they should remain on board of the Prince till Monday morning, and that the Princes should go on board the next morning to hear Professor’s Mapps’s lecture on Portugal.“Have you heard any thing of Raimundo or Lingall?” asked the principal.“Only what we got out of Stout,” replied Mr. Pelham. “But he was too tipsy to tell a very straight story.”“I don’t see how he got tipsy so quick; for he must have reached the Prince within fifteen or twenty minutesafter he left this hotel,” added Mr. Lowington. “However, he told me all he knew—at least, I suppose he did—about the others who ran away with him. It seems that Raimundo did not leave the Tritonia, and must have stowed himself away in the hold.”“But we searched the hold very thoroughly,” said Mr. Pelham.“Did you look under the dunnage?”“No, sir: he could not have got under that.”“Probably he did,—made a hole in the ballast. He must have had some one to help him,” suggested the principal.“If any one assisted him it must have been Hugo; for, as he is a Spaniard, they were always very thick together.”“I have informed Don Francisco, the lawyer, that Raimundo had gone to Oran; and I suppose he will be on the lookout for him. I have also written to Manuel Raimundo in New York. He must get my letter in a day or two,” continued the principal. “It is a very singular case; and I should as soon have thought of Sheridan running away as Raimundo.”“He must have had a strong reason for doing so,” added the vice-principal of the Tritonia.The next morning Mr. Pelham directed Peaks to bring his prisoner into the cabin. Bill Stout did not remember what he had said the night before; but he had prepared a story for the present occasion.“Good-morning, Stout,” the vice-principal began. “How do you feel after your spree?”“Pretty well, sir; I did not drink but once, and I couldn’t help it then,” replied the culprit, beginningto reel off the explanation he had got up for the occasion.“You couldn’t help it? That’s very odd.”“No, sir. I met a couple of sailors on shore, and asked them if they could tell me where the American Prince lay. They pointed the steamer out to me, and they insisted that I should take a drink with them. They wouldn’t take No for an answer, and I couldn’t get off,” whined Bill; and he always whined when he was in a scrape.“Doubtless you gave them No for an answer,” laughed Mr. Pelham.“I certainly did; for I never take any thing. They made me drink brandy; but I put very little into the glass, and, as I am not used to liquor, it made me very drunk.”“One horn would not have made you as tipsy as you were, Stout. I think you had better tell that story to the other marines.”“I am telling the truth, sir: I wouldn’t lie about it.”“I think it is a bad plan to do so,” added the vice-principal. “Then you were coming on board, were you?”“Yes, sir: I wanted to see you, and own up.”“Oh! that was your plan, was it?” laughed Mr. Pelham, amused at the pickle into which the rascal was putting himself.“Yes, sir: I came from Valencia on purpose to give myself up to you. I’m sorry I ran away. I got sick of it in a day or two.”“This was after Lingall left you, I suppose.”“Yes, sir; but I was sorry for it before he left. We were almost murdered in the felucca; and I had a hard time of it.”“And this made you penitent.”“Yes, sir. I shall never run away again as long as I live.”“I hope you will not. And you came all the way across Spain and Portugal to give yourself up to me,” added Mr. Pelham. “You were so very anxious to surrender to me, that you were not content to stay a single night at the hotel with Mr. Lowington, who is my superior.”“I wanted to see you; and that’s the reason I left the hotel, and came on board last night,” protested the culprit.“That’s a very good story, Stout; but for your sake I am sorry it is only a story,” said the vice-principal.“It is the truth, sir. I hope to”—“No, no; stop!” interposed Mr. Pelham. “Don’t hope any thing, except to be a better fellow. Your story won’t hold water. I was at the gangway when you came on board, and you told me that you wanted to go to England.”“I didn’t know what I was saying,” pleaded Bill, taken aback by this answer.“Yes, you did: you were not as tipsy as you might have been; for, when I told you the steamer was not going to England, you called your boatman back. It is a plain case; and you can stay in the brig till the ship returns to Barcelona.”The lies did not help the case a particle; and somehow every thing seemed to go wrong with Bill Stout, but that was because he went wrong himself.The boats were sent on ashore for the Princes; and when they arrived all hands were called to attend the lecture in the grand saloon.“Young gentlemen, I am glad to meet you again,” the professor began. “I have said all I need say about the geography of the peninsula. Some of you have been through Spain and Portugal, and have seen that the natural features of the two countries are about the same. The lack of industry and enterprise has had the same result in both. The people are alike in one respect, at least: each hates the other intensely. ‘Strip a Spaniard of his virtues, and you have a Portuguese,’ says the Spanish proverb; but I fancy one is as good as the other. There are plenty of minerals in the ground, plenty of excellent soil, and plenty of fish in the waters of Portugal; but none of the sources of wealth and prosperity are used as in England, France, and the United States. The principal productions are wheat, wine, olive-oil, cork, wool, and fruit. Of the forty million dollars’ worth of agricultural products, twelve are in wine, ten in grain, and seven in wool. More than two-thirds of the exports are to England.“The population of Portugal is about four millions. It has few large towns, only two having over fifty thousand inhabitants. Lisbon has two hundred and seventy-five thousand, and Oporto about ninety thousand. Coimbra,—which has the only university in the country,—Elvas, Evora, Braga, and Setubal, are important towns. The kingdom has six provinces; and we are now in Estremadura, as we were yesterday morning, though it is not the same one.“The government is a constitutional monarchy, not very different from that of Spain. The present king is Luis II. The army consists of about eighteen thousand men; and the navy, of twenty-two steamersand twenty-five sailing vessels. The colonial possessions of Portugal have a population equal to the kingdom itself.“The money of Portugal will bother you.”At this statement Sheridan and Murray looked at each other, and laughed.“You seem to be pleased, Captain Sheridan,” said the professor. “Perhaps you have had some experience with Portuguese money.”“Yes, sir: I went into a store to buy some photographs; and, when I asked the price of them, the man told me it was one thousand six hundred and fortyreis. I concluded that I should be busted if I bought that dozen pictures.”“It takes about a million of thosereisto make a dollar,” added Murray.“But, when I came to figure up the price, I found it was only a dollar and sixty-four cents,” continued Sheridan.“A naval officer who dined a party of his friends in this very city, when he found the bill was twenty-seven thousand five hundredreis, exclaimed that he was utterly ruined, for he should never be able to pay such a bill; but it was only twenty-seven dollars and a half. You count thereisat the rate of ten to a cent of our money,—a thousand to a dollar. About all the copper and silver money has a number on the coin that indicates its value inreis. For large sums, the count is given inmilreis, which means a thousandreis. The gold most in use is the English sovereign, which passes for forty-five hundredreis. We will now give some attention to the history of the country.“Portugal makes no great figure on the map of Europe. Looking at this narrow strip of territory, one would naturally suppose that its history would not fill a very large volume. But small states have had their history told in voluminous works; and Portugal happens to belong to this class. There are histories and chronicles of this country in the Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, English, and Latin languages, not to mention some Arabic works which I have not had time to examine,” continued the professor, with a smile. “Some of these works consist of from ten to thirty volumes. Even the discoveries and conquests of this people in the East and West require quite a number of large volumes; for there was a time when Portugal filled a large place in the eye of the world, though that time was short, hardly reaching through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.“But the history of this country does not begin at all till the eleventh century. There was, indeed, the old Roman province of Lusitania, which corresponded very nearly in size with modern Portugal, except that the latter extends farther north and not so far east. The ancient Lusitanians were a warlike people; and a hundred and fifty years before our era they gave the Romans a great deal of trouble to conquer them. Under Viriathus, the most famous of all the Lusitanians, they routed several Roman armies; and might have held their ground for many years longer, if their hero had not been treacherously murdered by his own countrymen.“The lines of the old Roman provinces were not preserved after the barbarians, of whom I have spokento you before, entered the peninsula in the fifth century. The Arabs occupied this province with the rest of the peninsula, after the defeat and death of King Roderick, or Don Rodrigo, the last of the Gothic kings of Spain; and held it till near the close of the eleventh century, a part of it somewhat later. In 1095 Alfonso VI., of Castile and Leon, bestowed a part of what is now Portugal upon his son-in-law, Henri of Burgundy, who had fought with Alfonso against the Moors, and seemed to have the ability to protect the country given him from the inroad of the Moslems. The region granted to Henri extended only from the Minho to the Tagus; and its capital was Coimbra, for Lisbon was then a Moorish city. The new ruler was called a count; and he had the privilege of conquering the country as far south as the Guadiana. His son Dom Alfonso defeated the Moors in a great battle near the Tagus, and was proclaimed king of Portugal on the battle-field. This was in the time of the crusades; but Spain and Portugal had infidels enough to fight at home, without going to the Holy Land, where hundreds of thousands were sent to die by other countries of Europe. Other additions were made to the country during the next century; but since the middle of the thirteenth century, when Sancho II. died, no increase has been made in the peninsula. The wealth and power of Portugal at a later period were derived from her colonies in America, Asia, and Africa.“John I.—Dom João, in Portuguese—led an expedition against Ceuta, a Moorish stronghold just across the Strait of Gibraltar, and captured the place. After this began their wonderful series of discoveries, whichbrought the whole world to the knowledge of Europe. But the Portuguese were not the first to carry on commerce by sea. Though merchandise had been mainly transported by land in the East, there was some trade on the Mediterranean and Black Seas, and on the Indian Ocean. It does not appear that the Phœnicians, the Carthaginians, or the Greeks, ever sailed on the Baltic Sea; and, though the Romans explored some parts of it, they never went far enough to ascertain that it was bounded on all sides by land.“The Eastern Empire of the middle ages, with its capital at Constantinople, carried on a much more extensive commerce than was ever known to the Romans in the days of their universal dominion. At first the goods brought from the East Indies were imported into Europe from Alexandria; but, when Egypt was conquered by the Arabs, a new route had to be found. Merchandise was conveyed up the Indus as far as that great river was navigable, then across the land to the Oxus, now the Amoo, flowing into the Sea of Aral, but then having a channel to the Caspian. From the mouth of this river it was carried over the Caspian Sea, and up the Volga, to about the point where there is now a railroad connecting this river with the Don. Then it was transported by land again to the Don, and taken in vessels by the Black Sea to Constantinople. The Suez Canal, opened this present year, makes an easy and expeditious route by water for steamers, connecting all the ports of Europe with those of India.“During this period another commercial state was growing up. After the fall of the Roman empire, when the Huns under Attila were ravaging Italy, the inhabitantsof Venetia fled for safety to the group of islands near the northern shore of the Adriatic, and laid the foundation of the illustrious city and state of Venice. The people of the city soon began to fit out small merchant fleets, which they sent to all parts of the Mediterranean, and particularly to Syria and Egypt, after spices and other products of Arabia and India. Soon after, the city of Genoa, on the other side of Italy, became a rival of Venice in this trade, and Florence and Pisa followed their example; but the Venetians, having some natural advantages, outstripped their rivals in the end, and became a great military and commercial power. The crusades, in which others wasted life and treasure, were a source of wealth to these Italian cities. