quently to receive the alms of pedestrians. A snuffy old servitor of the Church was carrying about a crucifix, which he offer

Oporto is abundantly supplied with water by means of public fountains, around which, as at Lisbon, interesting groups are formed of picturesque women and brawny men, who gossip and wrangle while awaiting the slow filling of their water-pots and casks.

We made an excursion early this morning with the Raven to Foz, the Oporto bain de mer. Our friend did not enjoy it, and could not see what we could find to amuse us in this frolicking, rollicking crowd of men and women floundering and leaping in the water like a school of porpoises. The bathing suits shocked his sense of decorum. "One might so well be as the man one," he said, intending by the term "man one" to indicate our first father, Adam. We walked along the beach, noticing the signboards labelled with attractive names, Theresa, Rosario, indicating that such and such favorite bathing-women had charge of the bath-houses in that locality, and would rent costumes and wait upon the bathers. On the sands of another and quieter little beach the nets of the fishermen were drying, and just opposite us was the treacherous bar of the Douro, which is such a blockade to commerce, and where so many lives have been lost. A party of engineers, who had come out to report on the subject, were examining the coast with a view to building a breakwater and forming a harbor near Foz, which should be connected with Oporto by a railway.

The gate of the grim old castle of Foz stood invitingly open, and we entered, joining for a moment the devout peasants who were hearing mass in the chapel, and then coming out over the draw-bridge to look down at the street cars running, by some absurd anachronism, in the moat below. Oporto streets we found as interesting in their way as those of Lisbon. was not so much elegant sauntering, but the people seemed to have acquired the art of blending enjoyment with business. We saw a lame beggar driving about in a queer little chaise drawn by a tiny donkey, fiddling as he went, and stopping not infre

There

such as accompanied the kiss with a copper, and mumbling a benediction or indulgence. At night we visited the grounds of the Crystal Palace, where bands and fire-works rend the heavens with imitation thunder and lightning. We found a charming seat apart from the artificial typhoon-a natural rocky balcony overhanging the river, and shut in by a screen of myrtle thicket-where we could watch the lights in the city and the reflected stars glancing in the river. The Crystal Palace itself-a fine building for its purposewas constructed by a company of Portuguese and Brazilian merchants for the International Exhibition of 1865, on the site of the old Torre da Marca, which was so named because, when seen on a line with the Tower of the Clerigos, it marked the channel for vessels crossing the bar. The building is used now for fairs and amusements of varied character. It contains a little theatre, where the nobility and upper classes give amateur theatricals for various charitable purposes. A farce entitled The Effects of New Wine, by an "Excellentissimo Senhor" (who in Lisbon would probably have turned his attention to bull-fighting instead of to literature), was acted during our stay, for the benefit of a firemen's association. This exhibit of the consequences of indulgence in vinho verde, written in a place which must afford abundant opportunity for its study, might serve as a tract for our temperance societies for distribution amongst the class who contend that there is no drunkenness in the vine-bearing regions of Europe.

Our wanderings one day brought us to a queer little refreshment garden hung around with the arms of the different cities of Portugal. One of these represented a saint rising, with folded hands, from a goblet, with a lion and dragon as her heraldic supporters. The Raven, at sight of this escutcheon, dipped gravely into poetry:

"Ze lion and ze dracon green
Ware viting for ze cup;
St. Ildefonso he step between,

An ze oder beasts gift it op." Characteristic evening spectacles at Oporto are the funerals, which always take place at night. Attendants run beside the hearse, carrying links, forming a

4. The Sedan-chair of São Ildefonso.

5. Group of Zouaves.

6. Litter bearing the venerated image of St. Peter.

7. Two little angels conducting the Ave Maria.

8. Car bearing tableau, Humility (composed of one figure and four angels).

9. Sedan-chair with an image of Our Lady of Prosperous Journeys.

10. The Angel of the Sun, "Electra ut Sol." 11. Another with the Moon, "Pul

VIEW FROM BOM-JESUS.

