BOOKS.
TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL* MR. LATOUCHE has not suffered so severely at the hands of his publishers as Mr. Rose, whose Untrodden Spain was the most slovenly production of the printing-press that ever passed through our hands ; but he has not been kindly treated. His Travels are badly printed on bad paper, and badly bound. On the other hand, they are delightfully written, and in our case at least they have conquered a distaste and dispelled a prejudice, while re moving the ignorance upon which both were founded. The dis- taste in question was to the subject, the prejudice a belief that nobody could make Portugal interesting. Lady Jackson assuredly had not done so ; she had put high-road common-places together ; and her Fair Lusitania was merely a pretty book, with letterpress to explain the pictures, but it did not in the least shake our con- viction that nobody could possibly want to go to Portugal until every other land had been exhausted, and that "travels- In that country were only to be read under compulsion.
Not many travellers will see Portugal as Mr. Latouche has seem it, and indeed, he very honestly recommends the ordinary tourist not to go there, though Portugal is a peaceful country, free from brigands, and with a civil and hospitable population. Every man is not born with the faculty for learning so crabbed a language as Portuguese, and for riding strange horses over unknown and difficult roads ; and he whom Nature has not so endowed had better not attempt Portugal, for these two conditions are indis- pensable for seeing the country and studying the people. The former is beautiful, the latter are very nice indeed, and both are surprisingly unlike their nearest neighbours. Mr. Latouche dwells upon and particularises this unlikeness; but it could not have escaped an habitual reader of books of this kind his first impres-
Travels in Portugal. By John Latouche. With Illustrations by the Right Hon. T. Elotheron Estoonrt. London: Ward, Lock, and Tyler. sion about these travels in Portugal would be that they are totally different from travels in Spain. The people are opposite in their customs and antipathetic in their ideas, they don't even talk in proverbs, and smuggling itself has failed to establish a bond of border brotherhood. The line of demarcation is nearly as sharp where only the Guadiana separates Portuguese from Andalusians as it is on the northern frontier. "There is," says the author, "that inherent antipathy between the two races which has so marvellously kept them apart, with but one short and -violently-effected union, for so many long centuries,—a circum- stance by no means to be deplored in the interests of Portugal. 4 Spain and Portugal,' a Portuguese gentleman once said to me, 'though in such close contact at so many points, can never natu- rally coalesce ; they are like two men sitting back to back to each
o ther who will never turn their heads.'"
The author starts from Vigo (where a French scientific expedi- tion has established itself, with the purpose of recovering the treasure which is believed to have lain in the depths of the sea since the sinking of the Spanish galleons in 1702) for the Minho and Valence, after a brief delay, which enables him to purchase a horse, and to tell the story of the " deal " with so much humour that the reader is immediately reassured, and thereafter never dreads dull- ness in the traveller. The horse-dealer accompanied him as a guide, and did battle for him with the sullen and surly Galician peasants. His first impression of the utter distinctness of the Spanish and the Portuguese nations, received as he rode along the frontier-line, was increased throughout the entire journey, and his preference of the latter is strongly marked. It is a novel notion to us that the Portuguese are better-looking than the Spaniards, but Mr. Latouche considers them so, solely excepting the Galicians. "At those points," he says, "where the Portu- guese and Spanish races are conterminous, the Portuguese is the better-looking, better-dressed, and better-mannered of the two. Nowhere is this so conspicuous as on the Minho. The contrast is heightened by the fact that the Portuguese of the province lying between the Douro and the Minho are as far superior in the -above respects to other Portuguese as the Galicians fall short, in the same matters, of men of the other provinces of Spain." A delightful air of almost lost romance pervades this horseback journey, in which the hungry horseman asks a farmer whom he meets by the roadside to direct him to some house of entertain- ment, and the farmer guides him along a vile ox-road, but with over-arching oaks and chestnuts with climbing vines all over them, to the scene thus described :— "Presently the road opened out into a square walled enclosure, which was also perfectly embowered and shaded by vines, carried on stout rafters of wood, the whole supported by the side-walls, and by stone pillars in the centre, so that the place was like a huge room, the ceiling .of which was of vine-leaves. It was, in fact, the courtyard of a good- sized farm-house. The farmer stopped at the door of the house which opened on to this yard. ' Why,' I said to him, 'this is a private house.' —' It is the house of your Excellency,' said the farmer, as he stood un- covered, with the true courteous hospitality of an old-fashioned Portu- guese. It was, in truth, his own house ; and presently a man appeared to take our horses, a dog came and licked the master's hand, children issued from the house and greeted their father, and the wife stood in the doorway and welcomed us. Cea ! cea!" the farmer called out cheerfully, which interpreted is supper. Here is a gentleman who has eaten nothing since he was in Spain.' [The farmer's kitchen is very