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the commerce of Europe was almost wholly confined to the Italians. The merchants of Italy scattered themselves in every kingdom; and the Lombards (for this was the name by which they were known) became the merchants and bankers everywhere. After a time, however, the commercial spirit began to develop itself, and to make progress in other parts of Europe; but, up to the fifteenth century, vessels were accustomed, in their voyages, to creep along the coast; and, though it was known that the magnetic needle points constantly to the North Pole, no use was made of this knowledge for purposes of navigation.“In 1415 the commercial spirit had reached Portugal; and the Ceuta expedition was undertaken quite as much in the interest of trade as of religion, for the place was held by pirates who were daily disturbing Portuguese commerce. Immense treasures fell to the victors as the reward of their enterprise.“Dom Henrique, or Henry, the son of King John, afterwards so famous in the history of his country, had a decided taste for study. He was an able mathematician, and made himself master of all the astronomy known to the Arabians, who were then the best mathematicians of Europe. Henry also studied the works of the ancients. At this period Ptolemy was the highest authority in geography; and he taught that the African Continent reached to the South Pole. But Henry had read the ancient accounts of the circumnavigation of Africa by the Phœnicians and others; and he believed, that, whether these voyages had or had not been made, good ships might sail around the southern point of the continent. If this could be done, the Portuguese would find a way to India by sea, and thus control the entire trade of the East.“The prince had many obstacles to overcome. Vessels in that day were not built for the open sea; and every headland and far-stretching cape seemed to be an impossible barrier. There was a notion that near the equator was a burning zone, where the very waters of the ocean actually boiled under the intolerable heat of the sun. A superstition also prevailed, that whoever doubled Cape Bojador—on the coast of Africa, about a thousand miles south of Lisbon—would never return; and it was feared that the burning zone would change those who entered it into negroes, thus dooming them to wear the black marks of their temerity to the grave.“The first voyage undertaken under the direction of Prince Henry was in 1419, and covered only five degrees of latitude. The expedition was driven out to sea and landed at a small island north-east of Madeira,which they named Porto Santo. The next year three vessels were sent for a longer voyage. This fleet reached the dreaded cape, and discovered Madeira. On the next voyage they doubled Cape Bojador; and, having exploded the superstition, in the course of a few years they advanced four hundred leagues farther, and discovered the Senegal River. Here they found men with woolly hair and skins as black as ebony; and they began to dread a nearer approach to the equator.“When they returned, their countrymen with one voice attempted to dissuade Prince Henry from any further attempts; but he would hear of no delay. He applied to Pope Eugene IV.; and, representing that his chief object was the pious wish to spread a knowledge of the Christian faith among the idolatrous people of Africa, he obtained a bull conferring on the people of Portugal the exclusive right to all the countries they had discovered, or might discover, between Cape Nun—about three hundred miles north of Cape Bojador—and India. Such a donation may appear ridiculous enough to us; but it was never doubted then that the pope had ample right to bestow such a gift; and for a long time all the powers of Europe considered the right of the Portuguese to be good, and acknowledged their title to almost the whole of Africa. About this time Prince Henry died, and little progress was made in discovery for some years. But the Portuguese had begun to push boldly out to sea, and had lost all dread of the burning zone.“In the reign of John II., from 1481 to 1495, discoveries were pushed with greater vigor than ever before.The Cape de Verde Islands were colonized; and the Portuguese ships, which had advanced to the coast of Guinea, began to return with cargoes of gold-dust, ivory, gums, and other valuable products. It was during the reign of this monarch that Columbus visited Lisbon, and offered his services to Portugal; and it appears that the king was inclined to listen to the plans of the great navigator, but he was dissuaded from doing so by his own courtiers.“The revenue derived at this time from the African coast became so important that John feared the vessels of other nations might be attracted to it. To prevent this, the voyages there were represented as being in the highest degree dangerous, and even impossible except in the peculiar vessels used by the Portuguese. The monarchs of Castile had some idea of what was going on, and were very eager to learn more; and in one case came very near succeeding. A Portuguese captain and two pilots, in the hope of a rich reward, set out for Castile to dispose of the desired information; but they were pursued by the king’s agents. When overtaken, they refused to return; but two of them were killed on the spot, and the other brought back to Evora and quartered. The attempt of a rich Spaniard, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, to build vessels in English ports for the African trade, turned out no better. King John reminded the English king, Edward IV., of the ancient alliance between the two crowns; and so these preparations were prohibited.“In 1497 a Portuguese fleet under Vasco de Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope, or the Cape of Storms as they called it then; and soon the voyagersbegan to hear the Arabian tongue spoken on the other shore of the continent, and found that they had nearly circumnavigated Africa. At length, with the aid of Mohammedan pilots, they passed the mouths of the Arabian and Persian Gulfs, and, stretching along the western coast of India, arrived, after a cruise of thirteen months, at Calicut, on the shore of Malabar, less than three hundred miles from the southern point of the peninsula.“The Court of Lisbon now appointed a viceroy to rule over new countries discovered. Expeditions followed each other in rapid succession; and, in less than half a century more, the Portuguese were masters of the entire trade of the Indian Ocean. Their flag floated triumphantly along the shores of Africa from Morocco to Abyssinia, and on the Asiatic coast from Arabia to Siam; not to mention the vast regions of Brazil, which this nation began to colonize about the same time. These conquests were not made without opposition; but the Portuguese were as remarkable for their valor as for their enterprise, in those days; and, for a time, their prowess was too much for their enemies in Africa, in India, and even in Europe. The Venetians, who had lost the trade between India and Europe, were of course their enemies; and the Sultan of Egypt was hostile when he found that he was about to lose the profitable trade that passed through Alexandria. These two powers joined hands; and the Venetians sent from Italy to the head of the Red Sea, at an immense expense, the materials for building a fleet to meet and destroy the Portuguese vessels on their passage to India. But, as soon as this fleet wasready for active operations, it was attacked and destroyed by the Portuguese navy.“Thus the Portuguese were masters of an empire on which the sun never set. It reached the height of its glory in the reign of John III., from 1521 to 1557. He was succeeded by his son Dom Sebastian, who made several expeditions against the Moors in Africa. In the last of these, he was utterly routed, his army destroyed, and he perished on the battle-field. This disaster seemed to initiate the decline of Portugal; and it continued to run down till it was only the shadow of its former greatness.“Concerning Dom Sebastian, a very remarkable superstition prevails, even at the present time, in Portugal, to the effect that he will return, resume the crown, and restore the realm to its former greatness. For nearly two hundred years this belief has existed, and was almost universal at one time, not among the ignorant only, but in all classes of society. It was claimed that he was not killed in the battle, though his body was recognized by his page, and that he will come back as the temporal Messiah of Portugal. Several persons have appeared who have claimed to be the prince, the most remarkable of whom turned up at Venice twenty years after the prince’s presumed death. He told a very straight story; but the Senate of Venice banished him, and he was afterwards imprisoned in Naples and Florence for insisting upon the truth of his statements. He finally died in Castile; and many believed that he was not an impostor. Several times have been fixed for his coming; but it is not likely that he will be able to put in an appearance, on account of thetwo hundred years that have elapsed since he was in the flesh.“As Sebastian did not come back from Africa, his uncle Henry assumed the crown; and at his death, as he had no direct heirs, Philip II., the Prince of Parma, and the Duchess of Braganza, claimed the throne, as did several others; but Philip settled the question by sending the Duke of Alva into Portugal, and taking forcible possession of the kingdom. In 1580, therefore, the whole of the vast dominions I have described were annexed to the Spanish empire. This connection lasted for sixty years; and the Portuguese call it ‘the sixty years’ captivity.’ During this time the people were never satisfied with their government, and in 1640 got up a revolution, and placed the Duke of Braganza on the throne, under the title of John IV. This was the beginning of the house of Braganza, which has held the throne up to the present time.“Even in the seventeenth century Portugal had fallen from her high estate. She had lost part of her possessions and all her prestige; and from that time till the present she has had no great weight in European politics. Some of her colonial territories returned to the original owners, while others were taken by the Dutch, the English, and the Spaniards. For two centuries the most remarkable events in her history have been misfortunes. In 1755 an earthquake destroyed half the city of Lisbon, and buried thirty thousand people under its ruins. It came in two shocks, the second of which left the city a pile of ruins. Thousands of men and women fled from the falling walls to the quays on the river. Suddenly the ground under themsank with all the crowd upon it; and not one of the bodies ever came up. At the same time all the boats and vessels, loaded down with fugitives from the ruin, were sucked in by a fearful whirlpool; and not a vestige of them returned to the surface.“Fifty-five years later came the French Revolution; in the results of which Portugal was involved. In 1807 she entered into an alliance with Great Britain; and Napoleon decided to wipe off the kingdom from the map of Europe. A French army was sent to Lisbon; and at its approach the Court left for Brazil, where it remained for several years. An English army arrived at Oporto the next year; and with these events began the peninsular war. The struggle lasted till 1812, and many great battles were fought in this kingdom. The country was desolated by the strife, and the sufferings of the people were extremely severe. Subscriptions were raised for them in England and elsewhere; and Sir Walter Scott wrote ‘The Vision of Don Roderick’ in aid of the sufferers.“In 1821 Brazil declared her independence; but it was not acknowledged by Portugal till 1825. After fourteen years of absence, the Court—John VI. was king, having succeeded to the throne while in Brazil—returned to Portugal. During this period the home kingdom was practically a colony of Brazil; and the people were dissatisfied with the arrangement. A constitution was made, and the king accepted it. He had left his son as regent of Brazil, and he was proclaimed emperor of that country as Pedro I. He was the father of the present emperor, Pedro II.“John VI. died in 1826. His legitimate successorwas Pedro of Brazil; but he gave the crown to his daughter Maria. Before she could get possession of it, Dom Miguel, a younger son of John VI., usurped the throne. As he did not pay much deference to the constitution, the people revolted; and civil war raged for several years. Pedro, having abdicated the crown of Brazil in favor of his son, came to Portugal in 1832, to look after the interests of his daughter. He was made regent,—Maria da Gloria was only thirteen years old,—and with the help of England, cleaned out the Miguelists two years later. The little queen was declared of age at fifteen, and took the oath to support the constitution. She died in 1853; and her son, Pedro V., became king when he was fifteen. But he lived only eight years after his accession, and was followed by his brother, Luis I., the present king. There have been several insurrections since the Miguelists were disposed of, but none since 1851. The royal family have secured the affections of the people; for the sons of Maria have proved to be wise and sensible men. The finances are in bad condition; for the expense of the government exceeds the income every year. Now you have heard, and you may go and see for yourselves.”
