62 A SPRING TOUR IX PORTUGAL. 



left lis or joined us, and where the station-master and single 

 porter seemed to be the only inhabitants; and as our 

 engine puffed through that uninhabited region, I was 

 forcibly reminded of the famous steamboat expedition of 

 Martin Chuzzlewit and Mark Tapley to the back wood 

 settlement of Eden, so graphically and cleverly described 

 by Mr. Dickens. Then we reached Pinbal Novo, the 

 junction for Setubal, where our train divided into two 

 portions, and we were left to pursue our course to Evora, a 

 very curtailed and somewhat mean fragment of what was 

 at starting a very respectable train. And now for the 

 next twenty or twenty-five miles we traversed a true 

 Portuguese heath,and if one rode through the whole country 

 a better sample could nowhere be found. It would re- 

 quire the pen of a Stanley to describe it accurately, and to 

 do justice to so singular and so beautiful a scene. It was 

 indeed the acme of all that was wild in nature and yet 

 brilliant in colour. Far as the eye could reach on either 

 side, through winding valleys and over undulating hills, 

 for leagues upon leagues, all was waste and barren, save 

 that the whole country was thickly covered with aromatic 

 bushes and shrubs and plants of various kinds. There 

 were literally miles upon miles of juniper, lavender, 

 myrtle, laurel, rosemary and broom ; miles upon miles of 

 heaths of every species ; of the fragrant thyme ; of the 

 beautiful cisti of various colours, the yellow, the pink, 

 the white, and the purple ; of the handsome hibiscus, and 

 many another flower which I could not identify. But the 

 result was, that the eye was almost dazzled with the bril- 

 liant patches of purple, and red, and blue, and yellow, 

 which completely carpeted the ground. It was a scene 

 over which a botanist would have gone wild with excite- 

 ment, and I heartily wished I had been a painter, and 

 could have accurately represented that gorgeous picture in 

 water colours or in oil. For many consecutive miles not 



