LISBON. 
9 
Seated on the southern slopes of a range of hills which extends along the water’s edge 
a distance of four miles, from the Tower of Belem to the Castello de S. Jorge, Lisbon rivals 
in beauty of situation the most queenly cities of the Old and New World. One of its principal 
charms for the visitor from the North, and one which he cannot fail to notice in the first 
hour of his arrival, is its climate. But for the shivering figures we met at the corners of 
the streets, muffled to the chin in their cloaks thrown over the left shoulder in accordance 
with the approved fashion of the South, there was nothing to remind us of the fact that it 
was January; and in the interval between a few showers we revelled in the mild breezes and 
bright sunshine of what seemed to be the pleasant days of April and May. Sitting one day 
in the Passeio Publico, I could not help contrasting the gay social scene before me with the 
appearance at the same season of a famous thoroughfare in a northern capital—the wet 
pavement dimly lighted by a few rays of yellowish gas struggling through the yellower fog; 
a sullen-looking crowd hurrying and jostling through the darkness. 
There was a time when Lisbon was the London of the then civilised world—when its 
outward-bound galleons spread their wings at the mouth of its beautiful river, to return laden 
with the wealth of the Indies ; and the remembrance of those days of Portugal’s greatness 
gives to a visit to Lisbon the character of a pilgrimage to the cradle of modern international 
commerce. Here Columbus came to live with his brother Bartholomew the chartmaker, and 
here he married the daughter of an Italian naval commander who had sailed on several 
voyages of discovery. The visitor to Cascaes, a small seaport at the foot of the Cintra range, 
is told that it is the birthplace of Affonso Sanchez, a pilot who, having been carried by a 
storm to an unknown land in the West about the year i486, on his return imparted his 
discovery to his host Columbus, then settled at Madeira. Whether this report be true or 
false, it is highly probable that Columbus, while engaged in trade between Madeira, the Azores, 
and the Canaries, all of which are washed on their west coasts by the return-current of the 
Gulf Stream, may have fallen in with numerous traditions of strange plants and fruits, or 
perchance canoes, stranded upon their shores, and thus become convinced of the existence of a 
continent beyond the seas which he was in the habit of navigating, though under-estimating 
the distance which separated him from the unknown land. 
The palaces, squares, fountains, and semi-tropical gardens of Lisbon offer many 
attractions to the sight-seer, but our short stay afforded but few chances of adding anything 
new and interesting to the descriptions of previous travellers. The lover of art finds in the 
numerous churches of the Portuguese capital a rare collection of masterpieces of sculpture, 
carving, and mosaic, although in the outward aspect of some of these buildings he may recognise 
the prototype of that degraded style of architecture, mainly consisting of scroll-work and 
plaster, with which both Portuguese and Spaniards have endowed their colonies in the two 
hemispheres. 
Nevertheless, Lisbon possesses several monuments of the golden age of architecture, 
foremost among which are the imposing ruins of the “ Carmo,” in the centre of the town ; a 
church founded in 1389, and reduced to its present condition by the great earthquake ; and 