WHAT PORTUGAL HAS DONE IN THE WORLD.
Mr. Lowingtonand the two vice-principals had a hearty laugh over the misadventure of poor Bill Stout, and then discussed their plans for the future. The Prince had been in the river five days; and the Josephines and Tritonias were all ready to start for Badajos the next morning. It was Friday night; and if the party left the next morning they would be obliged to remain over Sunday at Badajos; or, if they travelled all the next night, they would arrive at Toledo on Sunday morning, and this was no place for them to be on that day. It was decided that they should remain on board of the Prince till Monday morning, and that the Princes should go on board the next morning to hear Professor’s Mapps’s lecture on Portugal.
“Have you heard any thing of Raimundo or Lingall?” asked the principal.
“Only what we got out of Stout,” replied Mr. Pelham. “But he was too tipsy to tell a very straight story.”
“I don’t see how he got tipsy so quick; for he must have reached the Prince within fifteen or twenty minutesafter he left this hotel,” added Mr. Lowington. “However, he told me all he knew—at least, I suppose he did—about the others who ran away with him. It seems that Raimundo did not leave the Tritonia, and must have stowed himself away in the hold.”
“But we searched the hold very thoroughly,” said Mr. Pelham.
“Did you look under the dunnage?”
“No, sir: he could not have got under that.”
“Probably he did,—made a hole in the ballast. He must have had some one to help him,” suggested the principal.
“If any one assisted him it must have been Hugo; for, as he is a Spaniard, they were always very thick together.”
“I have informed Don Francisco, the lawyer, that Raimundo had gone to Oran; and I suppose he will be on the lookout for him. I have also written to Manuel Raimundo in New York. He must get my letter in a day or two,” continued the principal. “It is a very singular case; and I should as soon have thought of Sheridan running away as Raimundo.”
“He must have had a strong reason for doing so,” added the vice-principal of the Tritonia.
The next morning Mr. Pelham directed Peaks to bring his prisoner into the cabin. Bill Stout did not remember what he had said the night before; but he had prepared a story for the present occasion.
“Good-morning, Stout,” the vice-principal began. “How do you feel after your spree?”
“Pretty well, sir; I did not drink but once, and I couldn’t help it then,” replied the culprit, beginningto reel off the explanation he had got up for the occasion.
“You couldn’t help it? That’s very odd.”
“No, sir. I met a couple of sailors on shore, and asked them if they could tell me where the American Prince lay. They pointed the steamer out to me, and they insisted that I should take a drink with them. They wouldn’t take No for an answer, and I couldn’t get off,” whined Bill; and he always whined when he was in a scrape.
“Doubtless you gave them No for an answer,” laughed Mr. Pelham.
“I certainly did; for I never take any thing. They made me drink brandy; but I put very little into the glass, and, as I am not used to liquor, it made me very drunk.”
“One horn would not have made you as tipsy as you were, Stout. I think you had better tell that story to the other marines.”
“I am telling the truth, sir: I wouldn’t lie about it.”
“I think it is a bad plan to do so,” added the vice-principal. “Then you were coming on board, were you?”
“Yes, sir: I wanted to see you, and own up.”
“Oh! that was your plan, was it?” laughed Mr. Pelham, amused at the pickle into which the rascal was putting himself.
“Yes, sir: I came from Valencia on purpose to give myself up to you. I’m sorry I ran away. I got sick of it in a day or two.”
“This was after Lingall left you, I suppose.”
“Yes, sir; but I was sorry for it before he left. We were almost murdered in the felucca; and I had a hard time of it.”
“And this made you penitent.”
“Yes, sir. I shall never run away again as long as I live.”
“I hope you will not. And you came all the way across Spain and Portugal to give yourself up to me,” added Mr. Pelham. “You were so very anxious to surrender to me, that you were not content to stay a single night at the hotel with Mr. Lowington, who is my superior.”
“I wanted to see you; and that’s the reason I left the hotel, and came on board last night,” protested the culprit.
“That’s a very good story, Stout; but for your sake I am sorry it is only a story,” said the vice-principal.
“It is the truth, sir. I hope to”—
“No, no; stop!” interposed Mr. Pelham. “Don’t hope any thing, except to be a better fellow. Your story won’t hold water. I was at the gangway when you came on board, and you told me that you wanted to go to England.”
“I didn’t know what I was saying,” pleaded Bill, taken aback by this answer.
“Yes, you did: you were not as tipsy as you might have been; for, when I told you the steamer was not going to England, you called your boatman back. It is a plain case; and you can stay in the brig till the ship returns to Barcelona.”
The lies did not help the case a particle; and somehow every thing seemed to go wrong with Bill Stout, but that was because he went wrong himself.
The boats were sent on ashore for the Princes; and when they arrived all hands were called to attend the lecture in the grand saloon.
“Young gentlemen, I am glad to meet you again,” the professor began. “I have said all I need say about the geography of the peninsula. Some of you have been through Spain and Portugal, and have seen that the natural features of the two countries are about the same. The lack of industry and enterprise has had the same result in both. The people are alike in one respect, at least: each hates the other intensely. ‘Strip a Spaniard of his virtues, and you have a Portuguese,’ says the Spanish proverb; but I fancy one is as good as the other. There are plenty of minerals in the ground, plenty of excellent soil, and plenty of fish in the waters of Portugal; but none of the sources of wealth and prosperity are used as in England, France, and the United States. The principal productions are wheat, wine, olive-oil, cork, wool, and fruit. Of the forty million dollars’ worth of agricultural products, twelve are in wine, ten in grain, and seven in wool. More than two-thirds of the exports are to England.
“The population of Portugal is about four millions. It has few large towns, only two having over fifty thousand inhabitants. Lisbon has two hundred and seventy-five thousand, and Oporto about ninety thousand. Coimbra,—which has the only university in the country,—Elvas, Evora, Braga, and Setubal, are important towns. The kingdom has six provinces; and we are now in Estremadura, as we were yesterday morning, though it is not the same one.
“The government is a constitutional monarchy, not very different from that of Spain. The present king is Luis II. The army consists of about eighteen thousand men; and the navy, of twenty-two steamersand twenty-five sailing vessels. The colonial possessions of Portugal have a population equal to the kingdom itself.
“The money of Portugal will bother you.”
At this statement Sheridan and Murray looked at each other, and laughed.
“You seem to be pleased, Captain Sheridan,” said the professor. “Perhaps you have had some experience with Portuguese money.”
“Yes, sir: I went into a store to buy some photographs; and, when I asked the price of them, the man told me it was one thousand six hundred and fortyreis. I concluded that I should be busted if I bought that dozen pictures.”
“It takes about a million of thosereisto make a dollar,” added Murray.
“But, when I came to figure up the price, I found it was only a dollar and sixty-four cents,” continued Sheridan.
“A naval officer who dined a party of his friends in this very city, when he found the bill was twenty-seven thousand five hundredreis, exclaimed that he was utterly ruined, for he should never be able to pay such a bill; but it was only twenty-seven dollars and a half. You count thereisat the rate of ten to a cent of our money,—a thousand to a dollar. About all the copper and silver money has a number on the coin that indicates its value inreis. For large sums, the count is given inmilreis, which means a thousandreis. The gold most in use is the English sovereign, which passes for forty-five hundredreis. We will now give some attention to the history of the country.
“Portugal makes no great figure on the map of Europe. Looking at this narrow strip of territory, one would naturally suppose that its history would not fill a very large volume. But small states have had their history told in voluminous works; and Portugal happens to belong to this class. There are histories and chronicles of this country in the Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, English, and Latin languages, not to mention some Arabic works which I have not had time to examine,” continued the professor, with a smile. “Some of these works consist of from ten to thirty volumes. Even the discoveries and conquests of this people in the East and West require quite a number of large volumes; for there was a time when Portugal filled a large place in the eye of the world, though that time was short, hardly reaching through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
“But the history of this country does not begin at all till the eleventh century. There was, indeed, the old Roman province of Lusitania, which corresponded very nearly in size with modern Portugal, except that the latter extends farther north and not so far east. The ancient Lusitanians were a warlike people; and a hundred and fifty years before our era they gave the Romans a great deal of trouble to conquer them. Under Viriathus, the most famous of all the Lusitanians, they routed several Roman armies; and might have held their ground for many years longer, if their hero had not been treacherously murdered by his own countrymen.
“The lines of the old Roman provinces were not preserved after the barbarians, of whom I have spokento you before, entered the peninsula in the fifth century. The Arabs occupied this province with the rest of the peninsula, after the defeat and death of King Roderick, or Don Rodrigo, the last of the Gothic kings of Spain; and held it till near the close of the eleventh century, a part of it somewhat later. In 1095 Alfonso VI., of Castile and Leon, bestowed a part of what is now Portugal upon his son-in-law, Henri of Burgundy, who had fought with Alfonso against the Moors, and seemed to have the ability to protect the country given him from the inroad of the Moslems. The region granted to Henri extended only from the Minho to the Tagus; and its capital was Coimbra, for Lisbon was then a Moorish city. The new ruler was called a count; and he had the privilege of conquering the country as far south as the Guadiana. His son Dom Alfonso defeated the Moors in a great battle near the Tagus, and was proclaimed king of Portugal on the battle-field. This was in the time of the crusades; but Spain and Portugal had infidels enough to fight at home, without going to the Holy Land, where hundreds of thousands were sent to die by other countries of Europe. Other additions were made to the country during the next century; but since the middle of the thirteenth century, when Sancho II. died, no increase has been made in the peninsula. The wealth and power of Portugal at a later period were derived from her colonies in America, Asia, and Africa.
“John I.—Dom João, in Portuguese—led an expedition against Ceuta, a Moorish stronghold just across the Strait of Gibraltar, and captured the place. After this began their wonderful series of discoveries, whichbrought the whole world to the knowledge of Europe. But the Portuguese were not the first to carry on commerce by sea. Though merchandise had been mainly transported by land in the East, there was some trade on the Mediterranean and Black Seas, and on the Indian Ocean. It does not appear that the Phœnicians, the Carthaginians, or the Greeks, ever sailed on the Baltic Sea; and, though the Romans explored some parts of it, they never went far enough to ascertain that it was bounded on all sides by land.
“The Eastern Empire of the middle ages, with its capital at Constantinople, carried on a much more extensive commerce than was ever known to the Romans in the days of their universal dominion. At first the goods brought from the East Indies were imported into Europe from Alexandria; but, when Egypt was conquered by the Arabs, a new route had to be found. Merchandise was conveyed up the Indus as far as that great river was navigable, then across the land to the Oxus, now the Amoo, flowing into the Sea of Aral, but then having a channel to the Caspian. From the mouth of this river it was carried over the Caspian Sea, and up the Volga, to about the point where there is now a railroad connecting this river with the Don. Then it was transported by land again to the Don, and taken in vessels by the Black Sea to Constantinople. The Suez Canal, opened this present year, makes an easy and expeditious route by water for steamers, connecting all the ports of Europe with those of India.
“During this period another commercial state was growing up. After the fall of the Roman empire, when the Huns under Attila were ravaging Italy, the inhabitantsof Venetia fled for safety to the group of islands near the northern shore of the Adriatic, and laid the foundation of the illustrious city and state of Venice. The people of the city soon began to fit out small merchant fleets, which they sent to all parts of the Mediterranean, and particularly to Syria and Egypt, after spices and other products of Arabia and India. Soon after, the city of Genoa, on the other side of Italy, became a rival of Venice in this trade, and Florence and Pisa followed their example; but the Venetians, having some natural advantages, outstripped their rivals in the end, and became a great military and commercial power. The crusades, in which others wasted life and treasure, were a source of wealth to these Italian cities. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the commerce of Europe was almost wholly confined to the Italians. The merchants of Italy scattered themselves in every kingdom; and the Lombards (for this was the name by which they were known) became the merchants and bankers everywhere. After a time, however, the commercial spirit began to develop itself, and to make progress in other parts of Europe; but, up to the fifteenth century, vessels were accustomed, in their voyages, to creep along the coast; and, though it was known that the magnetic needle points constantly to the North Pole, no use was made of this knowledge for purposes of navigation.
“In 1415 the commercial spirit had reached Portugal; and the Ceuta expedition was undertaken quite as much in the interest of trade as of religion, for the place was held by pirates who were daily disturbing Portuguese commerce. Immense treasures fell to the victors as the reward of their enterprise.
“Dom Henrique, or Henry, the son of King John, afterwards so famous in the history of his country, had a decided taste for study. He was an able mathematician, and made himself master of all the astronomy known to the Arabians, who were then the best mathematicians of Europe. Henry also studied the works of the ancients. At this period Ptolemy was the highest authority in geography; and he taught that the African Continent reached to the South Pole. But Henry had read the ancient accounts of the circumnavigation of Africa by the Phœnicians and others; and he believed, that, whether these voyages had or had not been made, good ships might sail around the southern point of the continent. If this could be done, the Portuguese would find a way to India by sea, and thus control the entire trade of the East.
“The prince had many obstacles to overcome. Vessels in that day were not built for the open sea; and every headland and far-stretching cape seemed to be an impossible barrier. There was a notion that near the equator was a burning zone, where the very waters of the ocean actually boiled under the intolerable heat of the sun. A superstition also prevailed, that whoever doubled Cape Bojador—on the coast of Africa, about a thousand miles south of Lisbon—would never return; and it was feared that the burning zone would change those who entered it into negroes, thus dooming them to wear the black marks of their temerity to the grave.
“The first voyage undertaken under the direction of Prince Henry was in 1419, and covered only five degrees of latitude. The expedition was driven out to sea and landed at a small island north-east of Madeira,which they named Porto Santo. The next year three vessels were sent for a longer voyage. This fleet reached the dreaded cape, and discovered Madeira. On the next voyage they doubled Cape Bojador; and, having exploded the superstition, in the course of a few years they advanced four hundred leagues farther, and discovered the Senegal River. Here they found men with woolly hair and skins as black as ebony; and they began to dread a nearer approach to the equator.
“When they returned, their countrymen with one voice attempted to dissuade Prince Henry from any further attempts; but he would hear of no delay. He applied to Pope Eugene IV.; and, representing that his chief object was the pious wish to spread a knowledge of the Christian faith among the idolatrous people of Africa, he obtained a bull conferring on the people of Portugal the exclusive right to all the countries they had discovered, or might discover, between Cape Nun—about three hundred miles north of Cape Bojador—and India. Such a donation may appear ridiculous enough to us; but it was never doubted then that the pope had ample right to bestow such a gift; and for a long time all the powers of Europe considered the right of the Portuguese to be good, and acknowledged their title to almost the whole of Africa. About this time Prince Henry died, and little progress was made in discovery for some years. But the Portuguese had begun to push boldly out to sea, and had lost all dread of the burning zone.
“In the reign of John II., from 1481 to 1495, discoveries were pushed with greater vigor than ever before.The Cape de Verde Islands were colonized; and the Portuguese ships, which had advanced to the coast of Guinea, began to return with cargoes of gold-dust, ivory, gums, and other valuable products. It was during the reign of this monarch that Columbus visited Lisbon, and offered his services to Portugal; and it appears that the king was inclined to listen to the plans of the great navigator, but he was dissuaded from doing so by his own courtiers.
“The revenue derived at this time from the African coast became so important that John feared the vessels of other nations might be attracted to it. To prevent this, the voyages there were represented as being in the highest degree dangerous, and even impossible except in the peculiar vessels used by the Portuguese. The monarchs of Castile had some idea of what was going on, and were very eager to learn more; and in one case came very near succeeding. A Portuguese captain and two pilots, in the hope of a rich reward, set out for Castile to dispose of the desired information; but they were pursued by the king’s agents. When overtaken, they refused to return; but two of them were killed on the spot, and the other brought back to Evora and quartered. The attempt of a rich Spaniard, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, to build vessels in English ports for the African trade, turned out no better. King John reminded the English king, Edward IV., of the ancient alliance between the two crowns; and so these preparations were prohibited.