like a similar apartment in England.] Presently our supper was on the table Before each of us was placed a good-sized earthen- -ware bowl and a wooden spoon. The meal consisted of one dish and a renwve. The dish, sopa secca, literally, ' dry soup,' made of wheaten bread, beef, -cabbage, and mint, almost a national dish in Portugal ; and the remove, bacalhan, dried codfish, boiled—which is quite a national dish,—and the man who objects to such a bill of fare must, indeed, be an epicure. Then the host filled me a large tumbler of country wine, his own vintage, assuring me that wine never tastes so well as after bacalhan. This green wine,' as it is called, is a very remarkable drink. I have tasted the .country wines of many lands, but never yet such a wine as this. Per- fectly siiind, but possessing a fruitiness, astringency, and sharpness • enough to take one's breath away, it has got little more alcoholic strength than claret. So fall is it of viscous matter, that it is hardly ever clear, but it is liked none the less. To an exhausted man, on a summer's day, I know no greater restorative than a full draught of this Minho wine. When we had eaten and drunk, the dishes were pushed 'below the salt,' and the farm-servants fell to en the plentiful remainder, whilst we, wrapping ourselves in our cloaks, lighted our cigarettes, and proceeded to hold grave discourse."
Highly interesting is this discourse, in which the horse-dealer, the improvised servant of Mr. Latouche, adds details illustrative of the 'magnificence, wisdom, and wit of his improvised master, like a Portuguese Caleb Balderston, or a Sancho in the reverse sense of the immortal squire's proceedings. Very amusing is the farmer's astonishment and compassion for the English "poor devils," who grow neither maize nor wine, and extremely curious the account he gives of the popular superstitions ; of the " Lobis-homem," or wehr-wolf, a legend invested with extraordinary- ghastliness in Portugal, where the real wolf still plays an unpleasantly prominent part in rural affairs. This circumstance renders the country peculiarly strange and distant according to English notions ; and later on in his book the author tells us much on the subject, and puts it very picturesquely. The farmer told him the most terrible '° Loup- garou " story we have ever read, in which he had been an actor himself, and the next morning took him afield into a scene which was also little like the experience of every-thy life,—a farm of twenty-five acres, all in arableland, and every inch cared for and cultivated like a garden. The farm was held on a tenure which would satisfy the Home-rulers themselves, for the farmer told Mr. Latouche, that "if he were to fail to pay the rent for several years, the landlord would not be entitled to re-enter, but only to sue him for debt; so that as tenant or holder, he is to all intents and purposes the actual proprietor of the estate." As for the scene,—" A man might have fancied himself carried back eighteen hundred years, and trans- ported to that famous farm among the Sabine hills. Barring the maize, I fancy Horace would have seen nothing outlandish on this Portuguese farm. The ploughs, the ox-carts, the sickles, the pruning- hooks, are of the ancient Latin patterns, and all the operations of farming absolutely the same." An accident led Mr. Latouche to the discovery of a very perfect cromlech in the neighbourhood of Vianna. There is no record of Druidical remains in Portugal, nor did the author ever come upon another specimen in that country. Northern Portugal must be an exceptionally happy place, with its population of hardy, independent, contented yeomen, who have no great territorial possessions, where there is no accumula- tion of agricultural wealth in one man's lands, and no pauperism.
" The length and breath of the land is cultivated like a market- garden ; and the extreme subdivision of land which takes place in France, and is so incompatible with good farming, is obviated by the fact that, in Portugal, on the death of the holder of the estate, it is not divided among the children, but devolves upon one of them only, at the father's option. The legatee has then to pay his brothers and sisters their portions of the estate, which are fixed by law."
Very different is the author's picture of the condition of some of the Southern Provinces, where he found great estates ill-farmed, rich absentee landlords, and crowds of ill-looking, poverty- stricken, and woe-begone day-labourers. Mr. Latouche avoids big cities and great people, but in the little which he tells us of the latter, there is sufficient likeness to the Dons and Donnas of
Charles O'Malley to satisfy our curiosity. The peasantry are
evidently a happy race, at least in the Minho, where they dance queer, monotonous dances, and sing extemporary verses to guitar- music every evening ; where men and women have retained their national costumes, and there is no peasant woman without her necklace and earrings of genuine gold. The alternate verse- singing which the author describes is, he tells us, to be heard all day long among the fields and hill-sides of the Minho :—
" The shepherd lad, keeping his flock on the hill, will serenade his friend across the valley, a quarter of a mile away. A girl cutting grass will shout out her remarks to her lover, two fields from her, and these two will go on singing to each other the live-long day, like cicadas in the sunshine. I have heard a man, when no companion was at hand, actually whistle each second verse in a higher key, to represent, I pre- sume, the sweet strains of some absent mistress In the moun- tainous districts of Beira, the singing is of quite a different character; and in the poverty-stricken provinces of the south, there is neither singing nor cause for singing."
