It is a land of roses flowering in December, a land where, in the words of Garrett, “oranges glow in the orchards and myrtle blooms on the moors: Onde a laranjeira cresce na horta e o matto é de murta” (Viajens na minha terra, 1846). The foreigner who spends a few days in Portugal and sees perhaps Cintra and Estoril may think that he has been offered a few show pieces, yet everywhere in this wonderful climate, a warmer South-west of Ireland, given water and shelter either from the sea or from the subtle Spanish wind, plants thrive and grow as swiftly almost as the fabled bean-stalk, and flowers cover the ground like mushrooms in the twinkling of a fairy’s eye. A desolate strip of coast near Lisbon, apparently grey and barren, mere sunburnt and spray-beaten rock, was found on closer acquaintance to have at various seasons of the year, among other flowers, whin and cistus, yellow jonquil, white clustered jonquil, celandine, crocus, light blue dwarf iris, large dark-blue iris, mint and sea-lavender. And Cintra possesses many lovely places unknown to tourists, the whole region deserving not the stay of a few hours but a quiet sojourn in one of its houses or hôtels. The slopes of the Serra looking towards Cascaes, though rarely visited, are scarcely less beautiful than those above the village of Cintra, and are crowded with all kinds of trees and flowers. You may walk across from Estoril. The path goes haphazard through the uncultivated matto and then a road, also through matto moorland, passing an occasional village with low one-storeyed houses and lanes between walls of loose stones covered with brambles, sarsaparilla, and eglantine. Here a woman in white blouse, yellow skirt, and plum-coloured kerchief is at work in a small plot of vines; there a boy keeping donkeys and black-and-white cows is dressed all in light faded greys and blues like one of the wayside thistles. The country has a look of Dartmoor—only that there is no water, no patches of vivid treacherous green—and in front rise the twenty odd tors of the Serra.

At the foot of the Serra is Ribeira de Pena Longa, a little tumble-down village in olives and fruit-trees, with a few clumps of mighty planes. The village street is mainly of rock with loose stones, evidently a torrent in winter, and the forlorn and poverty-stricken look of the whole village will amaze the Englishman accustomed to see the flourishing condition of villages near or on some great estate in England. There are a few iron balconies with tins of carnations, and grey ruined walls of houses with olives and vines growing between them seem to tell of a more prosperous past, perhaps when the neighbouring Convent of Pena Longa was wont to receive the visits of King João III. From the village a wide gate leads into a kind of mysterious fairyland: out of the glowing sunshine the road passes to a cool shaded avenue of arched trees, where the songs of birds are heard in number and variety rare in Latin countries. A rapid stream runs by the road, and on this side and on that are a multitude of fruit trees and great myrtle hedges, twenty-feet high cactus with their large deep-orange-coloured flowers, giant-leaved bananas, vine-trellises, groves of lemons, plots gay with garden flowers. It is an enchanted country, and presently you will come to many peacocks and the low rambling house of the Viscondes de Pena Longa. At the other end the estate is bounded by the serra of pines and eucalyptus. A little further on a small lake is fringed with great pines, and here is a marvellous solemn silence scarcely broken by the distant cooing of doves or the sound of running water. Among the pines grows bracken and heather, myrtles in massed snow-white flower, and thick tufts of the dark purple lavender. Thence with some difficulty you may climb through a dense wood of every variety of tree and labyrinthine paths up to the palace of Pena. Fuchsias and bays and many a scented shrub and flowering tree will recompense you for the pains of the ascent, and goodly views of the Tagus, and of the Serra d’Ossa in Alemtejo. There are masses of periwinkles, and many an old wall a-crumble fretted with maidenhair and that variety of daisy which loves old mellow stonework, be it that of an Oxford college or of the Basque church of Urrugne.

Or you may attack Cintra by way of Cascaes and Collares, since the accepted approach is rarely the best way of seeing a place for the first time. There is a road for part of the way from Cascaes along the coast with sand-dunes, and hollows of scented cistus and many a delightful cove or broader sandy bays, which are now without a house, but might at the whim of fashion—absit omen—become favourite and crowded watering-places. Some miles from Cascaes the Mountains of the Moon descend into the sea, ending in the famous Cabo da Roca, the “Rock of Lisbon.” A little further on lies Collares in its celebrated vineyards, and taking the road from here to Cintra one has a view of the Serra above Cintra in a rugged, almost Alpine, grandeur of grey rocks and trees, and may understand how Fielding could call it a high mountain. To the right the last slopes are covered with groves of arbutus trees, which hang their berries in clustered lanterns of glowing yellow and orange, white and green and red. Thick layers of mist hide them on an autumn morning, through which the sun lights up the ravines in weird spears and shafts of light. To the left extends that fertile plain which produces nearly all the fruits of the earth and has for centuries provided Lisbon’s markets with their most treasured wares. Even in summer when all the surrounding country is in a cloudless blue the whole Serra of Cintra from crown to base is often blotted out in thick white mist which folds over peak and ravine, taking the shape of each in a more rounded softness of snowfields. Then when a slight wind drives it off in a bank along the horizon seaward the Serra appears a metallic blue, as if it had been poured molten into the mould and was just hardening to its definite shape.

