A LAND OF FLOWERS
[Sidenote: Estoril and Cintra.]
It is a land of roses flowering in December, a land where, in the words
of Garrett, “oranges glow in the orchards and myrtle blooms on the moors:
_Onde a laranjeira cresce na horta e o matto é de murta_” (_Viajens na
minha terra_, 1846). The foreigner who spends a few days in Portugal
and sees perhaps Cintra and Estoril may think that he has been offered
a few show pieces, yet everywhere in this wonderful climate, a warmer
South-west of Ireland, given water and shelter either from the sea or
from the subtle Spanish wind, plants thrive and grow as swiftly almost
as the fabled bean-stalk, and flowers cover the ground like mushrooms in
the twinkling of a fairy’s eye. A desolate strip of coast near Lisbon,
apparently grey and barren, mere sunburnt and spray-beaten rock, was
found on closer acquaintance to have at various seasons of the year,
among other flowers, whin and cistus, yellow jonquil, white clustered
jonquil, celandine, crocus, light blue dwarf iris, large dark-blue iris,
mint and sea-lavender. And Cintra possesses many lovely places unknown
to tourists, the whole region deserving not the stay of a few hours
but a quiet sojourn in one of its houses or hôtels. The slopes of the
_Serra_ looking towards Cascaes, though rarely visited, are scarcely less
beautiful than those above the village of Cintra, and are crowded with
all kinds of trees and flowers. You may walk across from Estoril. The
path goes haphazard through the uncultivated _matto_ and then a road,
also through _matto_ moorland, passing an occasional village with low
one-storeyed houses and lanes between walls of loose stones covered with
brambles, sarsaparilla, and eglantine. Here a woman in white blouse,
yellow skirt, and plum-coloured kerchief is at work in a small plot of
vines; there a boy keeping donkeys and black-and-white cows is dressed
all in light faded greys and blues like one of the wayside thistles. The
country has a look of Dartmoor—only that there is no water, no patches
of vivid treacherous green—and in front rise the twenty odd tors of the
_Serra_.
[Sidenote: Ribeira de Pena Longa.]
At the foot of the _Serra_ is Ribeira de Pena Longa, a little tumble-down
village in olives and fruit-trees, with a few clumps of mighty planes.
The village street is mainly of rock with loose stones, evidently a
torrent in winter, and the forlorn and poverty-stricken look of the whole
village will amaze the Englishman accustomed to see the flourishing
condition of villages near or on some great estate in England. There are
a few iron balconies with tins of carnations, and grey ruined walls of
houses with olives and vines growing between them seem to tell of a more
prosperous past, perhaps when the neighbouring Convent of Pena Longa was
wont to receive the visits of King João III. From the village a wide gate
leads into a kind of mysterious fairyland: out of the glowing sunshine
the road passes to a cool shaded avenue of arched trees, where the
songs of birds are heard in number and variety rare in Latin countries.
A rapid stream runs by the road, and on this side and on that are a
multitude of fruit trees and great myrtle hedges, twenty-feet high cactus
with their large deep-orange-coloured flowers, giant-leaved bananas,
vine-trellises, groves of lemons, plots gay with garden flowers. It is
an enchanted country, and presently you will come to many peacocks and
the low rambling house of the Viscondes de Pena Longa. At the other
end the estate is bounded by the _serra_ of pines and eucalyptus. A
little further on a small lake is fringed with great pines, and here is
a marvellous solemn silence scarcely broken by the distant cooing of
doves or the sound of running water. Among the pines grows bracken and
heather, myrtles in massed snow-white flower, and thick tufts of the
dark purple lavender. Thence with some difficulty you may climb through
a dense wood of every variety of tree and labyrinthine paths up to the
palace of Pena. Fuchsias and bays and many a scented shrub and flowering
tree will recompense you for the pains of the ascent, and goodly views
of the Tagus, and of the _Serra d’Ossa_ in Alemtejo. There are masses of
periwinkles, and many an old wall a-crumble fretted with maidenhair and
that variety of daisy which loves old mellow stonework, be it that of an
Oxford college or of the Basque church of Urrugne.
[Sidenote: The Coast.]
