My coachman is one of the talkative type of south Portuguese, almost oriental in the voluble vehemence of his manner, and his eagerness to impart information. Ah! yes Troia, Setubal, and Palmella were all very well in their way: but Evora! That indeed is a place. What a pity his Excellency was not going to see Evora. His Excellency replied that Evora was his present destination, and the patriotic Eborense, for, of course, the voluble coachman came from Evora, broke out into unrestrained panegyric of his native city. Lisbon was nothing, Oporto was nothing, to Evora; why, Evora was a great city and a capital when they were villages: Evora made Portugal what it is—and much more to the same effect the wild-eyed coachman rattled off with much gesticulation, whilst the patient horses, left to themselves, slowly toiled up the winding road to the town of Palmella, now to the right now to the left, and anon straight overhead, apparently inaccessible. At length we entered the town, a poor squalid looking place upon the steep slope; and whilst the tired horses rested I climbed the top of the hill to the castle. The tremendous outer defences covered with yellow lichen, and the round bastions of the inner circumvallation, are evidently of Moorish origin, whilst the great square battlemented towers inside appear to be mediæval. The whole of the top of the hill is occupied by the fortress; the outer walls following the contour, with corner bastions on the spurs of the summit. The views obtained from the battlements of the salient bastions are tremendous. The central keep, standing high above the rest, is veiled with mist, though where I stand upon the battlements is clear and bright. Over the vast plain spread below me bathed in sunlight dark patches of cloud wander, and, on the south side beyond it, is Setubal and the sea; whilst on the other, towards the north, far away stretches the broad estuary of the Tagus, and the distant mountains loom upon the west. Ancient as the castle is, it shows signs of more recent habitation than is usual, indeed a row of humble dependencies within the walls are still occupied by poor people. The roofs of the principal buildings are everywhere destroyed; and upon the very ancient walls of one portion there rises the ruin of a sixteenth-century palace; whilst by the side of the great mediæval keep is the shell of a beautiful chapel of Romanesque Gothic. The inner gateway of the fortress bears upon it a tablet with the arms of Portugal and the date of 1689; and I was informed by one of the residents in the row of dwellings that the place had only been entirely dismantled in living memory. All is silent and abandoned now; and the great Moorish stronghold which Affonso Henriques captured from the Moors in 1147, the royal fortress of the Commandery of the Order of Santiago, and the seat of the powerful Dukes of Palmella, as the place successively has been, has now become what for all future time it will remain, a worthy compeer