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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Photo and Copyright by Underwood & Underwood 

 WHERE THE OLD AQUEDUCT CROSSES THE ALCANTARA VALLEY: LISBON 



growing season, conduct the waters of 

 irrigation to grass, roots, and cereal crops 

 alike. The action of an improved New- 

 castle plow and a pair of i6-hand cart- 

 horses on such cramped ground would 

 resemble the gambols of a mad bull in 

 a china-shop. 



The Roman colonists in Portugal hit 

 upon the most fitting implement where- 

 with to work such fields. It is repre- 

 sented on innumerable ancient bas-reliefs. 

 The Roman plow, in its simpler form, 

 is still the implement employed on the 

 mountain farms of Portugal. It is drawn 

 by the slow and amenable ox, who turns, 

 stops, or goes forward at a word or a 

 touch, and treads deliberately, feeling his 



way amid the gourds and watermelons 

 that encumber every Portuguese stubble- 

 field. This plow is little more than the 

 crooked branch of some hardwood tree, 

 cut from the nearest wood, of cornel or 

 wild cherry, shod with iron and driven 

 with a single stilt. It is so light that a 

 man can lift it from the ground, and, 

 when the day's work is done, the plow- 

 man slings it between the yokes of his 

 oxen and thus illustrates that line of 

 Virgil which must have puzzled many 

 an English schoolboy: 



Aspice aratra ingo referunt suspensa 

 invenci. 



All the operations of the farm, indeed, 

 are conducted as the Romans conducted 



