Cintra would be a beautiful spot anywhere, but in this sun-scorched land it comes as a surprising revelation; a green oasis in a desolate expanse of aridity.

Here are great shady oak woods and tinkling fern-fringed brooks, pleasant leafy valleys, and a grateful sense of moist coolness. On the very summit of the rocky hill of Pena, King Fernando had built a fantastic dream-castle, all domes and pinnacles. It was exactly like the "enchanted castle" of one of Gustave Doré's illustrations, and had, I believe, been partly designed by Doré himself. Some of the details may have been a little too flamboyant for sober British tastes, but, perched on its lofty rock, this castle was surprisingly effective from below with its gilded turrets and Moorish tiles. As the castle occupied every inch of the summit of the Pena hill, the only approach to it was by a broad winding roadway tunnelled through the solid rock. Openings had been cut in the sides of the tunnel giving wonderful views over the valleys far down below. This approach was for all the world like the rocky ways up which Parsifal is led to the temple of the Grail in the first act of Wagner's great mystery drama. The finest feature about Pena, to my mind, was the wood of camellias on its southern face. These camellias had grown to a great size, and when in flower in March they were a most beautiful sight.

There was a great deal of work at the Lisbon Legation, principally of a commercial character. There were never-ending disputes between British shippers and the Custom House authorities, and the extremely dilatory methods of the Portuguese Government were most trying to the temper at times.

I shall always cherish mildly agreeable recollections of Lisbon. It was a placid, sunlit, soporific existence, very different from the turmoil of Petrograd life. The people were friendly, and as hospitable as their very limited financial resources enabled them to be. They could mostly speak French in a fashion, still their limited vocabulary was quite sufficient for expressing their more limited ideas.

I never could help contrasting the splendid past of this little nation with its somewhat inadequate present, for it must be remembered that Portugal in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was the leading maritime Power of Europe. Portugal had planted her colonies and her language (surely the most hideous of all spoken idioms!) in Asia, Africa, and South America long before Great Britain or France had even dreamed of a Colonial Empire.

They were a race of hardy and fearless seamen. Prince Henry the Navigator, the son of John of Portugal and of John of Gaunt's daughter, discovered Madeira, the Azores, and the Cape Verde islands in the early fourteen-hundreds.

In the same century Diaz doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and Vasco da Gama succeeded in reaching India by sea, whilst Albuquerque founded Portuguese colonies in Brazil and at Goa in India. This race of intrepid navigators and explorers held the command of the sea long before the Dutch or British, and by the middle of the sixteenth century little Portugal ranked as one of the most powerful monarchies in Europe.

Portugal, too, is England's oldest ally, for the Treaty of Windsor establishing an alliance between the two countries was signed as far back as 1386.

This is not the place in which to enter into the causes which led to the gradual decadence of this wonderful little nation, sapped her energies and atrophied her enterprise. To the historian those causes are sufficiently familiar.

Let us only trust that Lusitania's star may some day rise again.