THE GREATNESS OF LITTLE PORTUGAL 



881 



them, except that maize has become a 

 cereal crop in Portugal, ever since it was 

 imported from Brazil by the Portuguese 

 colonists of that country in the seven- 

 teenth century, and that the Portuguese 

 have learned from the Moors the use of 

 the easterH Wati&^-wheer to dr^w up the 

 water of wells and low-lying rivers. 



The vine is still trained to the poplar 

 or the elm, as in ancient Italy, or run 

 over lofty trelhs-work, as it still con- 

 tinues to be in some other countries 

 where the Romans have left their farm 

 traditions. The wine is made today just 

 as the Roman agricultural writers di- 

 rected it to be made 2,000 years ago. 

 The fermentation is still checked by the 

 fumes of burning sulphur, as it was in 

 Roman times, and the traveler who 

 drinks the common wines of Portugal 

 may be sure that he tastes the self-same 

 liquor that Horace drank and sang of 

 on his Sabine farm. There is but one 

 difference : it was then preserved in 

 earthen jars (amphorae), and now in 

 oaken barrels ; but the Roman amphora, 

 unchanged in shape and material, is still 

 to be seen in rural Portugal. It is borne 

 on the women's heads to carry water 

 from every village well. " ' ?' ; 



me:thods of governme:nt 



The Portuguese constitution, coming 

 piece-meal to the country, is hardly 80 

 years old, and the best that can be said 

 of it is that it took the place of very 

 miserable methods of government, and 

 that the Portuguese, being on the whole 

 a shrewd and reasonable people, have 

 made a better use of their constitution, 

 under a line of wise and liberal mon- 

 archs, than could have been expected. 



It cannot, however, be urged by the 

 most friendly critic of the Portuguese 

 people, that they have not been deplor- 

 ably misgoverned. By common assent of 

 the Portuguese themselves who are not 

 active members of a political party, brib- 

 ery, corruption, bad faith between gov- 

 ernors and governed, and consequent 

 maladministration are rife in every de- 

 partment of state. These facts have 

 indeed become by-words among the peo- 



ple of all classes in the country. They 

 are the topics of every-day talk in street 

 and market-place. 



The Portuguese, a wise, long-suffering 

 people, have lived, have suffered, and 

 have learned, too. Taking them as a 

 whole, the Portuguese are perhaps the 

 most unanimously patriotic people in the 

 world. This great quality in them, ex- 

 istent from the remote past, is still 

 strong, and will be sure to guide them 

 to high issues in the future, as it has in 

 the past. The welfare, the greatness, 

 and the independence of their country is 

 the end set vaguely in the mind of every 

 self-respecting inhabitant of the country. 



The modern Portuguese has somehow 

 left his former eminence in the line of 

 decorative art, and that he should have 

 done so is one of the puzzles that modern 

 Portugal presents. I will not attempt to 

 solve it ; I will only note that evidence 

 of high artistic traditions meet the trav- 

 eler everywhere. It is to be found abun- 

 dantly in articles of domestic use made 

 in Portugal two or three hundred years 

 ago, in the fine repouse silver plate, in 

 the faience from Portuguese kilns that 

 have not been lighted for 300 years, in 

 the inlaid cabinets known as Goa work, 

 but mostly made in Portugal, and in the 

 still more artistic cabinets, chests, tables, 

 chairs, bedsteads, and domestic shrines 

 of carved wood in good rococo style, 

 worked in native chestnut or in rose- 

 wood imported from Brazil. 



The now disestablished monasteries 

 must have been rich in such work, for 

 it is still to be found scattered in many 

 a farmhouse. There is a still more per- 

 sistent tradition of good art-work in the 

 peasant gold jewelry to be seen on the 

 necks and in the ears of every peasant 

 woman on market and fair days, and on 

 the counters of whole streets of jewel- 

 ers' shops in Lisbon and Oporto. These 

 fine-art forms derive from farther back 

 than the plate, pottery, and cabinet-work 

 before mentioned. They are unchanged 

 traditions from the days of the Moorish 

 occupancy. There are, however, extant 

 art traditions that go further back than 

 to Moorish times. In northern Portugal 