Or you may attack Cintra by way of Cascaes and Collares, since the
accepted approach is rarely the best way of seeing a place for the first
time. There is a road for part of the way from Cascaes along the coast
with sand-dunes, and hollows of scented cistus and many a delightful
cove or broader sandy bays, which are now without a house, but might
at the whim of fashion—_absit omen_—become favourite and crowded
watering-places. Some miles from Cascaes the Mountains of the Moon
descend into the sea, ending in the famous _Cabo da Roca_, the “Rock of
Lisbon.” A little further on lies Collares in its celebrated vineyards,
and taking the road from here to Cintra one has a view of the _Serra_
above Cintra in a rugged, almost Alpine, grandeur of grey rocks and
trees, and may understand how Fielding could call it a high mountain. To
the right the last slopes are covered with groves of arbutus trees, which
hang their berries in clustered lanterns of glowing yellow and orange,
white and green and red. Thick layers of mist hide them on an autumn
morning, through which the sun lights up the ravines in weird spears and
shafts of light. To the left extends that fertile plain which produces
nearly all the fruits of the earth and has for centuries provided
Lisbon’s markets with their most treasured wares. Even in summer when
all the surrounding country is in a cloudless blue the whole _Serra_ of
Cintra from crown to base is often blotted out in thick white mist which
folds over peak and ravine, taking the shape of each in a more rounded
softness of snowfields. Then when a slight wind drives it off in a bank
along the horizon seaward the _Serra_ appears a metallic blue, as if
it had been poured molten into the mould and was just hardening to its
definite shape.
[Sidenote: An Infinite Variety.]
The variety of Cintra is but a sample of that rich profusion of natural
beauties in the most diverse kinds throughout the country. With an area
little over a quarter of that of Great Britain and about three times
that of Belgium, Portugal presents perhaps greater variety of scenery
and products than any other country of Europe. Rich in trees and fruits
(especially figs and oranges), rice (it was one of the projects of the
last Ministry of the Monarchy to encourage rice-growing in Portugal),
wine, oil, maize, wheat, rye, cork, salt from the _marinhas_ of Aveiro
and Algarve, honey from Alemtejo, Portugal could also, but for State
prohibitions, produce tobacco, cotton, and the sugar-cane. The gardens
on the banks of the Tagus, the orchards of Setubal and Santarem, the
fruit-gardens round Caldas da Rainha and Alcobaça, the wide corn-lands on
the alluvial _lezirias_ of the rivers Tagus and Sado, the sub-tropical
vegetation of the southern slope of the _Serra de Arrabida_ and of Cintra
and of the neighbourhood of Faro and Villa Real de S. Antonio in Algarve,
prove that potentially at least Portugal is indeed the “garden of Europe
planted by the sea.”
[Sidenote: The Rivers.]
The salmon in the transparent rivers of Minho are less plentiful than
they were, owing to the poaching and wholesale destruction dating from
1498, when King Manoel deprived the nobility of hunting and fishing
privileges in their _coutadas_. The Vez, a tributary of the Lima, is
said to be still a good trout-stream, and some trout are to be caught
in the Leça. In the Cavado, Mondego and Zezere trout are now rare.
Salmon are caught only or chiefly in the river Minho. But the sea along
Portugal’s coasts provides her with an unfailing abundance of fish, and
the fish-markets of Lisbon and Faro are renowned for their richness and
variety all the year round. To the south, especially, sardines are
plentiful in winter as well as in summer. The Portuguese coast is in
great part rocky and dangerous, but these bare inhospitable cliffs are
broken by little sand coves and bays, and varied with immense bare or
pine-covered sand-dunes.
[Sidenote: Climate.]
