The next day was market-day at Leiria, and long before dawn the town was busy. This was by far the largest country market I saw in Portugal, and the gathering of peasantry the quaintest and most picturesque. The shops, particularly those in the mosaic-paved praça, are mainly wholesale warehouses for the supply of village traders, and a very extensive distributing trade must be done. The town itself, on this occasion, was one vast emporium, and multitudes of people bargained from early morning till past midday in the acacia avenues under the brilliant dark-blue sky. A gay-looking crowd they were: for the costume here is quite distinct. The women invariably wear a velvet pork-pie hat over a yellow or red head-kerchief, of which the ends hang down the back, and the older women have full black cloaks with hoods, whilst most of them have a broad band, some nine inches wide, of yellow cloth round the bottom of the skirt. The wares exposed for sale were infinite. In the praça great heaps of maize, grapes, potatoes, chestnuts, and beans covered the mosaic pavement, whilst stalls displayed calicoes and cloths of vivid colours. Giant yellow gourds in high piles lined the footpath, and elsewhere under the shade of the trees stacks of grass-fodder and maize-leaves for cattle stood. In another space heaps of salt, and long lines of stalls for the sale of salted sardines and salted pork, were followed by a score of temporary butchers’ shops. Then came stands for the sale of fresh fish, skate, sardines, and cod, with the inevitable bacalhau; and farther on, spread upon the ground, were hundreds of homely crocks, red amphoræ, slender and beautiful in shape, coarse household dishes gaudily decorated, and unglazed jars to keep water cool. Beneath a beautiful picturesque arcade of ancient arches in the praça women were seated before panniers piled with pears, figs, apples, melons, and grapes, such as Covent Garden might glory in; and hard by strings of garlic, onions, and eschalot claimed their purchasers. In a field by the side of the river long lines of oxen, horses, and asses were for sale, and men in red and green nightcaps, and trousers made of two or three different coloured cloths, soberly bargained for the beasts. Over all was the dark-blue arch of the sky, and the brilliant sun, tempered beneath the trees by the light-green of the acacia leaves: but what strikes most an observer who is familiar with the south, is the absence of vociferation and apparent excitement. There was no shouting, no pushing or quarrelling, and every transaction in the chaffering town seemed to be got through with serious deliberation. Even the cluster of gaily-dressed women around the stately sixteenth-century fountain adjoining the hotel, gossiped staidly, and the children playing beneath the trees were as grave as little judges. This is Leiria as I saw it on market-day; but long before sunset the country people trudged homeward