152 



A VOYAGE TO 



as may be supposed was let loose; all was noise, up- 

 roar and confusion. Seeing people going in and com- 

 ing out, of a long temporary building on one side of the 

 chapel, we approached, and were informed we might 

 enter. It was splendidly fitted up, propably for the 

 performance of some ceremony, as the regalia were 

 displayed on a table covered with rich purple; the 

 arms of Portugal were also seen, and the whole was 

 fitted up in a style of extraordinary magnificence. At 

 the door there were four or five priests, who had fal- 

 len fast asleep, having, as T supposed, set up all the 

 preceding night, and it was now in the afternoon.* 

 The palace is a long row of buildings, no way 

 remarkable in point of architecture, but sufficient to 

 lodge comfortably thirty or forty families. I saw a 

 great number of ladies seated on the balconies, dressed 

 in a very splendid attire, and their heads adorned with 

 a profusion of feathers; at first we took them all for 

 princesses, but afterwards supposed there might be 

 some maids of honor among them. In front of the 

 palace, there stood at least a dozen coaches, beside 

 other carriages, waiting for some thirty or forty of the 

 family, who were going to the country palace, where 

 the king had already gone. The coaches were splen- 

 did things, very heavy, with much gilding about 

 them, and apparently not less than a hundred years 

 old; from which I conjectured, that these vehicles were 

 only used on great occasions. The dresses of the 

 coachmen, the postillions, of whom there was one on 

 almost every mule, the footmen, and out-riders, were 



*It was humorously said, that numbers of the common people 

 gazed on the illumination with such blank amazement, as to fall 

 asleep with their eyes and mouths open. 