16. Choir of virgins. 17. Tableau, the Glory of Our Lady, with five angels.

"If you are interested in such specta

up into the Minho. It is at Bom-Jesus, near Braga, that the Romaria, or pilgrimage fair, is to be seen to the best advantage."

And to Braga, the quaint old episcopal city, we accordingly went. Since the closing of the monasteries the glory of Braga has signally departed. It is a very, very old city, confessing to over two thousand years, and fully looking its age. It has a general air of decay and desolation, and reminds one of a very aged dame, decrepit and shabby, who talks of her former magnificence in her present poverty, and shakes the rusty curls of her false black front at all modern pretensions to consequence. Its cathedral, with its old stonecarved lace-work, its hideous wooden figures, and its beautiful coro alto, is itself more than seven hundred years old. It witnessed the christening of Affonso Henriques, first King of Portugal; and an idea is conveyed of the venerable age of the primacy when one reads that Dom Lourenço de Lourinhã, the warlike prelate who wore his episcopal robes over a complete suit of armor, and gave and received such sturdy whacks at the battle of Aljubarrota so far back as 1385, was the eighty

sixth archbishop of the see. It was one of the archbishops of Braga, Rodrigo de Moura Zelles, who conceived the happy idea of founding a pilgrimage shrine in the mountains near Braga, a religious summer resort, a site for unending camp-meetings for the devout, the fashionable, the mercenary, the lover of nature, and the beggar, from all of whom the mother Church should collect her legitimate tithes. The Bom-Jesus do Monte is the most whimsical, most charming, and most delightfully absurd place in all the world. The carriage-road leading to its summit winds through a grove of cypress, cork,

and olive trees; but the Via Crucis, or Pilgrim's Staircase, is the more travelled route. It consists of a series of terraces and of zigzag ramps, bordered by giant cypresses and walls of ancient box, with here and there a chapel and a fountain. There are fourteen of the chapels which represent scenes from the passion and death of our Lord. They are small stone and plaster structures, with grated doors through which we look at a group of carved and painted wooden figures of life size forming a sort of tableau. The first is that of the Last Supper; the company is served not to simple bread and wine, but to a variety of dishes which servants bring in upon waiters and in covered tureens. Just opposite is that of the Garden of Gethsemane, Peter and James are sleeping comfortably, and an angel of the ballet flutters in mid-air upon wires. A tiny cascade leaps down the hill from one sculptured basin to another, changing its name at each new appearance. Just here we have the fountains of the Sun and Moon, and a little further on we find successively those of Diana, Mars, Mercury, Saturn, and Jupiter. This mingling of heathen mythology with the history of Jesus strikes us as somewhat preposterous, but the trickle of the fountains is refreshing to ear and eye, and they have afforded cooling draughts to many a thirsty pilgrim. The Kiss of Judas occupies the third chapel, where the most prominent figure is the young man of the linen garment making his hasty and unceremonious exit. The chapels of the Flagellation, the Crown of Thorns, and of Ecce Homo next follow; in the last, Pilate exhibits Jesus to the multitude from his balcony. Next we have Veronica obtaining the miraculous napkin portrait. Here the pathway loses its rustic character, changing to a grand double staircase with balustrades ornamented by a profusion of statues and fountains, beginning with that of the Five Wounds of Jesus, and followed by a fantastic series, the fountains of the Five Senses, where the water flows from each of the appropriate organs. In that of Sight it gushes from the eyes of a little weeping figure, who, far from awakening sympathetic grief on the part of the beholder, moves him rather to unseemly laughter. In the fountain of Hearing the water spouts from either ear. In that of Smell it trickles in a disgusting manner from the nose.

