Tyneside itself cannot be more disagreeable than Lisbon on the rare occasions when really bad weather comes up the Tagus from the west. Smoke of unusual blackness and abundance is poured without let or hindrance from innumerable industrial chimneys by the water-side, and the heavy sea-mist, clinging and wet, holds the carbon in its embrace until the atmosphere would hardly disgrace a London particular at Blackwall. I had stood it for a day, but as I knew I could get away from it by a short railway journey out of the valley of the Tagus I determined to endure it no longer, but to fly to the other side of the hills. The weather was as bad as ever when I started the next morning by the ferry-boat to cross the four miles or so of river to Barreiro, which is the terminus of the southern system of railways for Lisbon. Through an arid-looking country of vines producing the famous Lavradio wine, but ugly and poor, on the slopes of the Tagus watershed, we gradually rose to the region of pines and eucalyptus. Leaving all the mist and rain behind us we topped the sandy hills and descended towards the south in an atmosphere brilliantly clear and as exhilarating as nitrous oxide gas. Portuguese railways are slow, and it took an hour and a half to cover the eighteen miles between Barreiro and Setubal—the Saint Ubes of the English geographies. A clean spacious little town, beautifully situated, is this metropolis of sardines and salt. The days of its saline preeminence, it is true, have passed away—the times of humming prosperity at the salt-pans, when the harbours was wont to be crowded by ships loading salt for England and elsewhere; but still the local trade is considerable, and the great extension of the tinned sardine trade in Portugal has made up for everything, there being as many as thirty-four sardine-packing factories at present in full work at Setubal. Five minutes after we had got clear out of the Tagus valley and over the last ridge, the aspect of the land had changed as if by magic. Oranges, lemons, and almond-trees stretch in groves and orchards on all sides; broad tracts of cereal land and dark olive plantations mix with the vineyards, telling of a country of overflowing fertility; whilst long lines of tall eucalyptus trees, with hanging strips of bark, add a strange and exotic note to the scene. This fertile plain descending to the sea on the south is enclosed by high mountain ranges, especially towards the west, upon an outlying spur of which, a great isolated hill, stands aloft Palmella, another of those stupendous fortresses for which Portugal bears the palm. At the foot of the plain, on the edge of the sea, sits the sparkling little town of Setubal, with Palmella, six miles away, looming behind it, but in the marvellous clear air looking as if within reach of one’s hand.