The Cruise of the Frolic

by William Henry Giles Kingston

On one occasion, the Miguelites, wishing to attack the castle, brought a number of casks to the end of the spit of sand at the entrance of the river, and erected a battery on it, but they forgot to fill the casks with sand or earth; when morning broke there was a formidable battery directly under the walls of the castle. Some unfortunate troops were placed in it to work the guns; all went very well till the guns of the castle began to play on it, and then a few shots sent the entire fabric to the four winds of heaven, and either killed the soldiers placed in it, or drove them flying hurry-skurry across the sand, where many more were picked off by the rifles of the Constitutionalists.

What could be more unpleasant than having on a hot day to run along a heavy shingly beach, with a number of sharpshooters taking deliberate aim at one’s corpus? Happy would he be who could find a deep hole into which to roll himself out of harm’s way.

The banks of the Douro are picturesque from the very entrance. On either side are broken cliffs; on the south covered with pine-groves, on the north with yellow, white, and pick houses and churches, and orange-groves. On the south we passed the remains of the old convent of St. Antonio, where once the jovial monks feasted and sang and prayed, well supplied with the spoils of the sea. Here pious fishermen used to stop and ask a blessing on their labours, on their way down the river, and on their return they failed not to offer the choice of their spoil to the worthy friars. The gardens of the convent were profusely ornamented with statues of curious device, and flowers, and vases, and orange-trees, and grottoes, and temples; all now swept away by the scythe of war—the convent walls now forming part of a manufactory. The monks have disappeared from Portugal, and few people regret them less than the Portuguese. At best they were drones; and, if we are to credit one-quarter of the tales told of them, they continued to do no little amount of evil in their generation. On the same side of the river, but much higher up, where the Douro forces its way between two lofty cliffs, on the summit of the southern one, stands the once very celebrated convent of the Sierra. From beneath its walls the Duke of Wellington led his army across the river into Oporto, and drove Marshal Soult out of the city. This convent, and its surrounding garden, was the only spot held by the Pedroites, and most heroically held it was, against the whole army of the usurper Miguel, led by his best generals. Day after day, and night after night, were his legions led to the attack, and as often were they repulsed by the half-starved defenders of its earth-formed ramparts. We may speak with pride of the siege of Kars and of Lucknow, and of many another event in the late war; but I hold that they do not eclipse the gallant defence of the Portuguese Constitutionalists of the Sierra convent. Below the convent the two banks of the river are now joined by a handsome iron suspension-bridge, which superseded one long existing formed of boats. The city stands below this point, rising on the converse steep sides of a granite hill, and with its numerous church-steeples, its tinted-walled houses, its bright red roofs interspersed with the polished green of orange-trees in its gardens, is a very picturesque city. Along its quays are arranged vessels of various sizes, chiefly Portuguese or Brazilians, those of other nations anchoring on the other side, in the stream, to be away from the temptations of the wine-shops. On the south side is a bay with gently sloping shores; and here are found the long, low, narrow lodges in which are stowed the casks of Port wine, which has perhaps made Portugal and the Portuguese more generally known to Englishmen of all classes than would have been done by the historical associations connected with that beautiful country.

As Bubble’s friend was on his way to visit his wine-pipes, he took us first to Villa Nova, the place I have been speaking of. One lodge he showed us contained three thousand pipes, ranged in long lines, two and three pipes one above another, which, at fifty pounds a pipe, represents a capital of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Some of the English houses are said to have two or three times that quantity; but of course the young wine is not of the value I have mentioned. The Port wine is grown on the banks of the Douro, in a district commencing about fifty miles above the city. It is made in the autumn, and remains in large vats on the farms till the spring, when it is put into casks, and brought down in flat-bottomed boats to the lodges at Villa Nova. Here it is racked and lotted to get rid of impurities, and has brandy put to it to keep it. Our friend assured us that Port wine will not keep for any length of time without brandy; the experiment has been tried over and over again. The only way to make it keep for a short time is to rack it constantly; but then it becomes spiritless, vapid, and colourless. To one conclusion we came, that Port wine in the lodge at Villa Nova and Port wine out of decanter at an English dinner-table are very different things; for Port wine racked and lotted for the English market, and kept some years In a temperate cellar, is undoubtedly vastly superior to the juice of the grape before it is so prepared.

