Portugal of the Portuguese

by Aubrey F. G. Bell

The provinces of Minho and Traz os Montes, which limit Portugal to the north, have few great buildings. Minho is celebrated rather for its woods and hills and streams, its cheerful quintas in pleasant surroundings of maize and granite, than for its ancient buildings. It is not a country of large towns. Several unpretentious small towns it has along its sand and pine coast, Villa do Conde. Povoa de Varzim and Vianna do Castello, the latter beautiful in its sheltered position at the mouth of the river Lima. It is worth following up this river, which inspired the poet Diogo Bernardes with his tenderest verses, and to which his thoughts turned longingly when a captive in Africa after the battle of Alcacer Kebir, for it really is beautiful, and the quintas and villages most interesting. The capital of Minho, Braga, has few old buildings besides the Cathedral, which is said to date from the first years of Portugal’s existence, and preserves the tomb of Count Henry of Burgundy, father of Portugal’s first King.

Traz os Montes.

Traz os Montes, the neighbouring province to the east, has even fewer towns. Its villages lie like those of Castille in a bleak and shadeless country. The only two with pretensions to the name of town are Villa Real, the capital, and Bragança. Both of these towns are most curious. They have rather many interesting scraps of carved wood and stone than any great buildings, but the Castle of the Braganzas is one of the finest of the many noble castles that crown the hills of Portugal. It is surrounded by a wall within which is a little village of streets and shops of its own, so that it forms a miniature town above Bragança. The wall hides these low houses, tiny shops and narrow streets from sight, and the town of Bragança itself is in a hollow, so that from some distance one sees only the great castle standing out among the bare treeless hills.

Oporto.

Oporto, too, has succeeded in retaining its individuality. The towns of Portugal have to thank their position on steep hills, strong sites chosen against attack of Moor or Christian, for having kept in some at least of their quarters a peculiar character of mediaeval charm. So steep are many of Oporto’s streets that a strike of tramcars—which in Portugal ascend streets truly perpendicular—leaves the citizens in a comical helplessness, infants without arms. Oporto covers several hills on the right bank of the Douro. The river is here so narrow, the granite banks so steep that from some points of the city one may look across from one bank to the other without realising that there is any break or that a river flows between. Oporto is the only city of Portugal besides Lisbon. The latest returns give a population of 194,000. The total number of foreigners is 7,210, of which 3,110 are Brazilians, 2,764 Spaniards, 289 French, 229 Germans, and 579 English (census of 1911). It is a busy industrial city, and has no parades of idleness like Lisbon, where the busy workers are crushed away into side streets and quays, for fear the foreigner should see such undignified behaviour. The true Lisboeta’s ambition is to do nothing, and to do it elegantly. On the other hand, the inhabitant of Oporto is proud of his business. He is more vigorous and active, and has a sterner and more independent outlook on life. And the two cities are rivals, sometimes almost bitterly hostile. It is the steep right bank of the Douro which has provided Oporto with its most curious and conservative quarters. There is here little scope for change. The narrow streets descend so sheerly that they have become in places mere flights of stone steps, and the coal smoke of Oporto gives them a coat of blackness. It is the most northern in look of all southern cities. If you were to transport a part of the City or some town of the North of England to the radiant sunshine and crushing heat of Portugal, you might have a like effect. Not that Oporto has not plenty of colour in detail, but the first impression is one of iron-grey and gloom. The fine old Cathedral stands immediately above these steep descents to the river. One says “old” naturally, although it retains nothing of the twelfth century, when it was founded, and much of it is quite modern: for the granite of which it is built has a look of age even in its first youth. The cloisters are five centuries old, the oldest part of the building. In the sordid surroundings and in the summer heat, which can be more oppressive at Oporto than at Lisbon, the Cathedral is a cool refuge to which, however, few of the citizens have apparently the leisure to go; or the energy, unless they live in some little black court or smothered alley in its neighbourhood. More central is the eighteenth-century Priests’ Tower—Torre dos Clerigos—nearly a twentieth of a mile high, from which all Oporto and the surrounding country can be seen. Oporto has older buildings, as the Church of São Martinho de Cedofeita, of the twelfth century, but the real pride of its citizens is in the Jardim da Cordoaria, planted fifty years ago, in the Palacio de Crystal, of the same date, built in imitation of the Crystal Palace, in the statue of Prince Henry the Navigator (1900); the “Avenue of Fountains” above the Douro and the 200 ft. high bridge of Dom Luiz I across it. On top of the left bank in rocky prominence is the old Convent of the Augustinians, Nossa Senhora da Serra do Pilar, famous in the Peninsular War, and beneath are the gaily washed cellars and armazens of the port-wine merchants in the most ancient town of Gaia.

GENERAL VIEW, OPORTO

Alemtejo and Algarve.

Rarely does the foreign traveller in Portugal, rarely the Portuguese traveller on pleasure bent, cross the Tagus. Alemtejo and Algarve are relegated for the most part to the glare of the sun and to farmers, engineers and commercial travellers. Only a few cunning persons know that a whole new kingdom of pleasure and interest here awaits the enterprising. But it must be confessed that the travelling is not easy, and that the train which saunters along the single railway, zigzagging towards Algarve, takes a whole day to reach Faro from Lisbon. The foreigner coming from Badajoz sees the delightful town of Elvas, sees perhaps Estremoz or Portalegre. But many other towns and villages deserve his attention, Setubal for its position and groves of oranges, Santarem for its splendid view of the Tagus valley, Vianna do Alemtejo, a white village above wide charnecas, Monchique, high in the southernmost serra of Portugal, the ancient Silves, once a flourishing city of the Moors, Sines and Sagres for their more modern historical associations, Lagos in its beautiful sheltered bay calling to all those who like hot winters, Portimão with its no less beautiful Praia da Rocha.