[6]. The story of the expedition is told in full in “The Year after the Armada,” by the present writer.
[7]. Lisbon, 738 milimetres; Biarritz, 1067 milimetres; Nice, 766 milimetres.
IX
SETUBAL, TROYA, AND EVORA
Tyneside itself cannot be more disagreeable than Lisbon on the rare occasions when really bad weather comes up the Tagus from the west. Smoke of unusual blackness and abundance is poured without let or hindrance from innumerable industrial chimneys by the water-side, and the heavy sea-mist, clinging and wet, holds the carbon in its embrace until the atmosphere would hardly disgrace a London particular at Blackwall. I had stood it for a day, but as I knew I could get away from it by a short railway journey out of the valley of the Tagus I determined to endure it no longer, but to fly to the other side of the hills. The weather was as bad as ever when I started the next morning by the ferry-boat to cross the four miles or so of river to Barreiro, which is the terminus of the southern system of railways for Lisbon. Through an arid-looking country of vines producing the famous Lavradio wine, but ugly and poor, on the slopes of the Tagus watershed, we gradually rose to the region of pines and eucalyptus. Leaving all the mist and rain behind us we topped the sandy hills and descended towards the south in an atmosphere brilliantly clear and as exhilarating as nitrous oxide gas.
Portuguese railways are slow, and it took an hour and a half to cover the eighteen miles between Barreiro and Setubal—the Saint Ubes of the English geographies. A clean spacious little town, beautifully situated, is this metropolis of sardines and salt. The days of its saline preeminence, it is true, have passed away—the times of humming prosperity at the salt-pans, when the harbours was wont to be crowded by ships loading salt for England and elsewhere; but still the local trade is considerable, and the great extension of the tinned sardine trade in Portugal has made up for everything, there being as many as thirty-four sardine-packing factories at present in full work at Setubal. Five minutes after we had got clear out of the Tagus valley and over the last ridge, the aspect of the land had changed as if by magic. Oranges, lemons, and almond-trees stretch in groves and orchards on all sides; broad tracts of cereal land and dark olive plantations mix with the vineyards, telling of a country of overflowing fertility; whilst long lines of tall eucalyptus trees, with hanging strips of bark, add a strange and exotic note to the scene. This fertile plain descending to the sea on the south is enclosed by high mountain ranges, especially towards the west, upon an outlying spur of which, a great isolated hill, stands aloft Palmella, another of those stupendous fortresses for which Portugal bears the palm. At the foot of the plain, on the edge of the sea, sits the sparkling little town of Setubal, with Palmella, six miles away, looming behind it, but in the marvellous clear air looking as if within reach of one’s hand.
Before the town of Setubal, and three miles away across the estuary, there extends a long sandy spit or island completely enclosing the harbour and river mouth on the south, the only entrance being from the west where a rocky point, an extreme spur of the great Arrabida range, runs out into the Atlantic facing the sandy point. This land-locked haven of clear blue water is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen, especially when entering it from the sea. The climate of Setubal is perhaps the warmest of any in Portugal, and the fertility of the country at the back is remarkable, the hills behind it completely shutting off the winds from the north.
And yet the people in this part of the country present an undefinable trace of poverty and hardship, such as is never seen in North Portugal. They are hard-working and frugal, but they are somehow less upstanding and independent in their bearing, and their conditions of life are evidently inferior. The difference is no doubt to some extent racial; for here the sturdy Teutonic and Celtic stocks left fewer traces than in the north: but the land in the south is mostly owned in large estates, and not by the small cultivators themselves, as it is in North Portugal, and this has probably more to do with it. A population of wage-earners is never so well conditioned as one of independent workers, and in some such direction as this, surely, must be sought the explanation for the marked difference between the people of the north and south of a country so small and so homogeneous as Portugal.
The long sandy island across the bay was my objective, and I lost no time in bargaining with the owner of a sardine-boat to carry me across. The boat was a heavy, clumsy craft, as it needs to be for the sardine fisheries, the shape of a crescent-moon with pointed prow and stern, a high-peaked lateen sail of red canvas stretched on canes, and long sweeps which worked over a pin in the thwarts, fitting into a hole in a mighty block of wood in the centre of the oars instead of between rollocks. If the craft was picturesque the crew was still more so: the owner, a sturdy old seaman, and his son, a bright lad of twenty, wore the universal bag-cap, when they wore any head-covering at all, which was seldom. The old man had boots as well, evidently more for appearance than use, for he took them off for good as soon as the bargain with me was concluded. A flannel shirt and trousers tucked up to the knees, and girded at the waist by a red sash, completed the costume. The other member of the crew, presumably a hired hand, was a striking Levantine or Greek-looking fellow of about seven-and-twenty, far more intelligent than the patrão or his son, brimming over with eager interest in the expedition, an incessant talker, with all sorts of queer lore and information about the strange place we were going to see. He, for all his intelligence and readiness, had but two ragged and scanty cotton garments to cover him, and made no pretence of head or foot covering.
Whilst the boat was being brought round to the stair, I explored the town and found a fine old Manueline door in the church São Julião at the corner of the spacious praça called after the eighteenth-century poet Bocage, who having been born at Setubal is the principal literary glory of the town.
Not a breath of wind was stirring, and the lumbering sardine-boat, with its big sweeps weighing nearly half a hundredweight each, was a heavy pull for two men. But the patrão and his son put their backs into the work cheerfully and with good will, the vivacious, black-eyed tatterdemalion of a crew chattering incessantly whilst he held the tiller; his being by far the easiest job, apparently as a concession to the superiority of mind over matter. No ripple stirred the blue, clear water as we slowly pushed out into the bay and got clear of the town. The air was of exquisite clarity and fineness, with some sort of subtle pungency in it that seemed to blend the freshness of the salt sea with the languor of the lotus land; and as we receded from the shore there gradually opened out behind us, in clear, sharp outline sparkling with colour and brilliancy, one of the most striking coast panoramas I have ever beheld. The bay was almost land-locked, and at the brink of the blue water shone the town as white as snow in the sunlight. Behind, in a great amphitheatre, rose the hills from the deep green masses of the orange groves upon the broad plain at their feet. Bright red earth glowed in big gashes upon the slopes, amidst the varying verdure of olives, cork, and pines; and then above the trees and hills towards the west soared the peaks and crags of the great Arrabida range, tinted in this golden morning from orange to ochre and from ochre to violet, with shadows here and there of deepest indigo. Right behind the town the great stronghold of Palmella, upon its sudden hill six miles away, seemed to stand sentinel over the verdant plain and white houses: and there, in the near distance, on the west, upon a promontory of rock forming the point of the inner bay, was another ancient fortress, that of St. Philip, looking sheer down into the sea. Beyond that as we advanced we saw still another castle on a point; and, farther off, the end of the Arrabida range, whose towering peaks dwarfed all the lower hills, pushes far into the sea its precipitous bluff, bounding the landscape on that side.