The manners of these people of North Portugal, indeed, are irreproachable. So courteous are they that it seems almost rude of the stranger to note too closely the quaint garb of the working people around him. The peasant women especially keep their ancient costume unchanged. Barefoot they go, old and young, with their heavy burdens piled in their boat-shaped baskets upon the black, pork-pie hats they wear. Their skirts, usually black but often with a broad horizontal stripe of colour round the bottom, are very short, and gathered with great fulness at the waist and over the hips. Upon the shoulders there is almost invariably a brilliantly coloured handkerchief, and sometimes another upon the head beneath the hat; and long, pendant, gold earrings shine against their coarse jet-black hair. It is evident that for the most part they work quite as hard as the men, but they have no appearance of privation or ill-treatment, except that their habit of carrying heavy weights upon their heads has the effect of ruining their figures in the manner already described. There are no indications anywhere of excessive drinking, and even smoking is not conspicuous amongst the working men and boys in the streets; they seem, indeed, too seriously busy for that, except on some feast day, when, with their best clothes on, they are gay enough, though not vociferous even then, as most southern peoples are.
There is an ancient little church in the northern suburb of Oporto, which will be of some interest to students of architecture. It is little more than a fragment now, but represents the earliest orthodox Catholic foundation in the city, and indeed in this part of the Peninsula. In the clashing of creeds in the early centuries of Christianity, Visigothic Spain had been officially Arian, whilst orthodox trinitarianism was the creed of the great churchmen, and the majority of the Romanised people. In 559 Mir, King of the Suevians, who ruled in the north-west corner of the Peninsula, was distracted by the imminent danger of his son, who was ill apparently to death. He was an Arian, but the priests of the orthodox Church assured him that safety to his son might be gained by the aid of certain relics of St. Martin of Tours, and Mir swore that if the relics worked the miracle he and all his people would join the Catholic communion, and he would build a church to St. Martin within a year in his capital city. The prince recovered, and Mir was as good as his word. To the dismay of the Gothic monarchs of Spain, Suevia joined the orthodox fold, and in hot haste this Church of St. Martin was built; “Cedofeita,” “soon done,” being its name to this day. The upper part of the little cruciform church has been restored and the inner walls have been lined with the universal blue and white picture tiles; but the pillars and arches are pure romanesque, with capricious carvings on the capitals, and the charming little cloister is entered by a romanesque doorway of great beauty. The capitals, too, of the north doorway of the church are very curious, though apparently later than the cloister door, one of the carvings representing a man in a long gown being devoured by an animal’s head, doubtless an allegory of which the significance is lost to us.
Another church of some interest is that of Mattosinhos, a large and prosperous village adjoining the harbour of Leixões, where those who come by sea to Oporto land. The way thither from the city by the electric tramway lies along the river-side, and past the charming tropical-looking public gardens at the Foz de Douro, where in the summer heat the citizens of Oporto idle, flirt, and disport themselves in the surf that breaks upon the sandy beach. The Church of Mattosinhos is a great place of pilgrimage, for it possesses amongst other attractions a miraculous image of Christ, which is venerated throughout Portugal, and the shrine is a famous one. The church lies on a gentle eminence, and is approached by a beautiful, wide, mosaic pavement, bordered by avenues of planes and cork trees, under the shadow of which are six chapels containing life-sized groups representing scenes in the passion of Our Lord. The soft warm air from the sea comes heavy-laden with the scent of flowers, and on one side of the church a grove of orange trees shelters a merry school of boys, who do not even pause in their games to glance at the curious stranger peering about amongst them. The outside of the church, somewhat squat and solid eighteenth-century work, presents a fair specimen of a style of which we shall see much later; a style not at all ineffective, although its description may not sound attractive. Its peculiarity consists in the admixture of brownish-grey granite, of which all the architectural lines and salient points consist, with panels or spaces of snow-white plaster between. In this pure air, under a brilliant sun, the subdued colour of the granite softens the outlines, whilst the white spaces prevent an appearance of gloom or heaviness. Inside, the Church of Mattosinhos is grave and simple in its architectural features, but, as usual, the altars, and especially the chancel, are a riotous mass of gilt wood carving, without repose or restraint.
Down by the shore the great Atlantic rollers are thundering upon the beach, as if hungering to devour the crescent-shaped sardine boats drawn higher up for safety; and a long mail steamer, in the little harbour of Leixões, has its blue peter flying and its funnel smoking ready to sail for England. It is autumn there, no doubt, for the calendar tells us so and cannot lie; but here it is glorious summer still, for the palms and planes wave softly green in the languorous air, and the flowers, in great white and purple masses, hang over every wall and wrestle with the blue-black grapes that deck the trellises before the cottage doors. Everywhere is vivid colour and sharp outline in an atmosphere of marvellous clarity, and as we are carried rapidly through the balmy, voluptuous breeze to the city, we feel that life under such conditions is indeed worth living.
