As we near Coimbra, though it is not much past noon, we meet many groups of handsome country women, with, as usual, heavy burdens upon their heads, returning home from the weekly market in the city. Barefooted they go invariably, with their fine broad shoulders, full bosoms, classical faces, and broad, low brows, their gay kerchiefs on head and bosom, and their fine eyes gazing straight forth with modest dignity; and mentally I deny assent to the boast of Guimarães that its maids and matrons reign supreme in buxom grace, for those of Coimbra need bow the head to none on earth. All around the city are gently rounded undulating hills covered by olive orchards, and as the road tops one of them we see the picturesque old capital beneath us upon its steep slope, the broad Mondego at its foot, and beyond the river a high green ridge crowned by an immense white convent. In the ancient times, as the Christian monarchs wrested from the Moors one territory after another, and drove the Crescent ever farther south, the capital of Portugal followed the victorious standard, and Guimarães soon had to cede its place to Coimbra, which remained the capital from the time of the first Affonso (Henriques) in the twelfth century until the extinction of his dynasty in the fourteenth, and occasionally later. Coimbra is crowded with memories of the heroic times, of combats with the Moors, and of deeds of violence and blood perpetrated within its walls; and in its quaint crowded streets are corners that can hardly have changed since the Affonsos and Sanchos here held their court—the Arco d’Almedina leading out of the principal street, Rua do Visconde da Luz, for instance, and the quaint renascence palace, incorrectly called the palace of the martyred Maria de Telles, in the Rua de Sub-Ripas.