CORUNNA--OPORTO--PULL UP THE DOURO--NOTICE OF THE SIEGE OF OPORTO--
LINE-OF-BATTLE SHIP.
Porpoise's story lasted out the gale. We were not sorry to see the
conclusion of the latter, though it left old ocean in a very
uncomfortable state for some time. A downright heavy gale is
undoubtedly a very fine thing to witness--at least the effects are--and
every man would wish to see one once in his life; but having experienced
what it can do, and how it makes the ocean look and human beings feel, a
wise man will be satisfied, at all events if he is to fall in with it in
a small cutter in the Bay of Biscay when that once is over. I've had to
go through a good many in the course of my nautical career; and though
I've often heard sung with much gusto--
"One night it blew a hurricane,
The sea was mountains rolling,
When Barney Buntline turned his quid,
And cried to Billy Bowline:
"`Here's a south-wester coming, Billy;
Don't you hear it roar now?
Lord help 'em, how I pities those
Unhappy folks ashore now!
"`While you and I upon the deck
Are comfortably lying,
My eyes! what tiles and chimney-tops
About their heads are flying!'"
I mustn't quote more of the old song; for my own part I like a steady
breeze and a smooth sea, when plates and dishes will stay quietly on the
table, and a person may walk the deck without any undue exertion of the
muscles of the leg.
The gale had driven us somewhat into the bay, and finding it would cause
us little delay to look into Corunna, we determined to go there. The
entrance to the harbour is very easy--a fine tall lighthouse on the
south clearly making it. We brought up off the town, which is situated
along the circular shore of a bay something like Weymouth. After paying
our respects to the consul, we mounted a troop of steeds offered us for
hire, and galloped off to inspect the chief scenes of the engagement
between the English and the French, when the former retreated under Sir
John Moore. On our return we visited his tomb, situated on the ramparts
on the sea side of the town; the tomb is surrounded with cannon, with
their muzzles downward--a fit monument to the hero who sleeps beneath.
Carstairs did not fail to repeat with due effect--
"Not a sound was heard; not a funeral note."
They are truly magnificent lines, rarely equalled. Some, however, of a
like character appeared lately on Havelock, which are very much to my
taste.
But where am I driving to with my poetry and criticism? We got on board
the same night, and made sail by daybreak the next morning. We looked
into the deep and picturesque Gulf of Vigo, and thought the town a very
nasty one, in spite of its imposing castle on the top of a hill. Had we
come from the south we might have formed a different opinion of the
place. We hove-to off Oporto, and should have gone in, but though
exempt from harbour-dues, we found that the pilotage would be heavy, and
that we might have some difficulty in getting out again over the bar
which has formed across the mouth of the Douro. The city stands on a
granite hill on the north side of the river, and about three miles from
the sea. Fortunately for us, while we were hove-to there, the steamer
from England came in sight, and we were able to obtain a passage on
shore in the boats which brought off the mail bags. Hearty, Bubble, and
I formed the party; Carstairs and Porpoise remained to take care of the
ship. Away we pulled with the glee of schoolboys on a holiday
excursion; the boat was large, but of the roughest description--with the
stem and stern alike--probably not changed since the earliest days of
the Portuguese monarchy; she was double-banked, pulling twelve oars at
least. The men mostly wore red caps, with a coloured sash round their
waists, and had shoeless feet; some had huge wooden slippers, almost big
enough to go to sea in. Many of them were fine-looking fellows, but
they were very unlike English sailors, and oh! how they did jabber. To
those who understood them their observations might have been very
sensible, but to our ears their voices sounded like the chattering of a
huge family of monkeys in their native woods. The view before us
consisted of the blue shining sea, a large whitewashed and yellow-washed
village to the north, called St. Joao da Foz, with a lighthouse on a
hill at one end of it, a line of black rocks and white breakers before
us, and to the south a yellow beach with cliffs and pine-trees beyond,
and a convent, and a few of the higher standing houses and churches of
Oporto in the distance. When we got near the white foam-topped rollers,
all the jabbering ceased, our crew bent to their oars like men worthy of
descendants of Albuquerque's gallant crew; and the boat now backed for
an instant, now dashing on, we were in smooth water close under the
walls of a no very formidable-looking fortress. A little farther on we
landed at a stone slip, at the before-mentioned village, among
fishwomen, and porters, and boatmen, and soldiers, and custom-house
guards, and boys, all talking away most vociferously. As we had no
luggage to carry, we were allowed to look about us. What we should have
done I scarcely know, had not Bubble, who never failed to find
acquaintance in every place, recognised an English gentleman who had
come down to the river to embark for the city. Bubble's friend was
invaluable to us; he first invited us to go up the river in his boat,
and pointed out numerous spots of interest on the way. The boat was a
curious affair; it had a flat bottom and sides, and narrowed to a rising
point forward. The greater part was covered with a wooden awning
painted green, and supported by wooden stanchions; and the seats run
fore and aft round the sides; it had yellow curtains to keep out the sun
or rain; the crew, three in number, stood up with their faces to the
bow, pressing against the oars; two stood on a deck forward, and one,
who occasionally brought his oar in a line with the keel, rowed aft.