The variety of Cintra is but a sample of that rich profusion of natural beauties in the most diverse kinds throughout the country. With an area little over a quarter of that of Great Britain and about three times that of Belgium, Portugal presents perhaps greater variety of scenery and products than any other country of Europe. Rich in trees and fruits (especially figs and oranges), rice (it was one of the projects of the last Ministry of the Monarchy to encourage rice-growing in Portugal), wine, oil, maize, wheat, rye, cork, salt from the marinhas of Aveiro and Algarve, honey from Alemtejo, Portugal could also, but for State prohibitions, produce tobacco, cotton, and the sugar-cane. The gardens on the banks of the Tagus, the orchards of Setubal and Santarem, the fruit-gardens round Caldas da Rainha and Alcobaça, the wide corn-lands on the alluvial lezirias of the rivers Tagus and Sado, the sub-tropical vegetation of the southern slope of the Serra de Arrabida and of Cintra and of the neighbourhood of Faro and Villa Real de S. Antonio in Algarve, prove that potentially at least Portugal is indeed the “garden of Europe planted by the sea.”

The salmon in the transparent rivers of Minho are less plentiful than they were, owing to the poaching and wholesale destruction dating from 1498, when King Manoel deprived the nobility of hunting and fishing privileges in their coutadas. The Vez, a tributary of the Lima, is said to be still a good trout-stream, and some trout are to be caught in the Leça. In the Cavado, Mondego and Zezere trout are now rare. Salmon are caught only or chiefly in the river Minho. But the sea along Portugal’s coasts provides her with an unfailing abundance of fish, and the fish-markets of Lisbon and Faro are renowned for their richness and variety all the year round. To the south, especially, sardines are plentiful in winter as well as in summer. The Portuguese coast is in great part rocky and dangerous, but these bare inhospitable cliffs are broken by little sand coves and bays, and varied with immense bare or pine-covered sand-dunes.

The climate varies considerably. In the south (Algarve) and especially in Eastern Alemtejo (where the summer temperature can rise to 120 Fahrenheit) and Traz os Montes (where the climate is indeed rather Spanish than Portuguese) the heat can be insufferable, and the winter cold of the north-east is severe. But in the centre, and especially along the coast of Estremadura, the climate may be described without exaggeration as the best in Europe. The warm winters lead one to expect tropical summers, but this expectation is not fulfilled, and the sea and the north summer wind here moderate the heat which can be so oppressive in the interior. The following statistics from an article by Snr. Antonio Arroyo, in Notas sobre Portugal, give the average temperatures during the years 1856-1900 at (1) Lisbon, (2) Biarritz, (3) Nice—

Thus, while the Lisbon winters are nearly three degrees warmer, the summers are barely one degree warmer. The figures are Centigrade. To convert into Fahrenheit divide by five, multiply by 9, and add 32. A scientific book has recently been published on the climate round Lisbon: The Climate of Lisbon and of the two health resorts in its immediate neighbourhood, Mont’ Estoril, on the Riviera of Portugal, and Cintra. By Dr. A. G. Delgado. Lisbon, 1914.

At Estoril a thermal station, with casino, gardens, golf-links, etc., is in process of construction. The Estoril climate even excels that of Lisbon, being slightly warmer in winter and cooler in summer. It is a little surprising that more foreigners do not settle temporarily or permanently in this region, which is so easy of access and has so many advantages. The considerable number of Englishmen now living in Portugal are with few exceptions engaged in business. Possibly foreigners are afraid of revolutions, but revolutions in Portugal do not as a rule affect the foreigner in the slightest degree. Gambling, on a large scale, and great luxury, it is true, he will not find, but cleanliness and ordinary comfort are to be had at the existing hôtels, and any other deficiencies are amply compensated for by the excellent climate and the charms and interest of the surrounding country, and by the courtesy and helpfulness of its inhabitants. It is not often that travellers can live in a comfortable hôtel, have English newspapers, English books (from the Lisbon International Library), English tinned foods and tobacco, all the delights and none of the drawbacks of a southern climate, and at the same time such scenery to their hand as that of Cintra, and such architecture as is to be had on all sides in a day’s motor drive, besides lawn-tennis and golf, and the historical associations of the Peninsular War.

