_October 19, 1797._
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The valley of Collares affords me a source of perpetual amusement. I
have discovered a variety of paths which lead through chestnut copses
and orchards to irregular green spots, where self-sown bays and
citronbushes
hang wild over the rocky margin of a little river, and drop their fruit
and blossoms into the stream. You may ride for miles along the banks of
this delightful water, catching endless perspectives of flowery
thickets, between the stems of poplar and walnut. The scenery is truly
Elysian, and exactly such as poets assign for the resort of happy
spirits. The mossy fragments of rocks, grotesque pollards, and rustic
bridges you meet with at every step, recall Savoy and Switzerland to the
imagination; but the exotic cast of the vegetation, the vivid green of
the citron, the golden fruitage of the orange, the blossoming myrtle,
and the rich fragrance of a turf embroidered with the brightest-colored
and most aromatic flowers, allow me, without a stretch of fancy, to
believe myself in the garden of the Hesperides, and to expect the dragon
under every tree. I by no means like the thought of abandoning these
smiling regions, and have been twenty times on the point, this very day,
of revoking the orders I have given for my journey. Whatever objections
I may have had to Portugal seem to vanish since I have determined to
leave it; for such is the perversity of human nature, that objects
appear the most estimable precisely at the moment when we are going to
leave them.
There was this morning a mild radiance in the sunbeams, and a balsamic
serenity in the air, which infused that voluptuous listlessness—that
desire of remaining imparadised in one delightful spot, which, in
classical fictions, was supposed to render those who had tasted of the
lotus, forgetful of friends and of every tie. My feelings were not
dissimilar; I loathed the idea of moving away.
Though I had entered these beautiful orchards soon after sunrise, the
clocks of some distant conventual churches had chimed hour after hour,
before I could prevail upon myself to quit the spreading odoriferous
baytrees under which I had been lying. If shades so cool and fragrant
invited to repose, I must observe, that never were paths better
calculated to tempt the laziest of beings to a walk, than those that
opened on all sides, and are formed of a smooth, dry sand, bound firmly
together, composing a surface as hard as gravel. These level paths wind
about among a labyrinth of light, elegant fruit-trees: almond, plum, and
cherry, something like the groves of Tongo-Taboo, as represented in
Cook’s voyages; and to increase the resemblance, neat, clean fences and
low, open sheds, thatched with reeds, appear at intervals, breaking the
horizontal line of the perspective. I had now lingered and loitered away
pretty nearly the whole morning, and though, as far as scenery could
authorize and climate inspire, I might fancy myself an inhabitant of
Polynesia, I could not pretend to be sufficiently ethereal to exist
without nourishment. In plain English, I was extremely hungry. The
pears, quinces, and oranges, which dangled above my head, although fair
to the eye, were neither so juicy nor so gratifying to the palate, as
might have been expected from their promising appearance.