After the fountains of the senses follows a series based on the three virtues Faith, Hope, and Charity. Faith flows from the cross, Hope from Noah's ark, and Charity from a heart held by two children. After this we have a cascade starting from a spot where a statue of Moses strikes the rock; and all the way up, mingled with the fountains and bearing some mystical significance to their subjects, are statues of Old Testament worthies-David, Esdras, Jonathan, Joseph, Isaiah, Solomon, with such allegorical characters as Confession and Docility attendant on the fountain of Faith, Confidence and Glory on that of Hope, and Peace and Benignity on that of Charity. We admire the ingenuity of the old archbishop. What an imagination he must have had, and how cleverly he could have managed plot and characters in a threevolume novel or a five-act drama! Indeed, the place is a drama with many plots, the leading one being the Divine tragedy. At the head of the staircase we find the tableau of the Crucifixion, and the temple, or principal church, with its mirth-provoking Chapel of the Founders, a picture-gallery containing the portraits of all the benefactors of the enterprise, a collection of paintings only less amusing than the Art Gallery at Lisbon because it is less extensive. Leaving the church, we pass the remaining chapels - the Descent from the Cross, the Unction (anointing for burial), the Resurrection (where Mary Magdalene talks with Christ at the door of the tomb, and where Christ holds a spade--a conceit suggested by the words, "she supposing him to be the gardener"), the Appearance of Christ at Emmaus, and the Ascension. We have now reached the top of the mountain. An exquisite view of distant mountain ranges, of misty valley, of quiet lakes, and distant Braga is spread before us; and the mountain-top is so roomy that we have wood and dell, park, and little cluster of hospedarias, or inns and hermitages, with a lake, and many charming nooks to explore for days to come.

On our way up we have been partly shocked and partly amused by the grotesque wax-work show of the chapels, but little by little the spirit of devotion with which they are regarded by the simple peasants who visit them impresses us, and we begin to understand how such coarse and even painful representations may im

press the tragic story of the sufferings and death of Christ most vividly on the uncritical, child-like minds of the devotees. It must be very interesting to be here at Whitsuntide, when the great annual pilgrimage occurs. Then the camp grounds are filled with tents and booths, and the great ovens, which stand lonely and black and tall, like chimneys of burned homesteads, disgorge balls of brown bread round and large as bomb-shells. Then the band stands keep up the bombardment of sound, and fashionable idlers from the cities give to the promenade gardens the appearance of an urban park.

Now a delicious quiet broods over the mountain, and as we watch the sunset, flushing the beautiful Gerez chain from the extreme height of Bom-Jesus, the only sound which reaches us is the wolf-scaring shriek of the ox-cart toiling homeward with ungreased axles in the valley below. We do not wonder that the wild animals fly from this sound, for it is excruciating in the extreme, quite enough to make a wolf of ordinary sensibilities stuff cotton in his ears and fly to the most inaccessible depths of the forest.

On the hill-side under the cork-trees we see a child tending her flock, and spinning with distaff and spindle. Such a sight is very common: little girls have much to

do with the domestic animals; they run fearlessly between the long horns of the great tawny oxen, and guide them in the way they should go with a shower of blows on their long-suffering foreheads and muzzles. They milk the goats and herd the swine, and grow lithe and strong of limb and nut-brown of face in the warm sun. The herdsmen and shepherdesses beguile their lonely watch with the peculiar antiphonal songs of the country, which often display remarkable wit in repartee on the part of the improvisatores, as well as a ready talent for rhyming. These songs are composed as well in Spain as in Portugal. One shepherd challenges another to a tournament in verse, and begins by singing a stanza which is to serve as a key-note for the whole production, as well in the kind of measure to be used as in

tune. In one of these lyrical ballads, which, so far as I know, has never crept into print, a man begins the song half in banter, half in earnest:

"It is better to love a dog than to love a woman, For for a piece of gold a woman will leave you to grief,

But the affection of a dog is endless." A woman, who perhaps has had some experience of the improvidence as well as of the voracity of mankind, replies, in ready caricature of the other: