Steaming up the river, the first great feature of Lisbon which one notices is the palace of the Ajuda, standing out against the sky, a huge, solid-looking building on a hill, above the western portion of the town. It is in another palace near here, that of the Necessidades, that the present King, hardly more than a boy, remained for so many weeks without daring to venture beyond the walls, after the cruel assassination of his father and elder brother in the early part of 1908. The dreadful event is still so recent that most people will remember all about it. The King and Queen and the Crown Prince had disembarked at the fine landing-stage on the river side of the Praça do Commercio, or Black Horse Square, as the English call it, from the equestrian statue of King Joseph I., which stands in the centre. They had only just started for the palace, and the carriage was turning out of the Square into the narrow street known as the Street of the Arsenal, when a band of men with firearms, which they had kept hidden under the long cloaks they were wearing, sprang out and shot the King and the Prince before anyone had time to interfere. The coachman lashed up his horses, and drove at a gallop into the gates of the Arsenal close by. The brave Queen had thrown herself in front of her son to try and protect him; but, alas! it was too late to save either him or her husband. It is said that when, some months later, the young King Manuel drove out for the first time through the streets of the capital to attend a solemn requiem Mass, the Queen-mother wandered in restless terror up and down the long rooms and corridors of the palace, fear gripping at her heart, lest he too should fall a victim to assassins, and she had arranged to have telephonic messages sent to her from successive points on the royal route as he passed them by in safety. On the banks of the river below the Ajuda Palace is the historic old Tower of Belem, solid and square, with turrets at the four corners, and with ramparts, parapets, and battlements standing out into the water. It was from this spot that long ago the great explorer, Vasco da Gama, sailed away to discover the new route to India, round the Cape of Good Hope. Those were the days of Portugal’s greatness, when her sons went out to explore and to colonize, encouraged by their enlightened Prince, Henry the Navigator. Gradually her sailors found their way farther and farther from home, and made many settlements on the West Coast of Africa. In 1487 Bartolommeo Diaz, going farther still, discovered the Cape of Good Hope, and ten years later King Emanuel fitted out four ships, which he placed under the command of Vasco da Gama, who was to try and discover a way to India by sea.