The climate varies considerably. In the south (Algarve) and especially
in Eastern Alemtejo (where the summer temperature can rise to 120
Fahrenheit) and Traz os Montes (where the climate is indeed rather
Spanish than Portuguese) the heat can be insufferable, and the winter
cold of the north-east is severe. But in the centre, and especially
along the coast of Estremadura, the climate may be described without
exaggeration as the best in Europe. The warm winters lead one to expect
tropical summers, but this expectation is not fulfilled, and the sea and
the north summer wind here moderate the heat which can be so oppressive
in the interior. The following statistics from an article by Snr. Antonio
Arroyo, in _Notas sobre Portugal_, give the average temperatures during
the years 1856-1900 at (1) Lisbon, (2) Biarritz, (3) Nice—
_Yearly _Winter _Spring._ _Summer._ _Autumn._
Average._ Average._
(1) 15·63 10·63 14·38 20·69 16·69
(2) 13·80 7·79 12·39 19·67 15·25
(3) 14·75 7·91 13·27 21·94 15·79
Thus, while the Lisbon winters are nearly three degrees warmer, the
summers are barely one degree warmer. The figures are Centigrade. To
convert into Fahrenheit divide by five, multiply by 9, and add 32. A
scientific book has recently been published on the climate round Lisbon:
_The Climate of Lisbon and of the two health resorts in its immediate
neighbourhood, Mont’ Estoril, on the Riviera of Portugal, and Cintra_. By
Dr. A. G. Delgado. Lisbon, 1914.
[Sidenote: Estoril.]
At Estoril a thermal station, with casino, gardens, golf-links, etc.,
is in process of construction. The Estoril climate even excels that of
Lisbon, being slightly warmer in winter and cooler in summer. It is
a little surprising that more foreigners do not settle temporarily or
permanently in this region, which is so easy of access and has so many
advantages. The considerable number of Englishmen now living in Portugal
are with few exceptions engaged in business. Possibly foreigners are
afraid of revolutions, but revolutions in Portugal do not as a rule
affect the foreigner in the slightest degree. Gambling, on a large
scale, and great luxury, it is true, he will not find, but cleanliness
and ordinary comfort are to be had at the existing hôtels, and any other
deficiencies are amply compensated for by the excellent climate and the
charms and interest of the surrounding country, and by the courtesy and
helpfulness of its inhabitants. It is not often that travellers can live
in a comfortable hôtel, have English newspapers, English books (from the
Lisbon International Library), English tinned foods and tobacco, all the
delights and none of the drawbacks of a southern climate, and at the same
time such scenery to their hand as that of Cintra, and such architecture
as is to be had on all sides in a day’s motor drive, besides lawn-tennis
and golf, and the historical associations of the Peninsular War.
[Sidenote: Backwardness of the Country.]
Rarely does the country appear to be fully developed, yet even so it
produces such a wealth of fruits and flowers that evidently with greater
care, better methods, and a more widely extended system of irrigation, it
might be a perfect paradise. It would be unfair to attribute the neglect
and backwardness and misery prevailing throughout this lovely country
entirely to the character of the inhabitants. The accumulated misfortunes
of their history for the last three centuries would be enough to explain
it; but they certainly have been inclined to neglect their own native
soil for alien enterprises, and are only now beginning to realise that
the future of Portugal lies in Portugal. In time, no doubt, Algarve,
Estremadura, and Minho will be fringed with prosperous watering-places
and with busy seaports, to which railways from the interior will carry
many minerals, wood from existing forests and from land still awaiting
afforestation, as well as the most varied vegetables, fruits and flowers.
(Foreign countries will find it profitable also to import on a large
scale earthenware manufactures, _azulejos_, and the majolica wares of
Caldas da Rainha.) Irrigation will have transformed much _matto_ country
into flourishing gardens and orchards, and Alemtejo will become in fact
as well as in name the granary of Portugal. It is quite possible for
Portugal to become one continuous garden city, through which flawless
roads will whirl the traveller in a few hours from Valença to Faro, and
from Elvas to Cintra. This is the object at which those who care more for
Portugal than for party politics must aim.
[Sidenote: Travelling in Portugal.]
