Taipas, the famous thermal mineral baths of the Romans, did not detain me except to order lunch to be ready when I should return a few hours later to the primitive inn attached to the ancient baths, for I was bound for a place still more ancient than Roman Taipas, the mysterious buried city of Citania, the Portuguese Pompeii. A few miles’ drive upon an excellent road and through a prosperous smiling country of maize, vines, and olives, brought me to the tiny hamlet of São Estevão de Briteiros, just a humble little grey church, a large farmhouse, an inn, a few cottages and a school. The road had led almost at right angles to that by which we had reached Taipas, and the Falperra range, which we had crossed earlier in the day, again loomed nearer; the nearest spur, a bold hill of nine hundred or a thousand feet high at some distance from the range, projecting far out into the plain, and rising precipitously from the little village of Briteiros, which was the present limit of my drive. Long before we reached it the abrupt hill with its tiny white hermitage chapel of São Romão on the highest point had stood out conspicuously, and seen from below looked impossible of ascent. From Briteiros, however, the climb was seen to be not so formidable; for a rough path started from behind the humble schoolhouse, through little farmsteads, gradually winding and zigzagging up the precipitous slope through the trees and brushwood that clothed the lower portion of the hill. The population of Briteiros were mostly at Taipas for the market, and a demand for the services of _um rapaz_, a boy, to guide the stranger to the lost city of long ago met with the reply that no man nor boy was readily available. [Illustration: ON THE WAY TO MARKET, TAIPAS.]