“In 1497 a Portuguese fleet under Vasco de Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope, or the Cape of Storms as they called it then; and soon the voyagersbegan to hear the Arabian tongue spoken on the other shore of the continent, and found that they had nearly circumnavigated Africa. At length, with the aid of Mohammedan pilots, they passed the mouths of the Arabian and Persian Gulfs, and, stretching along the western coast of India, arrived, after a cruise of thirteen months, at Calicut, on the shore of Malabar, less than three hundred miles from the southern point of the peninsula.
“The Court of Lisbon now appointed a viceroy to rule over new countries discovered. Expeditions followed each other in rapid succession; and, in less than half a century more, the Portuguese were masters of the entire trade of the Indian Ocean. Their flag floated triumphantly along the shores of Africa from Morocco to Abyssinia, and on the Asiatic coast from Arabia to Siam; not to mention the vast regions of Brazil, which this nation began to colonize about the same time. These conquests were not made without opposition; but the Portuguese were as remarkable for their valor as for their enterprise, in those days; and, for a time, their prowess was too much for their enemies in Africa, in India, and even in Europe. The Venetians, who had lost the trade between India and Europe, were of course their enemies; and the Sultan of Egypt was hostile when he found that he was about to lose the profitable trade that passed through Alexandria. These two powers joined hands; and the Venetians sent from Italy to the head of the Red Sea, at an immense expense, the materials for building a fleet to meet and destroy the Portuguese vessels on their passage to India. But, as soon as this fleet wasready for active operations, it was attacked and destroyed by the Portuguese navy.
“Thus the Portuguese were masters of an empire on which the sun never set. It reached the height of its glory in the reign of John III., from 1521 to 1557. He was succeeded by his son Dom Sebastian, who made several expeditions against the Moors in Africa. In the last of these, he was utterly routed, his army destroyed, and he perished on the battle-field. This disaster seemed to initiate the decline of Portugal; and it continued to run down till it was only the shadow of its former greatness.
“Concerning Dom Sebastian, a very remarkable superstition prevails, even at the present time, in Portugal, to the effect that he will return, resume the crown, and restore the realm to its former greatness. For nearly two hundred years this belief has existed, and was almost universal at one time, not among the ignorant only, but in all classes of society. It was claimed that he was not killed in the battle, though his body was recognized by his page, and that he will come back as the temporal Messiah of Portugal. Several persons have appeared who have claimed to be the prince, the most remarkable of whom turned up at Venice twenty years after the prince’s presumed death. He told a very straight story; but the Senate of Venice banished him, and he was afterwards imprisoned in Naples and Florence for insisting upon the truth of his statements. He finally died in Castile; and many believed that he was not an impostor. Several times have been fixed for his coming; but it is not likely that he will be able to put in an appearance, on account of thetwo hundred years that have elapsed since he was in the flesh.
“As Sebastian did not come back from Africa, his uncle Henry assumed the crown; and at his death, as he had no direct heirs, Philip II., the Prince of Parma, and the Duchess of Braganza, claimed the throne, as did several others; but Philip settled the question by sending the Duke of Alva into Portugal, and taking forcible possession of the kingdom. In 1580, therefore, the whole of the vast dominions I have described were annexed to the Spanish empire. This connection lasted for sixty years; and the Portuguese call it ‘the sixty years’ captivity.’ During this time the people were never satisfied with their government, and in 1640 got up a revolution, and placed the Duke of Braganza on the throne, under the title of John IV. This was the beginning of the house of Braganza, which has held the throne up to the present time.
“Even in the seventeenth century Portugal had fallen from her high estate. She had lost part of her possessions and all her prestige; and from that time till the present she has had no great weight in European politics. Some of her colonial territories returned to the original owners, while others were taken by the Dutch, the English, and the Spaniards. For two centuries the most remarkable events in her history have been misfortunes. In 1755 an earthquake destroyed half the city of Lisbon, and buried thirty thousand people under its ruins. It came in two shocks, the second of which left the city a pile of ruins. Thousands of men and women fled from the falling walls to the quays on the river. Suddenly the ground under themsank with all the crowd upon it; and not one of the bodies ever came up. At the same time all the boats and vessels, loaded down with fugitives from the ruin, were sucked in by a fearful whirlpool; and not a vestige of them returned to the surface.
“Fifty-five years later came the French Revolution; in the results of which Portugal was involved. In 1807 she entered into an alliance with Great Britain; and Napoleon decided to wipe off the kingdom from the map of Europe. A French army was sent to Lisbon; and at its approach the Court left for Brazil, where it remained for several years. An English army arrived at Oporto the next year; and with these events began the peninsular war. The struggle lasted till 1812, and many great battles were fought in this kingdom. The country was desolated by the strife, and the sufferings of the people were extremely severe. Subscriptions were raised for them in England and elsewhere; and Sir Walter Scott wrote ‘The Vision of Don Roderick’ in aid of the sufferers.
“In 1821 Brazil declared her independence; but it was not acknowledged by Portugal till 1825. After fourteen years of absence, the Court—John VI. was king, having succeeded to the throne while in Brazil—returned to Portugal. During this period the home kingdom was practically a colony of Brazil; and the people were dissatisfied with the arrangement. A constitution was made, and the king accepted it. He had left his son as regent of Brazil, and he was proclaimed emperor of that country as Pedro I. He was the father of the present emperor, Pedro II.
“John VI. died in 1826. His legitimate successorwas Pedro of Brazil; but he gave the crown to his daughter Maria. Before she could get possession of it, Dom Miguel, a younger son of John VI., usurped the throne. As he did not pay much deference to the constitution, the people revolted; and civil war raged for several years. Pedro, having abdicated the crown of Brazil in favor of his son, came to Portugal in 1832, to look after the interests of his daughter. He was made regent,—Maria da Gloria was only thirteen years old,—and with the help of England, cleaned out the Miguelists two years later. The little queen was declared of age at fifteen, and took the oath to support the constitution. She died in 1853; and her son, Pedro V., became king when he was fifteen. But he lived only eight years after his accession, and was followed by his brother, Luis I., the present king. There have been several insurrections since the Miguelists were disposed of, but none since 1851. The royal family have secured the affections of the people; for the sons of Maria have proved to be wise and sensible men. The finances are in bad condition; for the expense of the government exceeds the income every year. Now you have heard, and you may go and see for yourselves.”
CHAPTER XX.LISBON AND ITS SURROUNDINGS.Theroom in the Hotel Braganza occupied by Sheridan and Murray was an excellent one, so far as the situation was concerned; for it commanded a beautiful view of the Tagus and the surrounding country.“I should think this hotel had been a fort some time,” said Sheridan, when they rose in the morning. “Those windows look like port-holes for cannon.”“It is the house of Braganza, and ought to be a royal hotel; but it is not very elegantly furnished. There are no towels here. Where is the bell?”“I noticed that there was one outside of each room on this floor. Here is the bell-pull. It is an original way to fix the bells,” added Sheridan. “The bell-boys must come up three flights of stairs in order to hear them ring.”“But, if the waiter don’t speak English, what will you ask for?” laughed Murray.“I have a book of four languages that I picked up in Madrid,—French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese,” said the captain, as he took the volume from his bag. “Here it is. ‘Une serviette,’—that’s a napkin, but it will do as well,—‘um guardinapo.’”The bell was rung, and a chambermaid answered it. The word brought the towels, but Sheridan pointed to the wash-stand; and the pantomime would have answered just as well as speech, for the woman could see what was wanting. When they were dressed, Dr. Winstock came to the door, and invited them to visit the top of the house, which commanded a view even more extensive than the window.“The Tagus runs about east and west here,” said he. “It is about a mile wide, but widens out into a broad bay opposite the city. There is no finer harbor in the world. The old part of the city, between the castle and the river, was not destroyed by the earthquake. Between us and the castle is a small region of straight streets; and this is the part that was destroyed. On the river below us are the marine arsenal and the custom-house, with thePraca do Commerciobetween them.”“The what?” asked Murray.“Pracais the Portuguese for ‘square;’ ‘Commercial Square’ in English will cover it. This one has several names; and the English, who are in great force in Lisbon, call it Black Horse Square. There is very little to see in Lisbon. Orders have come up for all hands to be on the quay at nine o’clock, to go on board the Prince for the lecture; and we must breakfast first.”After the lecture the Princes went on shore again. The doctor with his pupils took a carriage, and proceeded to “do” the city. Their first point was the square they had seen from the housetop. On one side of it was an arch supporting a clock-tower. In thecentre was an equestrian statue of Joseph I., erected by the inhabitants out of gratitude to the king and the Marquis of Pombal for their efforts to rebuild the city after the great earthquake. On the pedestal is an effigy of the marquis, who was the king’s minister, as powerful as he was unpopular. The populace cut his head out of the statue when the king died, but it was restored fifty years later.“This street,” said the doctor, indicating the one over which the ornamental arch was extended, “is theRua Augusta.”“I think the Commercial is as fine a square as I have seen in Europe,” added Sheridan.“Most people agree with you. Now, if we pass through theRua Augusta, we shall come to thePraca do Rocio, which is also a beautiful square. There are three other streets running parallel with this; on one side is Gold, and on the other Silver Street.”“They build their houses very high for an earthquaky country,” said Murray.“And this is the very spot which was sunk. I suppose they don’t expect to have another convulsion.”The carriage proceeded into the square, and then to another, only a couple of blocks from it, in which was the fruit-market. It was lined with trees, with a fountain in the centre. All around it were men and women selling fruit and other commodities. It was a lively scene. In this square they saw a Portuguese cart of the model that was probably used by the Moors. The wheels do not revolve on the axle, but the axle turns with the wheels, as in a child’s tin wagon, and creak and groan fearfully as they do so.As they passed through the Campo Santa Anna, the doctor pointed out theCirco dos Touros, or bull-ring.