From the Romans the Lusitanian received his first lessons in agriculture--lessons which have never been entirely superseded. His plough was given him by the Romans, and he has not yet seen fit to alter the pattern. The ox-cart used in town and country for all purposes of draught is another relic preserved intact. Its wheels of solid wood are fastened to the axle, which revolves with them, this revolution being accompanied by a chorus of inharmonious shrieks and creaks and wails which to the foreign and prejudiced nerve is simply agonizing. Its master hears it with a different ear: he finds it rather cheerful than otherwise, good to enliven the oxen, to dispel the silence of lonely places and to frighten away wolves and bogies, of which enemies he has a childish awe. Instead, therefore, of pouring oil upon this discord, he applies lemon-juice to aggravate the sound! The cart pleases the eye of the stranger more than his ear. When in the vintage season the upright poles forming its sides are bound together by a wickerwork of vine branches with their large leaves, and the inside is heaped with purple grapes, it is a goodly sight, and one which Alma-Tadema might paint as a Roman vintage, for it is doubtless a counterfeit presentment of the grape-laden wains which moved in the season of vintage over the Campagna. The results in both cases were the same, for the _vinho verde_, a harsh but refreshing wine, made and drunk by the country-people, is made in the same way and is probably identical with that wherewith the Latin farmer slaked his thirst. The recipe may have descended through Lusus, the companion of Bacchus, whom tradition names as the father of the Lusitanian. Be that as it may, the Portuguese is still favored of the wine-god. Wine flows for him even more freely than water, which gift of Nature has to be dug for and sought far and wide. He drinks the ruby liquid at home and carries it afield: he even shares it with his horse, who sinks his nose, nothing loth, in its inviting depths, and neither man nor beast shows any ill effects from this indulgence. [Illustration: A MADEIRA FISHERMAN.]