But the charm will have departed, and present-day travellers may
congratulate themselves that the change is not in their day. For now
parts of the country are not to be seen without considerable effort,
and have the added fascination of things difficult of attainment. The
Portuguese rarely journey for enjoyment south of the Tagus, to the land
_alemtejo_, yet both the Alemtejo and Algarve are delightful districts,
and fully repay any little discomforts which a visit to them may entail,
and the impression left is of a great region of wild flowers and garden
fruits lying in a semi-tropical sunshine, round a few villages and
ancient towns. Indeed, those who have seen not only Minho and the massed
rhododendrons in flower on the _Serra do Gerez_, and the smooth mountains
of the _Serra da Estrella_, apparently bare and desolate, covered with
cistus, lavender, and a thousand other varieties of wild flowers, but
also the rare flowers and rhododendrons of the _Serra de Monchique_ in
Algarve, and the giant patchwork of all kinds and colours of flowers
which make beautiful the pastures and wastelands of Alemtejo, from the
tall branching asphodels, like chandeliers of chalcedony, to the serried
fields of thistle or hawksweed, will readily extend to the whole of
Portugal the name of “Switzerland of Spain,” which has been bestowed on
Galicia. (The word “Spain,” meaning the whole Peninsula, once common, is
still in use occasionally, as in the title of the Archbishop of Braga,
who is “Primate of the Spains.”) The roads of Portugal are a delight by
reason of their wayside springs and streams and groves, and the hedges
which in height and thickness rival those of Devonshire, and have all the
luxuriant growth of the south. Or, when the road cuts through _matto_,
thick masses of cistus often invade it on either side, and the air is
heavy with its scent. (Both in leaf and scent it strongly resembles
escalonia.) A walking tour is more often a hardship than a pleasure, or
rather its pleasure is of recollections, especially where, as in Spain,
inns are rare and food in an inn rarer. But Portugal, that is in the
northern provinces—for the sun tyrannises south of the Tagus and shade is
rarer—is an ideal country for such a tour.
[Sidenote: Inns.]
The witty Nicolaus Clenardus, in the sixteenth century, after complaining
that at an inn in Spain his horses had well fasted, and he himself had
had but half an ounce of meat in an _olla_, and departed as he came,
_latrante stomacho_, admitted that in Portugal things were better: _omnia
mitescere visa sunt_. It is true that the author of the _Arte de Furtar_,
writing a few generations later, gives us a melancholy initiation into
the ways of the inn-hostess of Beja. “I saw her,” he says, “buy two
cabbages for a halfpenny. She cast them into a caldron with two large
_pimentos_ well crushed and another halfpenny-worth of oil. She boiled
them twice, and without ever rising from her stool, she made thirty
plates full at a penny each, with which she feasted guests and carters
alike, and they professed themselves satisfied.” There is something
sinister about this stationary woman. _Sedet aeternumque sedebit._
Probably if an old shoe had been to hand, instead of the _pimentões_,
in it would have gone. But, however far afield the twentieth century
traveller wanders, Heaven will probably keep him from such a hostess
in Portugal—in Spain she is still common—and everywhere he will find
great willingness to attend to his requirements, such readiness in fact
that he will probably expect to be asked for several shillings and be
surprised to be charged only in _vintens_. Of course, in a sense the more
poorly he goes clad the better he will fare in the out-of-the-way parts,
the poor reserving a wealth of kindliness and ready service exclusively
for the poor. The _hospedarias_ are bare and clean, the _estalagens_ are
not much less comfortable than the _hospedarias_, and sometimes as clean.
The _estalagem_ is where any passing wayfarer—carriers, _almocreves_,
etc., put up; the _hospedarias_ are rather for more permanent guests,
officers quartered in the town, and so on. But even the wayside _venda_,
perhaps consisting of a single room, roofed over with branches and with
the trodden ground for floor, will be able to provide a meal of eggs,
coffee, and bread.
[Sidenote: Walking in Portugal.]
The water difficulty is not present as in Spain. Springs and rivulets of
most excellent transparent water, flowing cleanly over granite, are ever
to the hand of the thirsty, icy cold even in the dog days, and the great
flowered hedges will yield him a plot of shade for a rest even if he does
not hit on some pleasant grove of trees and flowers. It is to be hoped
that the _Sociedade de Propaganda de Portugal_, which watches over the
interests of the more respectable tourist, will not forget to attend to
the needs of the humble pedestrian, and indeed of the motorist, by seeing
to it that sign-posts and milestones be set on all the roads. These can
be of such a character as not in the least to obtrude upon the rustic
character of these delightful roads. In Portugal the pedestrian has the
great advantage over the motorist that he is able to digest what he sees,
and even he will have to advance in very leisurely fashion in order to
do that. It is the charm of Alcobaça and Batalha—those two marvellous
buildings—that they have no railway. You may drive or walk, but even
if you walk it is but a few miles from the one to the other, through a
tempting country of dense pinewoods and heather, with the village of
Aljubarrota and the famous battlefield thrown in. To see in one day the
multifarious splendours of Batalha and Alcobaça, not to speak of Leiria,
is more than is good for the ordinary person.
