with the rest of the proud old Portuguese hill-top fortresses, whose sturdy walls dismantled though they be, refuse to crumble into dust. Long may they rear their noble towers intact from man’s destroying hand, and tell their silent lesson of heroic times to a generation that sorely needs it. As we wind down the hill again from the poverty-stricken town beneath the castle walls, carts of little black grapes meet us winding up the hill for the belated vintage, and through the open doors of granges we see the wide shallow tubs being filled with grapes trodden under the feet of swarthy lads. The air is soft and close as the sun sets red and orange behind the tree-clad hills, and I pass the hour waiting for the train at Pinhal Novo under a grove of lofty eucalyptus trees, whilst the shrill twittering of millions of cicadas, and the languorous perfume in the air tell me that I have left the strenuous land behind, and am in a clime where to strive is folly. The next morning Evora revealed its quaint charms to me, for in the night when I arrived all seemed gloomy and threatening in its narrow tortuous ways. Under a glowing blue sky and the fierce sun the place was charming, and few cities in Portugal, if any, present so many attractions to the archæologist, the antiquarian, or the simple seeker after the picturesque. The long irregular space of the principal praça is lined by ancient arcades like the plazas in Spanish towns, and the people who flock hither and thither under the covered ways are purely Andalusian in appearance, the men wearing sheepskin _zamarras_ over gaudy waistcoats, and upon their heads wide-brimmed velvet _calañeses_ surmount bright-coloured kerchiefs. We have almost lost sight now of the ox as a draught animal, and big mules, drawing a somewhat light waggon, are universal. At unexpected corners and unlikely angles relics of unfathomed antiquity meet you: a Roman tower built into a sixteenth-century wall, a Moorish arch, a low-browed doorway that may go back to the time of the Goths, though the house to which it gives entrance may be comparatively modern, fragments of palaces and beautiful bits of Manueline are everywhere. For this city of Evora is an epitome of the historical vicissitudes of Portugal, and under each successive régime has played a principal part. Ebora of the Phœnicians and Iberians, Liberalitas Julia of the Romans, seat of government of the patriot rebel Sertorius, who here defied the legions of the Cæsars (80 B.C.), Gothic capital of Lusitania, Yebora of the Moslems for four hundred years, and now chief city of Alemtejo and the south—the walls and towers of its Latin and Gothic masters are still clearly traceable, and the mediæval defences still surround the ancient city.