Turning aside and descending the glen by a narrower path, a ramble of half a mile brings me to another scene of marvellous beauty. In the foreground is a pool covered with water lilies and overshadowed by trees; and from it, leading straight up the hillside, is the “holy stair,” or cold spring, as it is called. Eleven double flights of stone stairs, each pair of flights leading to a landing of black and white mosaic, whilst in the centre between the two lines of steps a rocky cataract leads a rushing stream of icy cold clear water from the fountain gushing at the top from the rock in its mosaic recess down to the bottom of the hill, where it tumbles tumultuously into the pool. Through the whole length of the long fall, flanked by stairs, perhaps two hundred feet, rare ferns and mosses grow with wild luxuriance, especially in and about the pools on the ten landings; and, embosomed as the whole hillside is in dense greenery, it is impossible to exaggerate the delicious coolness and beauty of this secluded spot. From the top of the Fonte Fria, or Scala Santa, the path leads through a valley, and then precipitously up the ascent that faced me when on the morning after my arrival I stood upon the battlements for the first time. The hermitage of St. Antão stands upon a ledge high up the slope, a tiny dismantled cell, from which a view is gained on a clear day that fairly takes one’s breath away. Below, set in its vast bed of verdure, the white stone castle stands, the gold armillary sphere that crowns its tower glittering in the sun; whilst on the left the far-flung panorama of the plain, with the blue wall of the sea beyond, and the grey mountains on the north, is flooded with an inundation of light, and scattered with the abodes of men—the sombre masses of greenery and the profound silence that surround us making the contrast the more striking. A wider view still than this is obtained from the highest point of the domain, on the very outskirts towards the south, where the Cruz Alta, the “high cross,” marks the site of what in ancient times was a watch-tower of soldier-monks, overlooking the country towards Coimbra, whence the Moors might come to invade the sacred wood. [Illustration: IN THE GARDENS, BUSSACO.]