Then the old cathedral bells rang out. But the sea muffled them with velvet. Night began to come. And the splendor of the sea grew grey. The mountain tops looked black and lonely as I said good-bye to them, and veiled with the long floating ribbons of the rain. Three days later I was in Portugal. The weather had been rough and stormy. There was rain, mist, and continued cold. Then suddenly there blossomed out of the mist and the sea a rich, vari-tinted city—_Lisbon_. The sun began to shine. It is a city of glowing gardens, narrow streets, whose painted, stucco dwellings are more than charming—gem-pink, sulphur-yellow, weary violet. They jostle each other in little square places of flowers. Barefoot women go from door to door to sell fish, carried in baskets upon their heads; slim seminary students in long black, eloquent capes, move about, statues in ivory and jet. And children and girls have the charm of Latin youth. The _Avenida de la Liberdad_—wide, tree and flower bordered, paved in black and white stone (from which Rio de Janeiro copied Rio Branco), lined with fanciful, sugar-frosted, gay palaces, is a street of which all Portuguese are proud. It ranks among the lovely thoroughfares of the world. Because cities possess personality, I say that Lisbon is lovable. It strikes the senses like some forgotten melody of delight. I found an old buff-colored hotel, with black iron-grilled windows and tall green doors, set far back in a quaintly old-world garden, facing a tiny _Praça_, where I wish I could have lingered—and then been forgotten, and so stayed on forever. Architecturally speaking, the two loveliest things in Lisbon are the Tower of Belem and the Convent of San Jerónimo, both tributes to the great explorer, Vasco da Gama. The pallid, ivory carven surface of the Convent is not less lovely than the Taj Mahal. It has minarets, too, from which muezzins might have called. The entire building owns a kind of perfection. In one of its little interior chapels, sleep side by side, Vasco da Gama and the proud poet of Portugal, who wrote in Homeric verse his history—Camoens. And Camoens was not only poet, but warrior, explorer and one of the world’s bravest adventurers. Camoens lived many lives, and all of them were great. The world was his playground. His fiery spirit, which none own today, longed to give his Emperor continents for gifts. He is still Portugal’s great poet; the years have not permitted him to be surpassed.