Dressed in red caps with red sashes, and mostly in white or blue-striped
garments, they had a picturesque appearance.
Although the civil war which overthrew despotism, and planted the
present line on the throne, had occurred so long before, our new friend
spoke of it with as much interest as if it had but lately been
concluded. Such an occurrence, indeed, was the great event in the lives
of a generation.
On the south side of the entrance of the river is a long sandbank; on
the north side is the castle of Foz, or the mouth. This castle was
built by the Pedroites, and it was literally the key on which depended
the success of the enterprise. Had it been taken, the communication
with the sea and Oporto would have been cut off, and the Liberals would
have been starved out. For the greater portion of the time occupied by
the struggle, Dom Pedro's followers held little more than the city of
Oporto and a line of country on the north bank of the Douro scarcely a
mile wide, leading from the city to the sea. They held the lighthouse
at the north point of the village; but a few hundred yards beyond was a
mound on which the Miguelites erected a strong battery. Not a spot
along the whole line but what was the scene of some desperate encounter;
and most certainly the Portuguese Constitutionalists of all ranks, from
the highest to the lowest, fought as bravely as men could fight in the
noblest of causes. Heaven favoured the right, and in spite of
apparently overwhelming hosts opposed to them, of disease and gaunt
famine, they won their cause, and the mother of the present enlightened
King of Portugal ascended the throne.
But I am writing the cruise of the "Frolic," and not a history of
Portugal. Still I must dot down a few of our friend's anecdotes. While
the north side of the river was held by the Constitutionalists, the
south was in the hands of the Miguelites, and the two parties used to
amuse themselves by firing at each other across the stream, so that it
was dangerous to pass along the lower road by daylight.
On one occasion, the Miguelites, wishing to attack the castle, brought a
number of casks to the end of the spit of sand at the entrance of the
river, and erected a battery on it, but they forgot to fill the casks
with sand or earth; when morning broke there was a formidable battery
directly under the walls of the castle. Some unfortunate troops were
placed in it to work the guns; all went very well till the guns of the
castle began to play on it, and then a few shots sent the entire fabric
to the four winds of heaven, and either killed the soldiers placed in
it, or drove them flying hurry-skurry across the sand, where many more
were picked off by the rifles of the Constitutionalists.
What could be more unpleasant than having on a hot day to run along a
heavy shingly beach, with a number of sharpshooters taking deliberate
aim at one's corpus? Happy would he be who could find a deep hole into
which to roll himself out of harm's way.
