886 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



the garden the wood slopes suddenly 

 down in billows of greenery, and then at 

 its foot spreads the vast plain, with towns 

 and villages nestling in its hollows. And 

 as the sun grows in brightness, I see be- 

 yond the limits of the plain, far away, a 

 long strip of white, and over it, high up, 

 as it seems, above the horizon, a deep 

 violet wall. It is the sea, the broad At- 

 lantic, with its fringe of silvery sand 

 many miles distant, and it gives the su- 

 preme touch to a scene of perfect beauty. 



On the other side of the castle the 

 view is just as lovely in a different way. 

 Beyond the palms and flowers at the 

 foot, seen over a hundred carved crock- 

 ets and capricious stone pinnacles and 

 gargoyles, with the great tower of the 

 castle and its armillary sphere over all, 

 is a far stretch of undulating wood, and 

 then a vast tumble of mountains, range 

 over range, all but the highest clothed to 

 the top with forests, and beyond and 

 above them all the bare granite peaks of 

 the Caramulo range, iridescent now with 

 the morning sun. The domain occupies 

 the whole of the northwestern end of a 

 long, continuous mountain ridge, some 

 eight miles in total length, running from 

 southeast to northwest, and extremely 

 precipitous on all sides. 



From the earliest times, at all events 

 since the fourth century, the glens and 

 ravines that score these slopes have been 

 jealously guarded by ecclesiastical mas- 

 ters. 



The sheltered position and soft west- 

 erly breezes from the Atlantic endowed 

 the spot with a climate mild, equable, and 

 healthful, even for Portugal, whilst the 

 purity and abundance of the springs and 

 the marvelous fertility of the soil in the 

 deep, moist gorges on the mountain-side 

 made it an enviable place of secluded 

 residence. Whilst the minimum winter 

 temperature is about 40 degrees, frost 

 being unknown, the summer heat is tem- 

 pered by the altitude of the place and by 

 the abundant shade of the woods, so that 

 the temperature rarely exceeds that of a 

 warm July day in England. 



With these climatic conditions, it is 

 natural that this end of the ridge, pro- 



tected on all sides, should develop a vege- 

 tation of extraordinary luxuriance. So 

 remarkably was this the case, that the 

 successive ecclesiastical bodies to which 

 it belonged for fifteen hundred years de- 

 creed that the woods were forever to be 

 held sacred as a place of sanctuary and 

 devotion. From the eleventh century 

 onward the domain belonged to the 

 Archbishops of Braga, and in 1626 one 

 of them granted it to the order of shoe- 

 less Carmelites as a retreat remote from 

 the world, where the monks following 

 the strict Trappist rule might meditate 

 in silence, undisturbed by the turmoil of 

 their fellow-men. 



In poverty, and with the hard labor of 

 their own hands, the monks built the 

 little monastery and humble church as 

 they now stand, with other portions since 

 demolished, and, year by year, for two 

 hundred years, planted and tended with 

 devout care the sacred wood which was 

 their one earthly concern. From all 

 quarters of the globe where the Portu- 

 guese flag waved, from India, South 

 America, and the Far East, rare plants 

 and trees were sent by Carmelites to their 

 beloved ''Matto de Busaco." Medicinal 

 herbs, rare and lovely ferns, and exotic 

 fruit and flowers, impossible in other 

 places in Europe, here grew luxuriantly, 

 and the silent, white-robed gardeners 

 planted and tended their domain until it 

 became, not a wood, but a sylvan garden 

 of surpassing beauty, as it remains to- 

 day. 



A high wall shuts it in from the rest 

 of the world, whilst a special Bull of 

 Urban VIII, deeply cut to this day upon 

 a great slab on the principal gateway, 

 condemned to major excommunication 

 any person who violated the sanctuary or 

 injured any plant within the sacred pre- 

 cincts ; and another papal Bull bans any 

 woman who dares to set her foot upon 

 the domain. Beautiful terraced paths 

 were cut upon the hillsides, and, zigzag- 

 ging down the ravines, fountains that 

 gushed spontaneously from the mossy 

 rocks were dedicated to saints and 

 adorned with sculptured shrines or rustic 

 grottoes. 