Rarely does the country appear to be fully developed, yet even so it produces such a wealth of fruits and flowers that evidently with greater care, better methods, and a more widely extended system of irrigation, it might be a perfect paradise. It would be unfair to attribute the neglect and backwardness and misery prevailing throughout this lovely country entirely to the character of the inhabitants. The accumulated misfortunes of their history for the last three centuries would be enough to explain it; but they certainly have been inclined to neglect their own native soil for alien enterprises, and are only now beginning to realise that the future of Portugal lies in Portugal. In time, no doubt, Algarve, Estremadura, and Minho will be fringed with prosperous watering-places and with busy seaports, to which railways from the interior will carry many minerals, wood from existing forests and from land still awaiting afforestation, as well as the most varied vegetables, fruits and flowers. (Foreign countries will find it profitable also to import on a large scale earthenware manufactures, azulejos, and the majolica wares of Caldas da Rainha.) Irrigation will have transformed much matto country into flourishing gardens and orchards, and Alemtejo will become in fact as well as in name the granary of Portugal. It is quite possible for Portugal to become one continuous garden city, through which flawless roads will whirl the traveller in a few hours from Valença to Faro, and from Elvas to Cintra. This is the object at which those who care more for Portugal than for party politics must aim.

But the charm will have departed, and present-day travellers may congratulate themselves that the change is not in their day. For now parts of the country are not to be seen without considerable effort, and have the added fascination of things difficult of attainment. The Portuguese rarely journey for enjoyment south of the Tagus, to the land alemtejo, yet both the Alemtejo and Algarve are delightful districts, and fully repay any little discomforts which a visit to them may entail, and the impression left is of a great region of wild flowers and garden fruits lying in a semi-tropical sunshine, round a few villages and ancient towns. Indeed, those who have seen not only Minho and the massed rhododendrons in flower on the Serra do Gerez, and the smooth mountains of the Serra da Estrella, apparently bare and desolate, covered with cistus, lavender, and a thousand other varieties of wild flowers, but also the rare flowers and rhododendrons of the Serra de Monchique in Algarve, and the giant patchwork of all kinds and colours of flowers which make beautiful the pastures and wastelands of Alemtejo, from the tall branching asphodels, like chandeliers of chalcedony, to the serried fields of thistle or hawksweed, will readily extend to the whole of Portugal the name of “Switzerland of Spain,” which has been bestowed on Galicia. (The word “Spain,” meaning the whole Peninsula, once common, is still in use occasionally, as in the title of the Archbishop of Braga, who is “Primate of the Spains.”) The roads of Portugal are a delight by reason of their wayside springs and streams and groves, and the hedges which in height and thickness rival those of Devonshire, and have all the luxuriant growth of the south. Or, when the road cuts through matto, thick masses of cistus often invade it on either side, and the air is heavy with its scent. (Both in leaf and scent it strongly resembles escalonia.) A walking tour is more often a hardship than a pleasure, or rather its pleasure is of recollections, especially where, as in Spain, inns are rare and food in an inn rarer. But Portugal, that is in the northern provinces—for the sun tyrannises south of the Tagus and shade is rarer—is an ideal country for such a tour.

The witty Nicolaus Clenardus, in the sixteenth century, after complaining that at an inn in Spain his horses had well fasted, and he himself had had but half an ounce of meat in an olla, and departed as he came, latrante stomacho, admitted that in Portugal things were better: omnia mitescere visa sunt. It is true that the author of the Arte de Furtar, writing a few generations later, gives us a melancholy initiation into the ways of the inn-hostess of Beja. “I saw her,” he says, “buy two cabbages for a halfpenny. She cast them into a caldron with two large pimentos well crushed and another halfpenny-worth of oil. She boiled them twice, and without ever rising from her stool, she made thirty plates full at a penny each, with which she feasted guests and carters alike, and they professed themselves satisfied.” There is something sinister about this stationary woman. Sedet aeternumque sedebit. Probably if an old shoe had been to hand, instead of the pimentões, in it would have gone. But, however far afield the twentieth century traveller wanders, Heaven will probably keep him from such a hostess in Portugal—in Spain she is still common—and everywhere he will find great willingness to attend to his requirements, such readiness in fact that he will probably expect to be asked for several shillings and be surprised to be charged only in vintens. Of course, in a sense the more poorly he goes clad the better he will fare in the out-of-the-way parts, the poor reserving a wealth of kindliness and ready service exclusively for the poor. The hospedarias are bare and clean, the estalagens are not much less comfortable than the hospedarias, and sometimes as clean. The estalagem is where any passing wayfarer—carriers, almocreves, etc., put up; the hospedarias are rather for more permanent guests, officers quartered in the town, and so on. But even the wayside venda, perhaps consisting of a single room, roofed over with branches and with the trodden ground for floor, will be able to provide a meal of eggs, coffee, and bread.

