The mingling of the negro blood with the European, which is so marked a feature of the Portuguese, is doubtless responsible for the low ebb of morality in Lisbon. The Jewish type is very noticeable among the people one passes in the streets, and especially in the women. Altogether, I felt that the breath of the place was somewhat unwholesome, and Republicanism cannot possibly make matters worse, though national decay may have gone too far for any sort of government to re-vitalise the character of the people. Old Portugal’s adventurings abroad, which made her powerful for a time, brought to her the canker of luxury and the lowering of her virility, in the admixture of the blood of alien and vicious peoples, so that to-day in her decadence she is really paying her final debts of empire.
One of the Crowded Docks in the Port of Buenos Ayres.
Friends of Emigrants awaiting the Arrival of a Ship.
One sign there was of hope in what we saw—the admirably conducted orphanage that occupies the splendid buildings of the old monastery of Belem, hard by the memorial of Vasco da Gama, with its memories of Portugal’s golden age. Nowhere have I seen a finer institution of its kind, with better evidence of wise charity and tender care of the young. It was a good act that cleared out the droning monks and confiscated their building for its present humane and profitable use. The boys are taught all kinds of trades, including agriculture, and some of them to whom we spoke during their play-hour were much ahead of the scholars of any English orphanage in their knowledge of foreign languages. French was the favourite, although one of the lads, who had strong evidence of negro origin, spoke both French and English admirably, and told us he was studying German.
On the way to the monastery we spent some time examining the extraordinary collection of old royal carriages and sedan chairs, housed in a plain modern building. These relics of the gorgeous past are even more remarkable in their prodigal ostentation than those of the famous collection at Versailles, and will probably be guarded by the Republic as evidence that the spendthrift kings who so long oppressed the country went to sinful extremes in their love of ostentation and luxury, though all the same I would not swap a sixteen horse power car for the whole collection, if it were comfort I was after!
The driver of the motor car we had hired would have been kept in solitary confinement in any peaceful country, for he was a public danger, yet when we had loaded up with our luggage at the hotel we came near to missing the ship, as “something went wrong with the works,” and the reckless driver proved so incompetent a mechanic that we had eventually to transfer ourselves and our light luggage (the heavy having been shipped in England) to another taxi, and so reach the quay, where for a mere trifle of 2,000 reis ($2) two brawny rascals put our bags on board the tender, with more fuss than an English porter would have made over shifting a car-load.
In a few minutes more we were aboard the liner that was to carry us across the sunlit seas to that other America which is so different from the Northern Continent and of which Americans really know so little.