76 A SPRING TOUR IN PORTUGAL. 



CHAPTER VII. 



ALCOBAgA. 



We left Lisbon with regret : not only on account of our 

 very pleasant sojourn there, and the great kindness we 

 had met from many friends whose acquaintance we had 

 made, and the extreme courtesy and general readiness to 

 oblige which seem to be distinguishing traits of Portu- 

 guese character amongst all classes ; but also because we 

 had contracted a real liking for the beautiful city, its 

 streets, its gardens, its squares, and its suburbs ; and we 

 were sorry to bid adieu to the *^ golden Tagus,' whose 

 waters, at all events, sparkled daily in the golden sun- 

 shine before our windows, if its sands are not now covered 

 with gold, as in the days when Ovid sang,* and whose 

 name, if not derived, as suggested above, from the tajo or 

 chasm in the granite mountains through which it boils 

 beneath Toledo, and in its earlier course, may be, as Dean 

 Stanley tells us, the same as Dagon, the fish god of the 

 Philistines,! and so may record the renown it has enjoyed 

 for so many ages for the excellence and profusion of the 

 finny tribes with which its waters abound. 



However, our route now lay northwards towards Oporto ; 

 but, as we desired to see something of the intervening 

 country, and more especially to visit the famous monas- 

 teries of Alcoba9a and Batalha, we proposed to deviate 



* Metamorphosis, ii. v. 2ol. 



t Lectures on the Jewish Church, vol. i. p. 361. 



