To describe in detail the beauties of Bussaco is impossible in the space at my disposal, but one ramble amongst many may be cited as an example of the effect produced by them upon an appreciative visitor. The sky was the deep, lustrous, sapphire blue of which Portugal alone seems to hold the secret, and the fierce sunlight, held in check by the lofty canopy of leaves, just dappled with golden tesselation the steep path up which I wandered from the palace door. On each side of the well-kept walk stood low stone walls, a mass of brilliant emerald, clothed, as they were, with long trailing mosses and tender fronds of ferns innumerable. Autumn as yet had done nothing to braise and brand the greenness of summer; for in this favoured spot the seasons make but slight difference in the vegetation. Verdant glades and dim recesses of sea-green shadow open up at every turn in the winding path; domed masses of foliage above and below on the steep sides of the glen seem like the silent naves and aisles of vast cathedrals. To say that the air was like wine is a commonplace. This was primeval air, the breath of a myriad trees and sweet health-giving plants, inhaled upon a mountain top overlooking the boundless sea. Not like wine grossly made by man was this, but like some vital elixir distilled in a magician’s laboratory, bringing new life and vigour, with a sensuous joy added by the spirit of the place and the soft warmth of the shaded sun. Towering eucalyptus trees, the fawn-coloured bark hanging in long loose strips and showing the silver skin beneath, alternated with pied planes and feathery palms. Pines and cedars of Lebanon, and a score of trees one knows not by name, tower over all, their great trunks (I measured one cedar twenty feet round), clothed at foot by a dense undergrowth of flowering plants. Large camellia trees, agaves and magnolias full of bloom, the big white pendent flower of the datura, the pink and blue masses of hydrangea, and the glistening foliage of orange trees, lit up the shadowy slopes overhung by the dense foliage of the forest; and trails of smilax, and I know not what other verdant creepers hung in festoons from branch to branch. [Illustration: THE HOTEL, BUSSACO, FROM THE WOODS.]