The banks of the Douro are picturesque from the very entrance. On
either side are broken cliffs; on the south covered with pine-groves, on
the north with yellow, white, and pick houses and churches, and
orange-groves. On the south we passed the remains of the old convent of
St. Antonio, where once the jovial monks feasted and sang and prayed,
well supplied with the spoils of the sea. Here pious fishermen used to
stop and ask a blessing on their labours, on their way down the river,
and on their return they failed not to offer the choice of their spoil
to the worthy friars. The gardens of the convent were profusely
ornamented with statues of curious device, and flowers, and vases, and
orange-trees, and grottoes, and temples; all now swept away by the
scythe of war--the convent walls now forming part of a manufactory. The
monks have disappeared from Portugal, and few people regret them less
than the Portuguese. At best they were drones; and, if we are to credit
one-quarter of the tales told of them, they continued to do no little
amount of evil in their generation. On the same side of the river, but
much higher up, where the Douro forces its way between two lofty cliffs,
on the summit of the southern one, stands the once very celebrated
convent of the Sierra. From beneath its walls the Duke of Wellington
led his army across the river into Oporto, and drove Marshal Soult out
of the city. This convent, and its surrounding garden, was the only
spot held by the Pedroites, and most heroically held it was, against the
whole army of the usurper Miguel, led by his best generals. Day after
day, and night after night, were his legions led to the attack, and as
often were they repulsed by the half-starved defenders of its
earth-formed ramparts. We may speak with pride of the siege of Kars and
of Lucknow, and of many another event in the late war; but I hold that
they do not eclipse the gallant defence of the Portuguese
Constitutionalists of the Sierra convent. Below the convent the two
banks of the river are now joined by a handsome iron suspension-bridge,
which superseded one long existing formed of boats. The city stands
below this point, rising on the converse steep sides of a granite hill,
and with its numerous church-steeples, its tinted-walled houses, its
bright red roofs interspersed with the polished green of orange-trees in
its gardens, is a very picturesque city. Along its quays are arranged
vessels of various sizes, chiefly Portuguese or Brazilians, those of
other nations anchoring on the other side, in the stream, to be away
from the temptations of the wine-shops. On the south side is a bay with
gently sloping shores; and here are found the long, low, narrow lodges
in which are stowed the casks of Port wine, which has perhaps made
Portugal and the Portuguese more generally known to Englishmen of all
classes than would have been done by the historical associations
connected with that beautiful country.
As Bubble's friend was on his way to visit his wine-pipes, he took us
first to Villa Nova, the place I have been speaking of. One lodge he
showed us contained three thousand pipes, ranged in long lines, two and
three pipes one above another, which, at fifty pounds a pipe, represents
a capital of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Some of the English
houses are said to have two or three times that quantity; but of course
the young wine is not of the value I have mentioned. The Port wine is
grown on the banks of the Douro, in a district commencing about fifty
miles above the city. It is made in the autumn, and remains in large
vats on the farms till the spring, when it is put into casks, and
brought down in flat-bottomed boats to the lodges at Villa Nova. Here
it is racked and lotted to get rid of impurities, and has brandy put to
it to keep it. Our friend assured us that Port wine will not keep for
any length of time without brandy; the experiment has been tried over
and over again. The only way to make it keep for a short time is to
rack it constantly; but then it becomes spiritless, vapid, and
colourless. To one conclusion we came, that Port wine in the lodge at
Villa Nova and Port wine out of decanter at an English dinner-table are
very different things; for Port wine racked and lotted for the English
market, and kept some years In a temperate cellar, is undoubtedly vastly
superior to the juice of the grape before it is so prepared.
Having satisfied our curiosity, with our friend as guide, we crossed the
river to Oporto. We landed at a gateway in the brown old wall of the
city, which runs along the river and up the hill to the east and west,
surmounted by high, pointed battlements of a very Moorish appearance,
though the Moors did not plant their conquering standard so far north as
Oporto. Passing along a very narrow, cool, dirty, and somewhat
odoriferous street, we entered a wide, well-paved one, called the Rua
Nova. In the middle of it congregate the merchants every afternoon, at
the exchange hour, to transact their public business. At the end of the
street is a fine stone building, called the Factory House, a sort of
club belonging to the English, who become members by election. High
above the end of the street, on a hill covered with houses, rises the
old cathedral of Oporto. We found our way to it along some narrow,
twisting streets, with oriental-looking shops on either side--tinmen and
goldsmiths and shoemakers and stationers--a line of each sort together.
The cathedral, as well as all the churches we saw at Oporto, were rather
curious than elegant.
For the greater part of our walk we were continually ascending along
tolerably well-paved and clean streets, with stone houses and wide,
projecting balconies, some with stone, others with iron balustrades. We
passed through a street called the Street of Flowers; the chief shops in
it were those of jewellers, who showed us some very beautiful filigree
work in gold--brooches and ear-rings and rings. We next found ourselves
in a square at the bottom of two hills, with wide streets running up
each of them, and a church at their higher ends. One has a curious
arabesque tower, of great height, which we saw a long way out at sea,
called the Torre dos Clerigos. Going up still higher we reached a large
parade ground, with barracks at one end, and near them a granite-fronted
church, called the Lappa, where, in an urn, is preserved the heart of
the heroic Dom Pedro--the grandfather of the present King of Portugal.
