Away on the right a field is being ploughed, and the plough, like the cart, is of the same pattern as those used by the Romans--a very primitive affair. Just a wooden spike shod with iron, which scratches shallow furrows in the earth. It is being drawn by a great big ox and a very small donkey. The ploughman has a little boy to help him, who carries a long pole with which to clear away the earth that clogs the plough. Man and boy have been at work since very early morning, and they will go on till six or seven in the evening. All day long, hour after hour, they sing a monotonous kind of chant in a minor key, only about two lines, repeated over and over again, and it sounds as though there were no real words to it. It is just such a tune, or want of tune, as may be heard any day on the east coast of Africa, sung by native boat-boys. [Illustration: THE FARM CART OF THE COUNTRY.] It is a legacy from the early days when the country was held by the Moors. The Southern Portuguese more especially have retained many Moorish customs, and the peasants have a very distinctly Moorish type of face, with the inscrutable expression which may so often be seen among Eastern peoples. There are many Arab wells or _shadufs_ in the country. A beam is placed horizontally between two pillars, and on this is balanced a long pole, to one end of which a weight (very often a large stone) is attached, and to the other, by means of a rope, a bucket. A pull on the rope lets the bucket down into the well; when full the rope is let go, and the weight at the other end raises the water. With a few exceptions, in some of the larger towns, nearly all the shops are Eastern-looking. They have no smart plate-glass windows in which to show off their pretty merchandise; often they have hardly any window at all, but just a big doorway, through which you look into a dark passage, where the various goods for sale hang on the walls and from the ceiling. The Portuguese have many other Eastern ways: for instance, if they wish to send you farther from them, they make a sign with the hand which we should take to be beckoning you nearer, and if they want you to approach, they would seem to be motioning you away--both of which signs are entirely Eastern. They have also retained from the Moors a love of coloured tiles for decorating their houses, and even their churches, both inside and out. There are many factories at Lisbon and Oporto where these tiles are made, but they never now attain the beauty of the old Moorish ones, which are still to be seen here and there throughout the country. It is a lost art. But we have left our plough far behind, and are coming to a few cottages and a small wayside inn. A bush hangs over the door to show that wine is sold, the time-honoured sign which was used long ago in England, and from which the saying comes, “Good wine needs no bush.”