“But a bull-fight here is a tame affair compared with those in Spain,” he explained. “They do not kill the bull, nor are any horses gored to death; for the horns of the animal are tipped with large wooden balls. It is a rather lively affair, and will answer very well if you have not seen the real thing. It is said that there are seven hills in Lisbon, as in Rome; but this is a vanity of many other cities. There are many hills in Lisbon, however; and there seems to be a church or a convent on every one of them. This is thePassio Publico; and it is crowded with people on a warm evening,” continued the doctor, as they came to a long and narrow park. “It is thepradoof Lisbon.“I shall ask you to visit only one church in this city, unless you desire to see more; and this is the one,” said the doctor, as the carriage stopped at a plain building. “This is St. Roque. It is said that Dom John V., when he visited this church, was greatly mortified at the mean appearance of the chapel of his patron saint. He ordered one to be prepared in Rome, of the richest materials. When it was done, mass was said in it by the pope, Benedict XIV.; and then it was taken to pieces, and sent to Lisbon, where it was again set up as you will find it.”The party entered the church, and the attendant gave each of them a printed sheet on which was a description of the chapel. It proved to be a rather small recess; but the mosaics of the baptism of Christ in the Jordan by John, and other scriptural designs, are of the highest order of merit. The floor, ceiling, andsides are of the same costly work, the richest marbles and gems being used. The chapel contains eight columns of lapis-lazuli. The whole of this is said to have cost fourteen millioncrusados, over eight million dollars; but others say only one millioncrusados, and probably the last sum is nearer the truth.The next day was Sunday; and in the morning the United States steamer Franklin—the largest in the service—came into the river. There was a Portuguese frigate off the marine arsenal; and what with saluting the flag of Portugal, and the return-salute, saluting Mr. Lewis the American minister, and saluting Mr. Diamond the American consul, when each visited the ship, the guns of the great vessel were blazing away about all the forenoon. But the students were proud of the ship; and they did not object to any amount of gun-firing, even on Sunday. In the afternoon, some of them went to the cathedral, which was formerly a mosque, and to some of the other churches. All hands attended service on board of the American Prince at eleven.The next morning the Josephines and Tritonias started on their tour through the peninsula to Barcelona; and the ship’s company went on board of the steamer. Regular discipline was restored; but the business of sight-seeing was continued for two days more. The doctor conducted his little party to the palace of theNecessidades.“What a name for a palace!” exclaimed Murray. “I suppose that jaw-breaker means ‘necessities.’”“That is just what it means. Circumstances often give names to palaces and other things; and it was soin this case. A weaver brought an image of the Blessed Virgin from a place on the west coast, from which he fled to escape the plague. With money he begged of the pious, he built a small chapel for the image, near this spot. Like so many of these virgins, it wrought the most wonderful miracles, healing the sick, restoring the lame, and opening the eyes of the blind; and many people came to it in their ‘necessities,’ for relief. Dom John V. believed in it, and built a handsome church, with a convent attached to it, for the blessed image. It had restored his health once, and he built this palace near it, that it might be handy for his ‘necessities.’ During the long sickness preceding his death, he had it brought to the palace with royal honors, and kept it there in state, taking it with him wherever he went.“This square is theFraca Alcantara,” continued the doctor, when they came from the palace. “There are plenty of fountains in the city, nearly every public square being supplied with one. When I was here before, there were more water-carriers than now; and they were all men of Gallicia, as in Madrid. Three thousand of them used to be employed in supplying the inhabitants with water; but now it is probably conveyed into most of the houses in pipes. You can tell these men from the native Portuguese, because they carry their burden, whatever it may be, on their shoulders instead of their heads. A proverb here is to the effect that God made the Portuguese first, and then the Gallego to wait upon him. Most of the male servants in houses come from Gallicia. They are largely the porters and laborers, for the natives are too proud to carry burdens: it is too near like the workof a mule or a donkey. It is said, that when the French approached Coimbra in the peninsular war, and the people deserted the city, the men would not carry their valuables with them, so great was their prejudice against bundles; and every thing was lost except what the women could take with them. They could not disgrace themselves to save their property.”“No wonder the country is poor,” added Sheridan.“Now we will cross the bridge, and ride through Buenos Ayres, where many of the wealthy people live, and some of the ambassadors,” continued the doctor.They had a pleasant ride, passing the English cemetery in which Henry Fielding and Dr. Doddridge were buried. On the return, they passed the principal cemetery of the city. It is called thePrazeres, which means “pleasures;” a name it obtained by accident, and not because it was considered appropriate.The following day was set apart for an excursion to Cintra and Mafra, and a sufficient number of omnibuses were sent to a point on the north-west road; for the students were to walk over the aqueduct in order to see that wonderful work. The party ascended some stone steps to a large hall which contains the reservoir. It is near thePraca do Rato, and not far from the centre of the city. The party then entered the arched gallery, eight feet high and five feet wide, through which the water-ways are led. In the middle is a paved pathway for foot-passengers. On either side of it is a channel in the masonry, nine inches wide and a foot deep in the centre, rounded at the bottom. It looked like a small affair for the supply of a great city. The aqueduct is carried on a range of archesover the valley of the Alcantara, which is the name of the little stream that flows into the Tagus near theNecessidades. The highest of these arches are two hundred and sixty-three feet above the river. A causeway was built on each side of it, forming a bridge to the villages in the suburbs; but its use was discontinued because so many people committed suicide by throwing themselves from the dizzy height, or were possibly murdered by robbers. This aqueduct was erected by Dom John V., and it is the pride of the city. The water comes from springs six miles away.“Why did we have those water-jars in the hotel if they have spring-water?” asked Sheridan, as they walked along the gallery.“They think the water is better kept in those jars,” replied Dr. Winstock; “and I believe they are right; at least, they would be if they would keep the ants out of them.”On the other side of the valley the excursionists loaded themselves into the omnibuses, and were soon on their way to Cintra, which is fourteen miles from Lisbon. It is a sort of Versailles, Potsdam, or Windsor, where the court resides during a part of the year, and where all the wealthy and fashionable people spend their summers. It is a beautiful drive, with many pleasant villages, palaces, country-seats, groves, and gardens by the way.“Here we are,” said the doctor to his young companions, when the carriage in which they had come stopped before Victor’s Hotel. “Southey said this was the most blessed spot in the habitable world. Byron sang with equal enthusiasm; and the words of thesepoets have made the place famous in England. Our American guide-book does not even mention it.”Cintra is a town of forty-five hundred inhabitants. It is built on the southern end of the Estrella Mountains, at an elevation of from eighteen hundred to three thousand feet. It is only a few miles from the seashore, and the Atlantic may be seen from its hills. The party of the doctor first went to the royal palace. It was the Alhambra of the Moorish monarchs, and has been a favorite residence of the Christian kings. Dom Sebastian held his last court here when he left for Africa. The students wandered through its numerous apartments, laughed at its magpie saloon, and thought of the kings who had dwelt within its walls. They were more pleased with the gardens, though it was winter; for there was a great deal in them that was curious and interesting.The Pena Convent was the next attraction. All convents have been suppressed in Portugal, as in Spain; but the Gothic building has been repaired, and it looks more like a castle than a religious house. Its garden and grounds must be magnificent in the proper season. The view from the highest point presents an almost boundless panorama of country, river, and ocean. The Moorish castle that commands the town was examined; and the next thing was the Cork Convent. It is an edifice built in and on the rock, and contains twenty cells, each of which is lined with cork to keep out the dampness of the rock on which it is founded. These cells are dungeons five feet square, with doors so low that even the shortest of the students had to stoop to enter them.A country-house in Portugal is aquinta; and that of Dom John de Castro, the great navigator and the viceroy of the Indies, is calledPenha Verda, and is still in the hands of his descendants. The gardens are very pretty; and the first orange-trees set out in Europe were on this estate. In the garden is the chapel built by him on his return from the Indies, in 1542, and the rock with six trees on it, which was the only reward he desired for the conquest of the Island of Diu, in Hindostan. He died in the arms of St. Francis Xavier, in 1548, protesting that he had spent every thing he had in supplying the wants of his comrades in arms. He declared that he had not a change of linen, or money enough to buy him a chicken for his dinner. Most of the enormous wealth of the Indies had passed through his hands; and he had not stolen avintemof it. What an example for modern office-holders! When he was dead, only onevintem—about two cents—was found in his coffers. His descendants were prohibited from deriving any profit from the cultivation of this property.The rest of the time was given to wandering about among the estates of the wealthy men, including some of the foreign ministers, who havequintasin Cintra.After a lunch, the excursionists proceeded to Mafra, about ten miles from Cintra. This place contains an enormous pile of buildings on the plan of the Escurial, and rather larger, if any thing. It was erected by John V. to carry out his vow to change the poorest monastery into the most magnificent one when Heaven would give him a son. It contains eight hundred and sixty-six apartments; but the only one of interest tothe students was the audience-chamber, preserved as it was when the palace was inhabited by Dom John.It was late in the evening when the Princes returned to Lisbon; and they were rather glad to learn that the ship was to sail for Barcelona after breakfast the next morning.“I am rather sorry that we do not go to Oporto,” said the doctor, when the captain informed him of the order. “It is an old city set on a hillside; but it would not interest the students any more than Lisbon has.”