[Sidenote: Leiria.]
Leiria is little more than a village, a delightful village set in trees
and flowers, orchards and vineyards, with the sound of the rushing river
Lis ever present. On a sheer hill above it stands crumbling in flowers
the ruins of King Diniz’ Castle.
[Sidenote: Luso and Bussaco.]
The village of Luso, too, beneath Bussaco, is embedded in flowers and
creepers, and Bussaco itself, of course, consists of nothing but the
remnants of a convent and a single modern hôtel, all the rest being
a vast enclosure of trees, creepers, brushwood, shrubs and ferns and
flowers probably unequalled in Europe.
[Sidenote: Villages.]
And countless villages throughout Portugal are literally set in and
scented with flowers. A writer of the seventeenth century describes one
of them thus: “Each house has its garden with various trees, oranges,
and lemons, which fill the whole town with the sweetest scent and with
their gay flowers.”[35] For fuel all kinds of scented brushwood are
burnt—cistus, rosemary, myrtle—the thin blue smoke of which is a sweet
incense.
[Sidenote: Cascaes and the Estoris.]
Even on the rocky coast, at Cascaes near Lisbon, many flowers are to be
found. Where there is any moisture periwinkles star the ground, and in
the strip immediately along the coast burnt by the winter spray, flower
dwarf irises in crowds. They know that the sea-winds blow chiefly in
winter, and cunningly wait till they have little to fear from the spray,
springing into flower at the end of April or beginning of May. It is,
however, the land wind (the _nortadas_ that begin slightly in spring
and prevail in July and August) which blackens and bruises creepers and
flowers. This wind has something of the subtle winds of Spain, whence it
comes, and is disliked by some persons, but by those who shun intense
heat it is welcomed in the summer months. It brings cloudless skies
without great heat. It transforms all things to a clearer outline and
darkens the sea to a deep sapphire, flecked with white horses. Under the
cliffs the water in such weather—which may continue for ten days or a
fortnight—is calm and transparent, and the sunshine ripples and plays in
wrinkles of amber on the deep-sunken rocks, transmuted for the time into
great slabs of beryl, jasper and emerald. In summer a whole population
lives for weeks together fishing in these waters. Almost everything that
will float is put into requisition, and the queerest craft make their
appearance, long crescent-shaped boats that seem scarcely to touch the
water, old boats with a single square black or tawny sail, boats with
sails cherry-red, white, and brown.
[Sidenote: Wealth of Flowers.]
At Estoril, which almost joins Cascaes, live many of the foreigners
settled in Lisbon, and here the houses, mostly well sheltered by a
pine-covered hill, have gardens brimming with flowers, winter and summer.
Still more sheltered is Cintra, on the other side of the _Serra_,
where the work of the gardener consists rather in cutting away than
in encouraging growth. The road from Cintra to Collares is hemmed by
wonderful gardens and orchards, although there is still plenty of ground
waiting to be enclosed and turned into a little Monserrate. Some of these
orchards are half neglected, and one may wander gradually from woodland
into weedy garden paths where orange trees, crowded with glowing fruit,
grow apparently at random. (And the oranges of Cintra vie with those
of Setubal, at the mouth of the Sado.) It is from Collares in great
part that Lisbon fills its markets daily with an abundance of fruits
and flowers. “He who goes to the Church of the Misericordia will find
daily from fifteen to twenty girls selling flowers, loose or in wreaths
and bunches.”[36] The author, Frey Nicolas d’Oliveyra, adds that on
the 4th of August, 1620, for one _fête_ in four Lisbon churches three
thousand wreaths and two thousand bunches of flowers were used. If less
flowers now adorn Lisbon’s churches their number has not diminished, and
exportation of flowers and fruits on a vast scale only awaits quicker
means of transport and intelligent markets in foreign countries. For the
flowers fill the great uncultivated tracts of the country with scent and
colour, and wherever some minor Beckford has enclosed a plot of ground he
is rewarded by a true garden of Eden.