The author follows up the traces of the old Moorish occupa- tion of Portugal in an interesting chapter, and gives many strange instances of the rooted belief in the existence of hidden treasure which prevails in every part of Portugal. The unin- habited royal palace at Queluz, near Lisbon, is believed to secrete immense wealth, and it has been nearly pulled to pieces in the vain search for it. In Oporto a club has been formed for the sole purpose of seeking for the hiding-place of a fabulously large diamond said to be concealed in its near neighbourhood. Mr. Latouche had reason to believe that he was popularly supposed to be travelling in Portugal for the sole purpose of seeking for the military chest of the French army which was buried near Ponte de Lima, after the passage of the Douro and the capture of Oporto by Wellington. The country would not interest sportsmen who care for nothing but sport, but to the lover of natural history it offers an important field for study. The chapters which Mr. Latouche devotes to the fauna and flora of Portugal are charming, and full of the humour which is, though never obtrusive or paraded at the expense of good-feeling, always present throughout the book. We thank him heartily for telling us repeatedly and emphatically that thb Portuguese are, however ignorant, naturally kindly and gentle to all animals. "The tameness of all domestic animals in Portugal," says the author, "cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry, resulting from habitual kind treatment, is striking to a
foreigner." In a time when the sense of human cruelty to the brute world oppresses one like a nightmare, and is not to be shaken off or forgotten by any effort, it is a relief to be able to think of one little corner of the Western world in which men are not cruel and all other living creatures are not miserable, and it makes one love the people, though their education is singularly imperfect, and they have little literature and no art. They are frugal, moral, religious, and sentimental, ceremonious in their manners, and scrupulously polite among themselves. The author is exceedingly funny on the latter point, and in his description of their social proceedings in general. His account of a visit of con- dolence, of the contemplative courtship which prevails in the middle classes, of the notion respecting the English tongue fostered by the Vocabulary and Dialogues in (very rare) use among them, of their grandiloquence, and the odd rule which forbids the naming of a dog, though the people are especially fond of their dogs, and quite capable of appreciating those noble creatures, is very amusing. An unusually ob- servant and kindly traveller, he picks up odds and ends of char- acter, and an ample repertoire of good stories, which he mixes judiciously with the serious and extensive information his work conveys respecting Portugal past and present, its government, politics, natural features, commerce, and national characteristics. He is very entertaining about the difficulties of modes of address in Portugal,—which must indeed present some, when one may hear a little street-boy say to another, "Your lordship is cheating," and the accused reply, "Your worship has stolen my kite ;"— and tells a story (as, for instance, at p. 337) with all the more spirit and gusto, if it hits himself. In some parts of the country it is a solecism to talk of a dog ; the animal must be named apolo- getically as a puppy, a " cachorro." No Portuguese, the author tells us, will name that shocking animal the pig :-
"If he must be alluded to—and it is necessary sometimes, seeing that the Portuguese are very fond of him cooked—he is called 'the fat animal,' cevada ; and if a Portuguese is driven into a corner, and abso- lutely forced to employ the word, he will use the diminutive porquito,' a little pig, and even that only under his breath, and with the phrase t by your leave.' In a Portuguese translation of a French savant's account of a fossil bone-cave, in which bones of swine were abundant, all direct mention of the animal is avoided with immense ingenuity, and as often as science clearly demands the word - pig,' recourse is had to some pompous raraphrase, such as a familiar mammal which we still employ as food,' and so forth."
As funny is the avoidance of the word " dog." Even in print they slide over it with an initial and two stars, and Mr. Latouche says, "I have seen the name of a well-known place in Lisbon, Fonte do 011w do Cdo, 'the Fountain of the Dog's Eye,' printed Fonte do Olho do C"." It must not be supposed that Mr. Latouche paints his picture all couleur-de-rose because he likes the country and the people. His book is as fair as it is pleasant, as full of information as it is sparkling with humour, and we think that the majority of its readers—all those who do not belong to the privileged classes who know all about everything, and who would at once place us in the "every school-boy" category—will acknowledge that its perusal has taught them not only a great deal that they had not hitherto known about Portugal, but much more than they would have been induced to learn through any less entertaining medium.
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