SWABEY DIARY. 4.7 
the stage, which becomes very tiresome. Nor does the interior of the 
boxes at all correspond with the grandeur of the outside, as they have 
only one bench in front, which seats but four people, and does not 
incline to the stage. I expected, of course, to see all the beauty and 
fashion of Lisbon, but looked in vain, the senhoras having little to 
distinguish them from the women to be seen on foot in the streets. 
Their dress is exceedingly plain, and, doubtless, if there are any pretty 
women in Portugal, they have been enclosed in the convents. 
As to Lisbon, the part which was built after the last great earth- 
quake! by the Marquis de Pombal, the then Minister, might be called 
fine, were the streets clean. ‘The houses, plastered to resemble stone, 
are of an immense height and have many storeys, each, except in the 
grandees palaces, holds a separate family, and they have filthy habits. 
The other parts, which are not of the Marquis’s construction, are filthy 
in the extreme, the stench so great that, in spite of manners on first 
arriving’, one must hold one’s nose, and the streets are so intricate that 
it is extremely difficult to find one’s way. Notwithstanding the con- 
stant intercourse with Hngland, I was surprised to find no hotel that 
could deserve the title of decent, though the one at “ Buenos Ayres” 
might indeed be an exception. The people are indolent and filthy to a 
degree scarcely credible, and though there are wells and springs in 
almost every direction, they have no method of getting the water by 
pipes into their houses, but must send for it in casks, and they even 
hawk it about the streets as we do mackerel. The people at my hotel 
are very unwilling to let me drown myself in it, and are surprised at 
an Englishman who may have been taught the use of water, as well as 
of soap and towel. In the houses which are lighted by lamps there are 
no fire-grates, only stew-pans and chafing dishes, in which they burn 
charcoal. Their cookery consists of a vile jumble of oil and onions, 
very unpleasant to an Hnglish stomach; they, however, almost com- 
pensate for it by the fruit, the chief kinds at this time of year being 
grapes and water-melons, and every sort of fruit that we have in 
England, except currants and gooseberries. I think our English 
melons and peaches much finer. I dare not buy much as yet, as 
the money has so many subdivisions that it takes some time to know its 
value, and I am told that the people are great hands at cheating and 
stealing. 
Being now on the subject of Lisbon, I must mention that everybody 
of condition keeps a carriage drawn by two horses or mules, it has 
shafts or poles with two or four wheels, with a leather curtain that 
draws up in front in the place of windows, and holds two, or three 
people, if stuffed in as we sometimes go toa ballin England. These 
1The 1st of November, 1755, will ever be a memorable crisis in the annals of Europe, and especi- 
ally of Lisbon. In that city, which then contained nearly a quarter of a million of inhabitants, a 
brilliant morning sun was shining on the papal festivities of All Saints’ Day. At 11 0’clock the 
celebration of High Mass at 30 churches was quenched in universal collapse. The earthquake was 
sensibly felt all over western Europe, northern Africa, and even in the West Indies; but the 
catastrophe wrought its climax in Lisbon, where the convulsed bed of the Tagus lifted for some 
minutes all its shipping high and dry, to be overwhelmed immediately after by a refluent rush of 
waters, which fairly turned the harbour-quay bottom upwards and then swallowed it out of sight. 
Of the thousands of fugitives who had sought safety at that spot, and who thus went down quick 
into Hades, not a corpse ever rose to the surface. ‘The loss of human life in the city was estimated 
at 30,000, and the loss of property at £95,000,000. “ House of Cromwell”? (James Waylen), p. 114. 
