60 A SPRING TOUR IN PORTUGAL. 



which lies on the opposite bank of the Tagus ; but then 

 it must be owned that one train per day, which is at 

 present found to be amply sufficient for the requirements 

 of the people, does not imply a very numerous or very 

 bustling population ; indeed, the only marvel to everyone 

 who has traversed this line is, not why more trains are not 

 added, but how this single diurnal train can possibly pay 

 through so sparsely peopled and so unproductive a district ; 

 even when we take into account the very level nature of 

 the ground, and the extremely low figure at which any 

 quantity of land might be purchased by an enterprising 

 company. However, our business was not to speculate on 

 the small dividends of this railway, whose proposers and 

 directors must have been men of marvellous spirit and 

 enterprise, but to make use of it for our excursion, which 

 we did with great satisfaction during the few days of our 

 trip to Evora and Setubal. 



Accordingly, at a very early hour in the morning we 

 were astir, and had breakfasted, and had reached the 

 eastern suburb of Lisbon, and by 6.30 a.m. were on board 

 the river steamer, which was to convey us across the broad 

 belt of the Tagus, which here swells out into an imposing 

 lake, irreverently styled by British sailors ' Jackass Bay.' 

 There is certainly nothing hereabouts suggestive of the 

 boiling of a pent-up river through a narrow rent or gorge 

 or chasm {tajo\ from which many have derived the name of 

 Tagus, and such as indeed it appears as it flows by Toledo ; 

 neither could the most imaginative mind of modern days, 

 with any truth, describe it as the poets of old loved to 

 delineate its excellences, as rolling its transparent waters 

 over the golden sands with which its bed was declared to 

 be paved. Either we live in more degenerate days, when 

 the river has deteriorated in purity, or those writers of 

 ancient days embellished their subject without scruple, 

 and drew largely on the credulity and ignorance of their 



