This fortress, under whose protection the town first sprang up, was built by the Knights Templars in the middle of the twelfth century. It was the special mission of this order of knights to defend the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, to protect the Christians in that city, and to fight the Mohammedans wherever they might meet them. The Moslems in Portugal were the Moors, who made a mighty effort to capture this Castle of Thomar some sixty years after it was founded. It was a celebrated siege, and an old inscription, let into one of the walls, tells the history of it in a few quaint words. Translated, it reads as follows: “In 1228, on the 3rd day of July, the King of Morocco came with 400,000 cavalry, and 500,000 footmen, to besiege the Castle for six days, and destroyed all that he found outside the walls. God delivered the Castle, its Master and brethren from his hands. The same King returned to his country with innumerable losses of men and horses.” On the suppression of the Order of Templars in 1312, King Diniz established the Order of Christ at Thomar--“for the defence of the Faith, the discomfiture of the Moors, and the extension of the Portuguese monarchy,” as the old records put it. It became one of the wealthiest and most powerful orders of chivalry in Christendom, its knights fighting in all parts of the world, till in 1523 King John III. converted it into a purely religious community of monks, and the heroic days of war and adventure came to an end. As the years passed by many additions were made to the grim old fortress. A magnificent new church was added, chapter-houses and cloisters, dormitories and kitchens. There are no fewer than eight cloisters, of different dates, styles, and sizes, and all these oddments of architecture, each one beautiful in its own way, have mellowed with age into a rambling, fascinating whole. The town below contains several churches of interest, and many factories and cotton-mills. The River Nabao runs through it, passing beneath a fine old bridge, and turning numberless picturesque water-wheels as it flows along. On its banks poplars rear their tall heads, willows dip their long branches in the cool stream, and rows of peasant women may be seen standing in the water, hard at work washing. They rub and scrub the clothes ruthlessly on hard stones, rinsing them in the running water; but one feels quite reconciled to see the garments being worn out and ruined, if only one may be allowed to watch these charming, brightly-dressed laundresses, and to listen to their merry talk and laughter. CHAPTER XI THE PEASANTRY The peasants are very hard-working, particularly in the north, where they are a finer race altogether than in the south, not only better-looking, manlier, and more resolute in character, but thriftier and more industrious.