“By the way, doctor, we have not seen any port wine,” added Sheridan.“It is not a great sight to look at the casks that contain port wine. In Porto, not Oporto in Portugal, it is not the black, logwood decoction which passes under the name of port in the United States, though it is darker than ordinary wines. It gets its color and flavor from the peculiarity of the grapes that grow in the vicinity of Porto.”The officers were tired enough to turn in. Early the next morning the fires were roaring in the furnaces of the Prince; at a later hour the pipe of the boatswain was heard; and at half-past eight the steamer was standing down the river. As the students had not come to Lisbon from the sea, they all gathered on the deck and in the rigging to see the surroundings.“That building on the height is the palace of Ajuda, where the present king ordinarily resides,” said the surgeon, when the captain pointed it out to one of the officers. “A temporary wooden house was built on that hill for the royal family after the earthquake. Itis very large for this little kingdom, but is only one-third of the size it was intended to be. It was erected by John VI.; or, rather, it was begun by him, for it is not finished.”“You can see the buildings on the Cintra hills,” added Murray.“Yes; and you can see them better from the ocean.”“That is Belem Castle,” said Sheridan, as the ship approached the mouth of the river. “I saw a picture of it in an illustrated paper at home.”“It is called the Tower of Belem; and there is a palace with the same name on the shore. This is half Gothic and half Moorish. It is round, and the style is unique. What it was built for, no one knows. I suppose you are not aware how Columbus ascertained that there was a Western Continent,” added the doctor, smiling.“I know what the books say,—that he reasoned it out in his own mind,” replied the captain.“You see that town on the north: it is Cascaes, in which Sanchez, the renowned pilot, was born,” continued the doctor. “In 1486 Sanchez was blown off in a storm; and, before he could bring up, he was carried to an unknown land somewhere in North America. On his way back he stopped at Madeira, where he was the guest of Columbus. Somehow the log-book of the pilot fell into the hands of the great navigator, and from it he learned that there was an American Continent.”“Do you believe that story?” asked Sheridan seriously.“I do not. There are too many difficulties in the way of it; but it was told me by a Portuguese pilot.”When the ship had passed the bar, the pilot was discharged, and the course laid to the south. Just at dark she was in sight of Cape St. Vincent. The doctor related the story of its name, which was given to it because the body of St. Vincent, martyred in Rome, found its way to this cape, where it was watched over for a long period by crows. The ship that conveyed it to Lisbon was followed by these birds; and tame crows were afterwards kept in the cathedral, where the remains were deposited, in memory of the miraculous care of these birds. Three great naval victories have been won by the English Navy off this cape. Rodney defeated the Spanish fleet in 1780; Nelson, with fifteen small vessels, beat twenty-seven Spanish men-of-war, in 1797; and Sir Charles Napier, in 1833, with six vessels, only one of them a frigate, defeated ten Portuguese ships, thus putting an end to the Miguel war, and placing Maria I. on the throne of Portugal. The next day the Prince passed Cape Trafalgar, where, in 1805, Nelson gained his great naval victory over the combined fleets of France and Spain.On Sunday morning the Prince arrived at Barcelona.
LISBON AND ITS SURROUNDINGS.
Theroom in the Hotel Braganza occupied by Sheridan and Murray was an excellent one, so far as the situation was concerned; for it commanded a beautiful view of the Tagus and the surrounding country.
“I should think this hotel had been a fort some time,” said Sheridan, when they rose in the morning. “Those windows look like port-holes for cannon.”
“It is the house of Braganza, and ought to be a royal hotel; but it is not very elegantly furnished. There are no towels here. Where is the bell?”
“I noticed that there was one outside of each room on this floor. Here is the bell-pull. It is an original way to fix the bells,” added Sheridan. “The bell-boys must come up three flights of stairs in order to hear them ring.”
“But, if the waiter don’t speak English, what will you ask for?” laughed Murray.
“I have a book of four languages that I picked up in Madrid,—French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese,” said the captain, as he took the volume from his bag. “Here it is. ‘Une serviette,’—that’s a napkin, but it will do as well,—‘um guardinapo.’”
The bell was rung, and a chambermaid answered it. The word brought the towels, but Sheridan pointed to the wash-stand; and the pantomime would have answered just as well as speech, for the woman could see what was wanting. When they were dressed, Dr. Winstock came to the door, and invited them to visit the top of the house, which commanded a view even more extensive than the window.
“The Tagus runs about east and west here,” said he. “It is about a mile wide, but widens out into a broad bay opposite the city. There is no finer harbor in the world. The old part of the city, between the castle and the river, was not destroyed by the earthquake. Between us and the castle is a small region of straight streets; and this is the part that was destroyed. On the river below us are the marine arsenal and the custom-house, with thePraca do Commerciobetween them.”
“The what?” asked Murray.
“Pracais the Portuguese for ‘square;’ ‘Commercial Square’ in English will cover it. This one has several names; and the English, who are in great force in Lisbon, call it Black Horse Square. There is very little to see in Lisbon. Orders have come up for all hands to be on the quay at nine o’clock, to go on board the Prince for the lecture; and we must breakfast first.”
After the lecture the Princes went on shore again. The doctor with his pupils took a carriage, and proceeded to “do” the city. Their first point was the square they had seen from the housetop. On one side of it was an arch supporting a clock-tower. In thecentre was an equestrian statue of Joseph I., erected by the inhabitants out of gratitude to the king and the Marquis of Pombal for their efforts to rebuild the city after the great earthquake. On the pedestal is an effigy of the marquis, who was the king’s minister, as powerful as he was unpopular. The populace cut his head out of the statue when the king died, but it was restored fifty years later.
“This street,” said the doctor, indicating the one over which the ornamental arch was extended, “is theRua Augusta.”
“I think the Commercial is as fine a square as I have seen in Europe,” added Sheridan.
“Most people agree with you. Now, if we pass through theRua Augusta, we shall come to thePraca do Rocio, which is also a beautiful square. There are three other streets running parallel with this; on one side is Gold, and on the other Silver Street.”
“They build their houses very high for an earthquaky country,” said Murray.
“And this is the very spot which was sunk. I suppose they don’t expect to have another convulsion.”
The carriage proceeded into the square, and then to another, only a couple of blocks from it, in which was the fruit-market. It was lined with trees, with a fountain in the centre. All around it were men and women selling fruit and other commodities. It was a lively scene. In this square they saw a Portuguese cart of the model that was probably used by the Moors. The wheels do not revolve on the axle, but the axle turns with the wheels, as in a child’s tin wagon, and creak and groan fearfully as they do so.As they passed through the Campo Santa Anna, the doctor pointed out theCirco dos Touros, or bull-ring.
“But a bull-fight here is a tame affair compared with those in Spain,” he explained. “They do not kill the bull, nor are any horses gored to death; for the horns of the animal are tipped with large wooden balls. It is a rather lively affair, and will answer very well if you have not seen the real thing. It is said that there are seven hills in Lisbon, as in Rome; but this is a vanity of many other cities. There are many hills in Lisbon, however; and there seems to be a church or a convent on every one of them. This is thePassio Publico; and it is crowded with people on a warm evening,” continued the doctor, as they came to a long and narrow park. “It is thepradoof Lisbon.
“I shall ask you to visit only one church in this city, unless you desire to see more; and this is the one,” said the doctor, as the carriage stopped at a plain building. “This is St. Roque. It is said that Dom John V., when he visited this church, was greatly mortified at the mean appearance of the chapel of his patron saint. He ordered one to be prepared in Rome, of the richest materials. When it was done, mass was said in it by the pope, Benedict XIV.; and then it was taken to pieces, and sent to Lisbon, where it was again set up as you will find it.”
The party entered the church, and the attendant gave each of them a printed sheet on which was a description of the chapel. It proved to be a rather small recess; but the mosaics of the baptism of Christ in the Jordan by John, and other scriptural designs, are of the highest order of merit. The floor, ceiling, andsides are of the same costly work, the richest marbles and gems being used. The chapel contains eight columns of lapis-lazuli. The whole of this is said to have cost fourteen millioncrusados, over eight million dollars; but others say only one millioncrusados, and probably the last sum is nearer the truth.
The next day was Sunday; and in the morning the United States steamer Franklin—the largest in the service—came into the river. There was a Portuguese frigate off the marine arsenal; and what with saluting the flag of Portugal, and the return-salute, saluting Mr. Lewis the American minister, and saluting Mr. Diamond the American consul, when each visited the ship, the guns of the great vessel were blazing away about all the forenoon. But the students were proud of the ship; and they did not object to any amount of gun-firing, even on Sunday. In the afternoon, some of them went to the cathedral, which was formerly a mosque, and to some of the other churches. All hands attended service on board of the American Prince at eleven.
The next morning the Josephines and Tritonias started on their tour through the peninsula to Barcelona; and the ship’s company went on board of the steamer. Regular discipline was restored; but the business of sight-seeing was continued for two days more. The doctor conducted his little party to the palace of theNecessidades.
“What a name for a palace!” exclaimed Murray. “I suppose that jaw-breaker means ‘necessities.’”
“That is just what it means. Circumstances often give names to palaces and other things; and it was soin this case. A weaver brought an image of the Blessed Virgin from a place on the west coast, from which he fled to escape the plague. With money he begged of the pious, he built a small chapel for the image, near this spot. Like so many of these virgins, it wrought the most wonderful miracles, healing the sick, restoring the lame, and opening the eyes of the blind; and many people came to it in their ‘necessities,’ for relief. Dom John V. believed in it, and built a handsome church, with a convent attached to it, for the blessed image. It had restored his health once, and he built this palace near it, that it might be handy for his ‘necessities.’ During the long sickness preceding his death, he had it brought to the palace with royal honors, and kept it there in state, taking it with him wherever he went.