II
BRAGA AND BOM JESUS
The famous port-wine is grown upon a well-defined region nearly sixty miles up the river from Oporto, and, interesting as the manufacture is, the arid and inhospitable-looking land of terraced hillsides, where the glorious grape grows upon the loose, stony soil, offers little attraction to the seeker after the picturesque. To the north of Oporto, and indeed in most of the province of Minho, the wine produced, though varying in excellence, is generally of stout claret character, not unlike the Rioja wine grown in the north of Spain. But North Portugal, though cultivated like a garden wherever possible by a peasantry probably unequalled in Europe for self-respecting independence and laboriousness, thanks largely to causes that have made them practically owners as well as tillers of the soil, does not strike a cursory observer as being naturally fertile. For miles together, and as far as the eye reaches, pine-clad hillsides stretch: beautiful straight pines, rising in huge forests or isolated clumps, the light-green feathery foliage shining against the clear indigo background of the sky, high above the sandy soil carpeted with a thick soft cushion of pine-needles. But closer view shows that down in the sheltered valleys between the hills and on the lower slopes there nestle hundreds of little vineyards and fields of maize and rye, the staple breadstuffs of the people.
The peasantry live well in their way, and are not content with inferior food. Not for them is the poor makeshift of white bread and the fat cold bacon of the English farm hand. The bread of rye with an admixture of maize flour, the broa or brona, as it is called in north-western Spain, is dark in colour and coarse in texture; but it is a fine sustaining food, upon which, in Galicia, I have often made a good meal. The ever-present dried codfish, bacalhau, cooked with garlic and oil, and sometimes with rice, flavoured with saffron, is also not by any means a food to be contemned, unpalatable as it is to those who taste it for the first time. But this, although forming the staple fare of the Minho peasant and small farmer, does not exhaust his menu. There is for high days and holidays the savoury estofado of stewed meat and vegetables, of which the Portuguese peasant housewife is pardonably proud; there are olives, onions, and fruit ad libitum, and good, sound, new wine, tart, but not unpleasant, at the price of the cheapest small beer in England.
But the foreign visitor who comes simply for a short pleasure trip on the more or less beaten tracks will not be expected to regale himself upon this peasant fare, good as it is in its way. Of mutton he will find little or none, but veal, especially in the national stew, he will see at most meals, and ox-tongue, with a rich sauce, will appear on the table more frequently than is usual elsewhere. A thin, and, it must be confessed, usually tough steak, to which the adopted English name of beef (spelt bife) is given, will be placed before him pretty often, and he will find both the thing and the word omelette—which is never used in Spanish—universal in Portuguese dining-rooms.
Through a glorious country of pine-clad uplands and sheltered vineyards the railway runs from Oporto to the former great city of Braga, in Roman times Bracara Augusta, and capital of the whole north-western part of the Iberian Peninsula. Its position on a slight elevation in the midst of a vast undulating plain or cuenca, surrounded by mountains, has made of Braga the natural emporium of the province, and in each succeeding racial dispensation a royal seat and capital; and it remains to-day, though shorn of its splendour, the ecclesiastical capital of the Spains, claiming precedence over imperial Toledo for its archbishopric and primacy. It is a busy, prosperous place, humming with little spinning and weaving factories, where woollen and cotton fabrics are turned out in great quantities, and hold their own not only here in Minho, but in the rest of Portugal and far Brazil and Portuguese Africa.
At the railway station at Braga, in the outskirts of the city, a noisy, assertive little steam-train of several carriages is waiting in the street, and with much puffing and whistling, it carries the travellers up the slope into the narrow thoroughfares of the town. It is Sunday, and the streets are thronged with gaily-dressed people, the women, heavily decked with the ancient gold jewellery, long earrings, heavy neck chains, and crosses upon the white shirt that covers the bosom. Across the shoulders of most of them there is a brilliantly coloured silk handkerchief, whilst their full-pleated short skirts are usually of some thick dark-coloured cloth, and upon their heads here in Braga they often wear, like their sisters in Oporto, the peculiar round cloth pork-pie hat, with the curling silk fringe on the top of the rim. The men are less picturesque in their Sunday trim, for many of them wear felt wide-brimmed hats instead of the workaday bag cap; but even they have usually added a bit of colour to their sombre masculine garb in the form of a bright scarf encircling their waists to do the duty of braces.