Having satisfied our curiosity, with our friend as guide, we crossed the river to Oporto. We landed at a gateway in the brown old wall of the city, which runs along the river and up the hill to the east and west, surmounted by high, pointed battlements of a very Moorish appearance, though the Moors did not plant their conquering standard so far north as Oporto. Passing along a very narrow, cool, dirty, and somewhat odoriferous street, we entered a wide, well-paved one, called the Rua Nova. In the middle of it congregate the merchants every afternoon, at the exchange hour, to transact their public business. At the end of the street is a fine stone building, called the Factory House, a sort of club belonging to the English, who become members by election. High above the end of the street, on a hill covered with houses, rises the old cathedral of Oporto. We found our way to it along some narrow, twisting streets, with oriental-looking shops on either side—tinmen and goldsmiths and shoemakers and stationers—a line of each sort together. The cathedral, as well as all the churches we saw at Oporto, were rather curious than elegant.

For the greater part of our walk we were continually ascending along tolerably well-paved and clean streets, with stone houses and wide, projecting balconies, some with stone, others with iron balustrades. We passed through a street called the Street of Flowers; the chief shops in it were those of jewellers, who showed us some very beautiful filigree work in gold—brooches and ear-rings and rings. We next found ourselves in a square at the bottom of two hills, with wide streets running up each of them, and a church at their higher ends. One has a curious arabesque tower, of great height, which we saw a long way out at sea, called the Torre dos Clerigos. Going up still higher we reached a large parade ground, with barracks at one end, and near them a granite-fronted church, called the Lappa, where, in an urn, is preserved the heart of the heroic Dom Pedro—the grandfather of the present King of Portugal. Oporto is full of gardens, which make the city spread over a wide extent of ground. We were agreeably surprised with its bright, clean, cheerful look. Built on a succession of granite hills, which afford admirable materials for the construction of its edifices, it has a substantial comfortable look. It is also tolerably well drained, and wayfarers are not much offended with either bad sights or smells. The variety of the costume of the inhabitants gives it a lively look; for although gentlemen and ladies have taken to French fashions, the townspeople still generally wear the graceful black mantilla, or coloured or white handkerchief over their heads, while the peasantry appear with broad-brimmed hats and cloth jackets, gay-coloured petticoats, and a profusion of gold ear-rings and chains. There are beggars, but they are not very importunate, and the smallest copper coin seemed to satisfy them. Our friend told us that he has seen a Portuguese gentleman, wanting a copper, take his snuff-box and present it to a beggar, who would take a pinch with the air of a noble, and shower a thousand blessings on the head of the donor in return. “The truth is, that the Portuguese as a nation are the kindest people I have ever met,” observed our friend. “They think charitably and act charitably, and do not despise each other; they are kindly affectionate one to another. A good government and a reformed church would make them a very happy people.”

Our walk through the city was a hurried one, as we wished to be on board again before dark. We passed near a large palace, with some ugly visages garnishing the front. Here Dom Pedro lived, and here Marshal Soult’s dinner had been prepared, when the Duke of Wellington entered the city and ate it up. We found a boat ready to carry us down the river, which we reached by a steep, winding road. Our friend kindly insisted on accompanying us.

At Foz a catria was prepared by our friend’s directions to put us on board the yacht. Oh, how refreshing to our olfactory senses, after the hot air of the streets, was the fresh sea-breeze as we reached the mouth of the river, and once more floated on the blue Atlantic! The sun descended beneath the far western wave in a blaze of glory, such as I have seldom seen equalled in any latitude; the glow lit up the Lappa church, the Clerigos tower, and the Sierra convent in the distance, suffusing a rich glow over the whole landscape. All sail was set, but we made little way through the water; a calm succeeded, and then the hot night-wind came off the land in fitful gusts, smelling of parched earth and dry leaves. Having stood off the land sufficiently to clear every danger, we kept our course. The night was somewhat dark, and we had all turned in, leaving the mate in charge of the watch.

I know not what it was made me restless and inclined to turn out, and breathe the fresher air on deck; probably I was heated with the long and exciting excursion of the day. As I put my head up the companion-hatch, sailor-fashion, I turned my eyes towards every point of the compass. Did they deceive me? “Hallo, Sleet, what’s that?” I exclaimed. “Port the helm; hard aport, or we shall be run into.” What was the look-out about? Where were Sleet’s eyes? All, I suspect, were asleep. There, directly ahead of us, like some huge phantom of a disordered dream, came gliding on a line-of-battle ship, her tall masts and wide-spreading canvas towering up into the sky—a dark pyramid high above our heads; our destruction seemed inevitable. With a hail which horror made sound more like a shriek of despair, I summoned all hands on deck. Happily, the man at the helm of the yacht obeyed my orders at the moment, and the agile little craft slipped out of the way as the huge monster glided by, her side almost touching our taffrail, and her lower studding-sail booms just passing over our peak—so it seemed; our topmast, I know, had a narrow squeak for it.

“What ship’s that?” shouted Porpoise, springing on deck.