The water difficulty is not present as in Spain. Springs and rivulets of most excellent transparent water, flowing cleanly over granite, are ever to the hand of the thirsty, icy cold even in the dog days, and the great flowered hedges will yield him a plot of shade for a rest even if he does not hit on some pleasant grove of trees and flowers. It is to be hoped that the Sociedade de Propaganda de Portugal, which watches over the interests of the more respectable tourist, will not forget to attend to the needs of the humble pedestrian, and indeed of the motorist, by seeing to it that sign-posts and milestones be set on all the roads. These can be of such a character as not in the least to obtrude upon the rustic character of these delightful roads. In Portugal the pedestrian has the great advantage over the motorist that he is able to digest what he sees, and even he will have to advance in very leisurely fashion in order to do that. It is the charm of Alcobaça and Batalha—those two marvellous buildings—that they have no railway. You may drive or walk, but even if you walk it is but a few miles from the one to the other, through a tempting country of dense pinewoods and heather, with the village of Aljubarrota and the famous battlefield thrown in. To see in one day the multifarious splendours of Batalha and Alcobaça, not to speak of Leiria, is more than is good for the ordinary person.

Leiria is little more than a village, a delightful village set in trees and flowers, orchards and vineyards, with the sound of the rushing river Lis ever present. On a sheer hill above it stands crumbling in flowers the ruins of King Diniz’ Castle.

The village of Luso, too, beneath Bussaco, is embedded in flowers and creepers, and Bussaco itself, of course, consists of nothing but the remnants of a convent and a single modern hôtel, all the rest being a vast enclosure of trees, creepers, brushwood, shrubs and ferns and flowers probably unequalled in Europe.

And countless villages throughout Portugal are literally set in and scented with flowers. A writer of the seventeenth century describes one of them thus: “Each house has its garden with various trees, oranges, and lemons, which fill the whole town with the sweetest scent and with their gay flowers.”[35] For fuel all kinds of scented brushwood are burnt—cistus, rosemary, myrtle—the thin blue smoke of which is a sweet incense.

Even on the rocky coast, at Cascaes near Lisbon, many flowers are to be found. Where there is any moisture periwinkles star the ground, and in the strip immediately along the coast burnt by the winter spray, flower dwarf irises in crowds. They know that the sea-winds blow chiefly in winter, and cunningly wait till they have little to fear from the spray, springing into flower at the end of April or beginning of May. It is, however, the land wind (the nortadas that begin slightly in spring and prevail in July and August) which blackens and bruises creepers and flowers. This wind has something of the subtle winds of Spain, whence it comes, and is disliked by some persons, but by those who shun intense heat it is welcomed in the summer months. It brings cloudless skies without great heat. It transforms all things to a clearer outline and darkens the sea to a deep sapphire, flecked with white horses. Under the cliffs the water in such weather—which may continue for ten days or a fortnight—is calm and transparent, and the sunshine ripples and plays in wrinkles of amber on the deep-sunken rocks, transmuted for the time into great slabs of beryl, jasper and emerald. In summer a whole population lives for weeks together fishing in these waters. Almost everything that will float is put into requisition, and the queerest craft make their appearance, long crescent-shaped boats that seem scarcely to touch the water, old boats with a single square black or tawny sail, boats with sails cherry-red, white, and brown.

At Estoril, which almost joins Cascaes, live many of the foreigners settled in Lisbon, and here the houses, mostly well sheltered by a pine-covered hill, have gardens brimming with flowers, winter and summer. Still more sheltered is Cintra, on the other side of the Serra, where the work of the gardener consists rather in cutting away than in encouraging growth. The road from Cintra to Collares is hemmed by wonderful gardens and orchards, although there is still plenty of ground waiting to be enclosed and turned into a little Monserrate. Some of these orchards are half neglected, and one may wander gradually from woodland into weedy garden paths where orange trees, crowded with glowing fruit, grow apparently at random. (And the oranges of Cintra vie with those of Setubal, at the mouth of the Sado.) It is from Collares in great part that Lisbon fills its markets daily with an abundance of fruits and flowers. “He who goes to the Church of the Misericordia will find daily from fifteen to twenty girls selling flowers, loose or in wreaths and bunches.”[36] The author, Frey Nicolas d’Oliveyra, adds that on the 4th of August, 1620, for one fête in four Lisbon churches three thousand wreaths and two thousand bunches of flowers were used. If less flowers now adorn Lisbon’s churches their number has not diminished, and exportation of flowers and fruits on a vast scale only awaits quicker means of transport and intelligent markets in foreign countries. For the flowers fill the great uncultivated tracts of the country with scent and colour, and wherever some minor Beckford has enclosed a plot of ground he is rewarded by a true garden of Eden.