Not a breath of wind was stirring, and the lumbering sardine-boat, with its big sweeps weighing nearly half a hundredweight each, was a heavy pull for two men. But the _patrão_ and his son put their backs into the work cheerfully and with good will, the vivacious, black-eyed tatterdemalion of a crew chattering incessantly whilst he held the tiller; his being by far the easiest job, apparently as a concession to the superiority of mind over matter. No ripple stirred the blue, clear water as we slowly pushed out into the bay and got clear of the town. The air was of exquisite clarity and fineness, with some sort of subtle pungency in it that seemed to blend the freshness of the salt sea with the languor of the lotus land; and as we receded from the shore there gradually opened out behind us, in clear, sharp outline sparkling with colour and brilliancy, one of the most striking coast panoramas I have ever beheld. The bay was almost land-locked, and at the brink of the blue water shone the town as white as snow in the sunlight. Behind, in a great amphitheatre, rose the hills from the deep green masses of the orange groves upon the broad plain at their feet. Bright red earth glowed in big gashes upon the slopes, amidst the varying verdure of olives, cork, and pines; and then above the trees and hills towards the west soared the peaks and crags of the great Arrabida range, tinted in this golden morning from orange to ochre and from ochre to violet, with shadows here and there of deepest indigo. Right behind the town the great stronghold of Palmella, upon its sudden hill six miles away, seemed to stand sentinel over the verdant plain and white houses: and there, in the near distance, on the west, upon a promontory of rock forming the point of the inner bay, was another ancient fortress, that of St. Philip, looking sheer down into the sea. Beyond that as we advanced we saw still another castle on a point; and, farther off, the end of the Arrabida range, whose towering peaks dwarfed all the lower hills, pushes far into the sea its precipitous bluff, bounding the landscape on that side.