Oporto is full of gardens, which make the city spread over a wide extent
of ground. We were agreeably surprised with its bright, clean, cheerful
look. Built on a succession of granite hills, which afford admirable
materials for the construction of its edifices, it has a substantial
comfortable look. It is also tolerably well drained, and wayfarers are
not much offended with either bad sights or smells. The variety of the
costume of the inhabitants gives it a lively look; for although
gentlemen and ladies have taken to French fashions, the townspeople
still generally wear the graceful black mantilla, or coloured or white
handkerchief over their heads, while the peasantry appear with
broad-brimmed hats and cloth jackets, gay-coloured petticoats, and a
profusion of gold ear-rings and chains. There are beggars, but they are
not very importunate, and the smallest copper coin seemed to satisfy
them. Our friend told us that he has seen a Portuguese gentleman,
wanting a copper, take his snuff-box and present it to a beggar, who
would take a pinch with the air of a noble, and shower a thousand
blessings on the head of the donor in return. "The truth is, that the
Portuguese as a nation are the kindest people I have ever met," observed
our friend. "They think charitably and act charitably, and do not
despise each other; they are kindly affectionate one to another. A good
government and a reformed church would make them a very happy people."
Our walk through the city was a hurried one, as we wished to be on board
again before dark. We passed near a large palace, with some ugly
visages garnishing the front. Here Dom Pedro lived, and here Marshal
Soult's dinner had been prepared, when the Duke of Wellington entered
the city and ate it up. We found a boat ready to carry us down the
river, which we reached by a steep, winding road. Our friend kindly
insisted on accompanying us.
At Foz a catria was prepared by our friend's directions to put us on
board the yacht. Oh, how refreshing to our olfactory senses, after the
hot air of the streets, was the fresh sea-breeze as we reached the mouth
of the river, and once more floated on the blue Atlantic! The sun
descended beneath the far western wave in a blaze of glory, such as I
have seldom seen equalled in any latitude; the glow lit up the Lappa
church, the Clerigos tower, and the Sierra convent in the distance,
suffusing a rich glow over the whole landscape. All sail was set, but
we made little way through the water; a calm succeeded, and then the hot
night-wind came off the land in fitful gusts, smelling of parched earth
and dry leaves. Having stood off the land sufficiently to clear every
danger, we kept our course. The night was somewhat dark, and we had all
turned in, leaving the mate in charge of the watch.
I know not what it was made me restless and inclined to turn out, and
breathe the fresher air on deck; probably I was heated with the long and
exciting excursion of the day. As I put my head up the companion-hatch,
sailor-fashion, I turned my eyes towards every point of the compass.
Did they deceive me? "Hallo, Sleet, what's that?" I exclaimed. "Port
the helm; hard aport, or we shall be run into." What was the look-out
about? Where were Sleet's eyes? All, I suspect, were asleep. There,
directly ahead of us, like some huge phantom of a disordered dream, came
gliding on a line-of-battle ship, her tall masts and wide-spreading
canvas towering up into the sky--a dark pyramid high above our heads;
our destruction seemed inevitable. With a hail which horror made sound
more like a shriek of despair, I summoned all hands on deck. Happily,
the man at the helm of the yacht obeyed my orders at the moment, and the
agile little craft slipped out of the way as the huge monster glided by,
her side almost touching our taffrail, and her lower studding-sail booms
just passing over our peak--so it seemed; our topmast, I know, had a
narrow squeak for it.
"What ship's that?" shouted Porpoise, springing on deck.
"Her Britannic Majesty's ship `Megatherium,'" so the name sounded.
"Then let a better lookout be kept aboard her Britannic Majesty's ship
`megatherium' in future, or the Duke of Blow-you-up will have to report
to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty," replied Porpoise, through
the speaking-trumpet. "I hauled in the duke just to frighten them a
bit," he added; "they wouldn't care for the plain mister. The chances
are that some of the lookouts had their eyes shut, and the officer of
the watch had gone to freshen his nip a bit. No one dreams of danger on
a fine night like this, and if a few small fishing-boats had been run
down, no one would have heard any thing about it; there would be just a
cry and a shriek from the drowning people, and all would be over.
There's more danger of being run down on a calm night like this than in
a gale of wind, when everybody has his eyes open."
"What cutter is that?" hailed some on board the ship, through a
speaking-trumpet, before Porpoise had done speaking.
"Bow-wow-wow! I leave you to guess," he answered.
By this time the vessels were so far apart that a hail could scarcely be
distinguished, and so we separated. I only hope those who deserved a
reprimand got it, and that any of my brother-officers, or other
sea-going men who read these pages, will take the hint, and have as
bright a lookout kept in fine weather as in foul.