I had often before seen Caldas in the height of the bathing season, when
the midsummer heat made Lisbon intolerable and inspired people with more
or less imaginary maladies to get cured. The place then, with its crowds
of visitors and pleasant parties, was bright and lively enough; but now
that the last pleasure-seeker had fled, and the only people taking the
wonderful health-giving waters were the few really sick, and the inmates
of the great “Queen’s hospital” adjoining the hot springs, Caldas looked
mean and ugly. The drives through the pine forests in the neighbourhood,
it is true, are pleasant; but for a fortnight I had been passing through
a glorious pine country much more diversified and elevated than these,
and Caldas had no fresh attractions to offer me. A visit to the famous
factory of enamelled _faience_, charmingly situated in the midst of
gardens, yielded an hour’s interest in the inspection of the late
Bordallo Pinheiro’s fine sacred figure groups now in course of
production for the shrines at Bussaco, and the hundred curious
Palissy-like pieces in high relief, plates of fruit, fish, &c., which
are the specialty of the factory. But that being finished the charms of
Caldas were exhausted, so far as I was concerned, and the train for
Cintra claimed me irresistibly.
The first station from Caldas (Obidos), with its little town, nestles at
the foot of an eminence upon which another of the stupendous mediæval
castles peculiar to Portugal rears its massive battlements, castles in
comparison with which most of the English feudal strongholds are mere
sentry-boxes. For these Portuguese fortresses were national outposts
thrust forward successively into conquered or debatable land; bases for
further extension southward and bulwarks against the return of the tide
of Islam. Another two hours of travelling brought us into a country of
red rolling hills, with a bold granite ridge on the east and a still
loftier ridge beyond merging into the blue mist on the horizon. For
miles on either side grand sweeps of flowering heather flushed against
breaks and slides of ochre-earth, touched here and there with the light
feathery green of the pines; whilst in the dips of hills sheltered
valleys of bronzing vines and little white granges, slept tranquilly
after the bustle of the just finished vintage. Soon we get nearer the
granite hills before us, and looming over the station, upon a great
projecting spur of one of these there frowns another of these tremendous
strongholds, from which, running towards the east and south between us
and Lisbon, there bars the way a series of gigantic ridges and peaks.
Most of the heights are capped by towers, and scored along the faces of
the mountains may still be discerned lines and marks of earthworks and
redoubts. These are the never-to-be-forgotten lines of Torres Vedras, by
which the genius of Wellington finally held the legions of Napoleon at
bay, and saved Portugal—and incidentally Europe—from the domination of