(1) The road north of the river Mondego, by Celorico, Vizeu, Bussaco, and Coimbra. (2) The corresponding and parallel road south of the Mondego, from Celorico by Chamusca, Maceira and Ponte de Murcella to Coimbra. (3) The road which, striking south from Celorico, crosses the headwaters of the Zezere, by Belmonte and Fundão, and then, climbing the Serra de Moradal, descends to Castello Branco, and from thence reaches Abrantes by the Sobreira Formosa. It may be remarked, by the way, that nothing in all the geography of Portugal seems more astonishing than that there should not be a fourth alternative road, one down the long valley of the Zezere, which, running in a straight line from Belmonte to Abrantes, looks on the map as if it ought to be a main artery of communication, and seems to indicate the obvious road to Lisbon from Almeida, since a straight line drawn between these points would run along the river for some forty miles. But as a matter of fact there was neither a first nor a second-rate road down the Zezere: the only towns on its course, Covilhão and Belmonte, lie hard by its sources, and its central reaches were almost uninhabited. The only good line of communication running near it is a by-road or duplication of the third route mentioned above, called the _Estrada Nova_, which, leaving the upper Zezere at Belmonte, keeps high up the side of the Serra de Moradal, and rejoins the Castello Branco road at Sobreira Formosa. This route was much employed by Wellington in later years, as a military road from north to south, usable even when Castello Branco was threatened by the French. But in 1810 he had ordered it to be rendered impassable, and this had been done by making several long cuttings at points where the track passed along precipices, the whole roadway being blown or shovelled down into the gulf below[157]. The French were, of course, unaware of this, and Masséna is said by his confidant Foy to have taken the _Estrada Nova_ into serious consideration, and to have decided against it because of the necessity for forcing the passage of the Zezere when the defiles were passed, and for laying siege to Abrantes[158]. A far more practical objection was its extreme wildness: it runs along an absolutely uninhabited mountain-side, and the neighbourhood is destitute not only of food but of water for great sections of its length. This Masséna ought to have known, if his Portuguese advisers had been competent. Apparently he was wholly unaware of its character, just as he was necessarily ignorant of the fact that his prescient adversary had blasted away huge sections of it, so that it was absolutely impassable for guns or wagons, as also that earthworks had been carefully constructed to cover the point where it debouches on to the Zezere.