EVENING OPPOSITE OPORTO.
Along the shore of the busy Ribeira lie ships unloading, small craft they usually are, for the bar of the Douro is a terrible one, and the big ships now enter the harbour of Leixões, a league away. In a constant stream the men and women pass across the planks from ship to shore, carrying the cargo upon their heads or shoulders in peculiar boat-shaped baskets, which are the inseparable companion of the Oporto workers. Here is a smart schooner hailing from the Cornish port of Fowey, from which stockfish from Newfoundland is being landed on the heads of women, flat salt slabs as hard and dry as wood, but good nutritious food for all that; and farther along, with their prows to the shore, rest a dozen un-ladened wine and fruit boats from up the Douro, and flat-bottomed passenger skiffs into which women and men with baskets and bundles, representing their week’s supplies purchased in Oporto, are crowding to be carried back to their homes in the rich vineyard villages miles up the river. One by one the quaint craft hoist their crimson sails, and struggle out from the tangle of the bank, until the breeze catches them, and in a shimmer of red gold from the setting sun they hustle through the brown tide until a projecting corner hides them from view. It is a scene never to be forgotten.
The centre of the Ribeira is the Praça called after it, where a sloping square facing the water opens out. The scene is picturesque in the extreme. The space is thronged by men, either sleeping in their baskets or carrying them filled with fish or merchandise upon their heads: a motley, water-side crowd, men of all nations, pass to and fro, or gossip under the vine trellis before the wine shop overlooking the square, and as the observer casts his eyes upwards he sees the gaily coloured houses piled apparently on the top of one another, until at the top of all, as if overhead, is the glaring white palace of the bishop, and the glittering cathedral cross, standing out hard and clear against a sky of fathomless indigo.
This busy river-side way of the Ribeira is, so to speak, a street of two storeys. Below is the walk I have described, with the cavernous shops in the face of the old river-wall, and on the top of the wall is another path reached by occasional flights of steps, and also bordered by the squalid medley of dark shops in which strange savoury-odoured victuals are washed down by strong red wine, and quiet brown men and women, and grave-eyed swarthy babies are inextricably mixed up with brown merchandise in the gloom beyond the glaring sunlight. Unexpected steep alleys, arched and mysterious, lead to the thoroughfares higher up the precipitous slope, and the next storey, a parallel narrow street, the Rua do Robelleiro, narrow, dark, and ancient, is almost as picturesque as the Ribeira itself.
A slab let into the river-wall by the beach commemorates one of the most terrible days in Oporto’s history. The English army had been chased to its ships at Corunna, and the Spanish levies scattered: the Peninsula seemed to be at the mercy of the French legions, which, under Napoleon’s greatest marshals, held the richest provinces of Spain in the name of King Joseph Bonaparte. But 9000 English troops remained in Lisbon, and with Portugal in the hands of his enemies Napoleon knew that he would never be master of Spain. So the word went forth that Soult was to march down with a great army from Galicia, and sweep the English out of Portugal. It seemed easy, and authorities even in England believed that Portugal was untenable and should be evacuated. All but one man, Arthur Wellesley, whose victory at Vimeiro in the previous year had been wasted by the inept old women who were his superior officers. With 20,000 men, said Wellesley, he would hold Portugal against 100,000 French, the marshals notwithstanding; and the great Englishman had his way. Beresford was sent out to reorganise the scattered Portuguese fighting men, and Arthur Wellesley sailed from England with his little army to face Soult in Portugal. Before he arrived in Lisbon the French had swept down from Galicia, and on the 27th March 1809, Soult summoned Oporto to surrender. The warlike Bishop of Oporto was heading the hastily organised defence; his forces were undisciplined and badly armed, but their hearts were stout, and behind their poor earthworks the citizens of Oporto and their bishop bade defiance to Soult and his invading army.
On the 29th March at dawn the devoted city was stormed by Napoleon’s veterans, who swept all before them. There was no quarter, no mercy, and the steep streets of the city were turned to blood-smeared shambles. Down to the river bank flocked the affrighted people, falling as they ran under the rain of bullets that pursued them. Over the river from the Ribeira was a bridge of boats, and upon this the crowd of panic-stricken fugitives poured. The weight sank it, and thousands were drowned in the Douro, or struggled ashore only to be despatched by the French, whilst many of those who had been in arms deliberately drowned themselves rather than surrender. Eighteen thousand Portuguese perished on that awful day, without counting the drowned who were never recovered; whilst of the whole Portuguese host only two hundred live prisoners were taken.
Six weeks afterwards the tables were turned; six weeks spent by Soult in intrigues for his own advancement, and by his officers in discontented idleness. On the 12th May Wellesley and his army from Lisbon surprised him at Oporto in broad daylight, crossing the river a few miles above the city by a brilliant piece of daring, and Soult ignominiously fled north, leaving impedimenta and baggage behind him, harassed and scattered by the Portuguese peasants in arms, until a mere remnant of his force finally found refuge in Spain. The very dinner to which he was about to sit down at Oporto when he was surprised regaled Sir Arthur Wellesley instead, and the victor took up his residence in that big white monastery on the Serra de Pilar, which from the height on the left of the bridge affords a panorama of unequalled beauty of the city opposite on its amphitheatre of hills, shining white and stately against the dark background of the sky.
However you go from the lower level by the river-side to the main streets of the city the climb is a severe one, for in this town of precipitous hills the gradients are startling, even for the electric trams which of late years have completely taken possession of the streets. But we will leave the electric trams on this peregrination, and face the ascent on foot from the lower level of the bridge on the Ribeira itself to the upper town. First some toilsome flights of steps which have taken the place of the lower end of a precipitous alley, cut away to make the approach to the bridge, lead you up about two hundred feet to an ancient winding lane which itself is almost a flight of steps. Quaint foreign interiors are disclosed through the open doors of the dark humble abodes that line the way, and poor little home industries are carried on coram populo; half-way up the ladder-like ascent there is a ruined church, and by-and-by on the right we skirt the great battlemented wall of the vast disestablished monastery of Santa Clara. At a turn in the wall the corner of the grim old edifice itself appears, fortress-like and looming here as built for defence in the fierce times of long ago. Through the doubly-grated windows, a few feet above our heads, brown paws are thrust out, and a hoarse murmur from within takes form, by-and-by, as a demand for alms in the name of God. A glance inside makes one start back in horror, almost in disgust, though the sorry spectacle unfortunately soon becomes familiar to those who sojourn in any large Portuguese town. Huddled in squalor and filth together are half-naked, savage-looking criminals, old men, sturdy vagabonds, and youths almost children, staring out from the gloom of the prison-house through the unglazed barred windows, with whining prayer for charity, ribald jest, or explosive curses. These gaol-birds, herded publicly in their unutterable degradation behind the gratings, form the blackest spot visible in Portuguese life. Even Spain for the most part has brought her prisons into some semblance of civilised order, but Portugal in this one respect lags inexplicably behind.
FROM THE RIBEIRA, OPORTO.