“This square is theFraca Alcantara,” continued the doctor, when they came from the palace. “There are plenty of fountains in the city, nearly every public square being supplied with one. When I was here before, there were more water-carriers than now; and they were all men of Gallicia, as in Madrid. Three thousand of them used to be employed in supplying the inhabitants with water; but now it is probably conveyed into most of the houses in pipes. You can tell these men from the native Portuguese, because they carry their burden, whatever it may be, on their shoulders instead of their heads. A proverb here is to the effect that God made the Portuguese first, and then the Gallego to wait upon him. Most of the male servants in houses come from Gallicia. They are largely the porters and laborers, for the natives are too proud to carry burdens: it is too near like the workof a mule or a donkey. It is said, that when the French approached Coimbra in the peninsular war, and the people deserted the city, the men would not carry their valuables with them, so great was their prejudice against bundles; and every thing was lost except what the women could take with them. They could not disgrace themselves to save their property.”
“No wonder the country is poor,” added Sheridan.
“Now we will cross the bridge, and ride through Buenos Ayres, where many of the wealthy people live, and some of the ambassadors,” continued the doctor.
They had a pleasant ride, passing the English cemetery in which Henry Fielding and Dr. Doddridge were buried. On the return, they passed the principal cemetery of the city. It is called thePrazeres, which means “pleasures;” a name it obtained by accident, and not because it was considered appropriate.
The following day was set apart for an excursion to Cintra and Mafra, and a sufficient number of omnibuses were sent to a point on the north-west road; for the students were to walk over the aqueduct in order to see that wonderful work. The party ascended some stone steps to a large hall which contains the reservoir. It is near thePraca do Rato, and not far from the centre of the city. The party then entered the arched gallery, eight feet high and five feet wide, through which the water-ways are led. In the middle is a paved pathway for foot-passengers. On either side of it is a channel in the masonry, nine inches wide and a foot deep in the centre, rounded at the bottom. It looked like a small affair for the supply of a great city. The aqueduct is carried on a range of archesover the valley of the Alcantara, which is the name of the little stream that flows into the Tagus near theNecessidades. The highest of these arches are two hundred and sixty-three feet above the river. A causeway was built on each side of it, forming a bridge to the villages in the suburbs; but its use was discontinued because so many people committed suicide by throwing themselves from the dizzy height, or were possibly murdered by robbers. This aqueduct was erected by Dom John V., and it is the pride of the city. The water comes from springs six miles away.
“Why did we have those water-jars in the hotel if they have spring-water?” asked Sheridan, as they walked along the gallery.
“They think the water is better kept in those jars,” replied Dr. Winstock; “and I believe they are right; at least, they would be if they would keep the ants out of them.”
On the other side of the valley the excursionists loaded themselves into the omnibuses, and were soon on their way to Cintra, which is fourteen miles from Lisbon. It is a sort of Versailles, Potsdam, or Windsor, where the court resides during a part of the year, and where all the wealthy and fashionable people spend their summers. It is a beautiful drive, with many pleasant villages, palaces, country-seats, groves, and gardens by the way.
“Here we are,” said the doctor to his young companions, when the carriage in which they had come stopped before Victor’s Hotel. “Southey said this was the most blessed spot in the habitable world. Byron sang with equal enthusiasm; and the words of thesepoets have made the place famous in England. Our American guide-book does not even mention it.”
Cintra is a town of forty-five hundred inhabitants. It is built on the southern end of the Estrella Mountains, at an elevation of from eighteen hundred to three thousand feet. It is only a few miles from the seashore, and the Atlantic may be seen from its hills. The party of the doctor first went to the royal palace. It was the Alhambra of the Moorish monarchs, and has been a favorite residence of the Christian kings. Dom Sebastian held his last court here when he left for Africa. The students wandered through its numerous apartments, laughed at its magpie saloon, and thought of the kings who had dwelt within its walls. They were more pleased with the gardens, though it was winter; for there was a great deal in them that was curious and interesting.
The Pena Convent was the next attraction. All convents have been suppressed in Portugal, as in Spain; but the Gothic building has been repaired, and it looks more like a castle than a religious house. Its garden and grounds must be magnificent in the proper season. The view from the highest point presents an almost boundless panorama of country, river, and ocean. The Moorish castle that commands the town was examined; and the next thing was the Cork Convent. It is an edifice built in and on the rock, and contains twenty cells, each of which is lined with cork to keep out the dampness of the rock on which it is founded. These cells are dungeons five feet square, with doors so low that even the shortest of the students had to stoop to enter them.
A country-house in Portugal is aquinta; and that of Dom John de Castro, the great navigator and the viceroy of the Indies, is calledPenha Verda, and is still in the hands of his descendants. The gardens are very pretty; and the first orange-trees set out in Europe were on this estate. In the garden is the chapel built by him on his return from the Indies, in 1542, and the rock with six trees on it, which was the only reward he desired for the conquest of the Island of Diu, in Hindostan. He died in the arms of St. Francis Xavier, in 1548, protesting that he had spent every thing he had in supplying the wants of his comrades in arms. He declared that he had not a change of linen, or money enough to buy him a chicken for his dinner. Most of the enormous wealth of the Indies had passed through his hands; and he had not stolen avintemof it. What an example for modern office-holders! When he was dead, only onevintem—about two cents—was found in his coffers. His descendants were prohibited from deriving any profit from the cultivation of this property.
The rest of the time was given to wandering about among the estates of the wealthy men, including some of the foreign ministers, who havequintasin Cintra.
After a lunch, the excursionists proceeded to Mafra, about ten miles from Cintra. This place contains an enormous pile of buildings on the plan of the Escurial, and rather larger, if any thing. It was erected by John V. to carry out his vow to change the poorest monastery into the most magnificent one when Heaven would give him a son. It contains eight hundred and sixty-six apartments; but the only one of interest tothe students was the audience-chamber, preserved as it was when the palace was inhabited by Dom John.
It was late in the evening when the Princes returned to Lisbon; and they were rather glad to learn that the ship was to sail for Barcelona after breakfast the next morning.
“I am rather sorry that we do not go to Oporto,” said the doctor, when the captain informed him of the order. “It is an old city set on a hillside; but it would not interest the students any more than Lisbon has.”
“By the way, doctor, we have not seen any port wine,” added Sheridan.
“It is not a great sight to look at the casks that contain port wine. In Porto, not Oporto in Portugal, it is not the black, logwood decoction which passes under the name of port in the United States, though it is darker than ordinary wines. It gets its color and flavor from the peculiarity of the grapes that grow in the vicinity of Porto.”
The officers were tired enough to turn in. Early the next morning the fires were roaring in the furnaces of the Prince; at a later hour the pipe of the boatswain was heard; and at half-past eight the steamer was standing down the river. As the students had not come to Lisbon from the sea, they all gathered on the deck and in the rigging to see the surroundings.
“That building on the height is the palace of Ajuda, where the present king ordinarily resides,” said the surgeon, when the captain pointed it out to one of the officers. “A temporary wooden house was built on that hill for the royal family after the earthquake. Itis very large for this little kingdom, but is only one-third of the size it was intended to be. It was erected by John VI.; or, rather, it was begun by him, for it is not finished.”
“You can see the buildings on the Cintra hills,” added Murray.
“Yes; and you can see them better from the ocean.”
“That is Belem Castle,” said Sheridan, as the ship approached the mouth of the river. “I saw a picture of it in an illustrated paper at home.”
“It is called the Tower of Belem; and there is a palace with the same name on the shore. This is half Gothic and half Moorish. It is round, and the style is unique. What it was built for, no one knows. I suppose you are not aware how Columbus ascertained that there was a Western Continent,” added the doctor, smiling.
“I know what the books say,—that he reasoned it out in his own mind,” replied the captain.
“You see that town on the north: it is Cascaes, in which Sanchez, the renowned pilot, was born,” continued the doctor. “In 1486 Sanchez was blown off in a storm; and, before he could bring up, he was carried to an unknown land somewhere in North America. On his way back he stopped at Madeira, where he was the guest of Columbus. Somehow the log-book of the pilot fell into the hands of the great navigator, and from it he learned that there was an American Continent.”
“Do you believe that story?” asked Sheridan seriously.
“I do not. There are too many difficulties in the way of it; but it was told me by a Portuguese pilot.”
When the ship had passed the bar, the pilot was discharged, and the course laid to the south. Just at dark she was in sight of Cape St. Vincent. The doctor related the story of its name, which was given to it because the body of St. Vincent, martyred in Rome, found its way to this cape, where it was watched over for a long period by crows. The ship that conveyed it to Lisbon was followed by these birds; and tame crows were afterwards kept in the cathedral, where the remains were deposited, in memory of the miraculous care of these birds. Three great naval victories have been won by the English Navy off this cape. Rodney defeated the Spanish fleet in 1780; Nelson, with fifteen small vessels, beat twenty-seven Spanish men-of-war, in 1797; and Sir Charles Napier, in 1833, with six vessels, only one of them a frigate, defeated ten Portuguese ships, thus putting an end to the Miguel war, and placing Maria I. on the throne of Portugal. The next day the Prince passed Cape Trafalgar, where, in 1805, Nelson gained his great naval victory over the combined fleets of France and Spain.
On Sunday morning the Prince arrived at Barcelona.