In towns like Lisbon and Oporto a great number of persons are employed in the fish trade. The fish-girls, with their distinctive costumes, their bare feet, and the graceful poise of the heavy basket of fish on their heads, are a very characteristic feature of both towns. The costumes differ in the two cities, mainly in the head-gear, but they are both picturesque and dirty, and emit the same "ancient and fish-like smell." The men, too, with their bare legs and feet, balancing a long pole on the shoulder, with a basket of fish at each end, will cover a marvellous amount of ground in a day at the curious trotting pace which they affect. Miles inland these men will carry their finny wares, stopping at the public water-supplies to moisten the cloth which protects the fish from the sun and dust. These may or may not be fresh when the day's work is nearly done, but housewives purchasing a supply in the afternoon had better keep a very sharp look-out. Fish plays an important part in the domestic economy of dwellers within a reasonable distance of the sea, and forms a considerable item in the food-stuffs of the working classes. It is fairly cheap, and is cooked so as to get the full value of it. More important than the fresh fish is the salted cod (_bacalhao_). This, which Napier described as "the ordinary food of the Portuguese," is the backbone of the worker's _menu_. It is not fragrant, nor is it inviting in aspect in its raw state, but it is said to be highly nutritive, and it can certainly be cooked in ways which make it appetising. The midday meal, which the wife brings to her husband at his work, and shares with him as they sit in the shade, is often composed of a _caldo_ (soup) made of _bacalhao_, or of all sorts of oddments, thickened with beans and flavoured with garlic, accompanied by a bit of rye-bread or of _broa_, the bread made from maize. These soups and breads, accompanied by salads, onions, tomatoes, and other vegetables, washed down with draughts of a light red table-wine of little alcoholic strength, form the not unwholesome average diet of the worker with his hands. If he wants to get drunk, he can do so, with some difficulty, by imbibing sufficient wine, but the easiest method is to drink the fearful crude spirit _aguardente_. If he survives, he gets horribly, brutally drunk, and possibly does some mischief before he recovers. But it is only fair to say that he but rarely gets drunk, and that when he is thirsty he quenches his thirst with water, with a harmless decoction of herbs or lemonade, or with the almost innocuous wine. This sobriety is not the result of any temperance legislation or restrictions. No license is required for opening a shop for the sale of liquor. Only revenue dues and _octroi_ duties have to be paid, and, of course, there is a liability to police supervision, which provides the police with a means of increasing their very inadequate pay by bribes or blackmail.