2.44, SWABEY DIARY. 
rock, the declivities of which as well as the plain on the summit were 
covered by an uninterrupted mantle of Gum Cistus which perfumed 
the whole atmosphere and the gushing torrent forcing here and there its 
silvery way formed, particularly in combination with the view from 
one beautiful acclivity, an assemblage of natural beauty of a description 
and extent that no art or cultivation could ever hope to imitate. I have 
often since reflected on the internal condition of the Portuguese nation. 
All its provinces, except the Alemtejo, have yet to be submitted to the 
hand of cultivation. In spite of a beautiful climate, endless means of 
irrigation, a soil producing every species of grain and Indian corn, 
vegetables and fruits, a population more destitute of the means of 
comfortable subsistence cannot well be imagined. I leave it to philo- 
sophical speculation to unravel the causes why this country has not yet 
assumed the position in the agricultural world which providence might 
seem to have assigned it. I will however hazard two conjectures, the 
one that its social and political institutions are not favourable to the 
development of individual energy, and the other, that its fame and 
predilections have always rather led it in the pursuit of distant dis- 
covery and, for a time, of colonization, whereby its own inexhaustible 
resources have become neglected. 
The Portuguese are by no means ignorant of agriculture, as is 
testified by the cultivation of the vicinities of various large towns and 
villages in all its provinces, and particularly in the Alemtejo. But 
the extent of the land under cultivation in so old a country is particu- 
larly small, its rocky and mountainous surface only in part accounting’ 
for the fact. I was soon however to pass into Andalusia where the 
well built towns stood as it were isolated in the midst of unenclosed 
plains vast and gorgeous with the waving corn; justifying the Poet?s 
epithet “the golden harvest,” and here too the proportion of cultivation 
is bounded by the comparative numerical weakness of the population. 
But the plains and valleys teem with natural fertility, and so great 
is their extent in proportion to the number of inhabitants, that but 
little pains are taken to do more than resort continually to new ground. 
Having taken a crop the land is left and new ground is turned up, so 
that nature will here produce two white crops! without cultivation, and 
the soil is continually renewing its powers of production after a temp- 
orary exhaustion. Most of these grounds are cultivated by the hand, 
not with a spade, but an instrument used by two men who pass it under 
the surface and turn the soil completely over. When the crop is 
gathered it is carried to the neighbourhood of the town, where, on cir- 
cular stone pavements sometimes natural or else constructed, it is laid 
to be threshed or rather trodden out by horses or mules driven round 
in a circle, and thus the straw is cut to pieces and turned into a very 
valuable kind of chaff ready without cutting, bruised and nutritious. ] 
23rd April.—Made my march to Alpah&o. At this place I was struck 
with the difference in the manners of the inhabitants, who when the 
town was filled with troops the other day were extremely condescending, 
but now that we had no power to intimidate them, were barely civil, 
1 Any corn crop, such as wheat, barley, oats, rye, or maize—F.A.W, 
