59 



CHAPTER Vr. 



EVORA AND SETUBAL. 



One of the Diost interesting excursions which we made 

 during our tour in Portugal was to the ancient city of 

 Evora. This is the capital of the large province of Alem- 

 tejo, and is distant from Lisbon some seventy miles; it 

 was also the most southern, and with one exception, the 

 most eastern point which we reached. Now, no part of 

 Portugal is thickly populated, at all events, in the English 

 sense of the word ; nay, I may even go so far as to say that 

 Portugal is one of the most thinly inhabited countries of 

 Europe ; and I quote the author of the ' Prize Essay' for the 

 assertion that ' Dame Nature farms one half the countr}^ 

 and the other half is but imperfectly cultivated;' * but at 

 all events, by very far the least populous of all the six 

 provinces into which the kingdom is divided, and the 

 least interfered with by man, is this said district of Alem- 

 tejo. Partly perhaps on this account, and partly from the 

 vast uninhabited heath or desert which separates it from 

 Lisbon, both the city of Evora itself and the country 

 which we had to traverse to reach it, were more charmingly 

 Portuguese, and more unsophisticated, and less altered by 

 recent contact with other nations, than any other portions 

 of the land which we visited. And yet Evora is now con- 

 nected by railway with the capital, or at least with Barreiro, 



* Price Eissai/ on Portugal. By John James Forrester. Loudon, 1854. 



