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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Photo and Copyright by Underwood & Underwood 

 ON A STREET corner: OPORTO, PORTUGAI, 



Everything that single-hearted toil and 

 devotional spirit could do, for centuries 

 the shoeless Carmelites did for their re- 

 mote monastery and the fairy glens of 

 Busaco, and since the abolition of the 

 monastic orders in Portugal, the govern- 

 ment have tended and guarded the spot 

 as carefully as the silent monks before 

 them. 



As one trod the old path of the pil- 

 grimage, up mossy steps and past de- 

 spoiled shrines, with glimpses of sunlit 

 glades and shady green dells, it was 

 impossible to shut away from one's 

 thoughts those generations of silent, 

 white-clad figures who, shoeless, had 



toiled so often up the Via Dolorosa, with 

 tears of penitence, perhaps agonies of 

 regret, for the life from which they had 

 fled. All around were relics of their un- 

 recorded labor. Sculptured stones, 

 chapels, hermitages, fountains, grottoes, 

 and shrines were all built by their pa- 

 tient hands ; paths scarped on steep hill- 

 sides, seats placed in quiet nooks for the 

 meditative and weary ; nay, the trees and 

 plants from all lands growing so proudly 

 now, had all been tended anxiously by 

 the same dumb shadows that for centu- 

 ries waited for death within the walls en- 

 closing the sacred wood. If ever a place 

 was haunted by sad, harmless ghosts. 



