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June, 1852 I will now proceed to relate the incidents of my principal excursion up the Tapajos, which I began to prepare for, after residing about six months at Santarem.
The way was thus paved for one of the worst engagements in the whole Peninsular war; I mean the storming of Badajoz. The French did not move from Santarem till the beginning of March, which we discovered on the 6th, and Lord Wellington, having received fresh reinforcements from England, determined on following them up. They had taken three routes, and consequently our army had to be divided too.
Dom Manoel therefore determined to finish the Capellas Imperfeitas, and the work was given to the elder Matheus Fernandes, who had till 1480, when he was followed by João Rodrigues, been master of the royal works at Santarem.
Inside the walls are covered to half their height with exquisite tiles of Moorish pattern, blue, green and brown on a white ground. On the north wall is a great white marble chimney-piece, once a present from Pope Leo X. to Dom Manoel and brought by the great Marques de Pombal from the ruined palace of Almeirim opposite Santarem.
The Turks were so intent on defending themselves against the Portuguese boats, that they neglected to barricade this hole, of which the people in De Silvas boat took advantage to get on board; Alonzo Lopez the master, and Alvaro Lopez one of the kings servants, now town-clerk of Santarem, being the first who entered by the hole.
Two other corps left Santarem, on the night of the fifth, and retired to Thomar. The rest of the army moved by other routes. For four days Wellington, although discovering that a retreat was in progress, was unable to ascertain by which line Massena was really retiring.
This tomb, which was made at the command of his daughter Dona Leonor, stands in the church of the Graça at Santarem, a church which had been founded by his grandfather the count of Ourem in 1376 for canons regular of St. Augustine.
At Cameta, the lively, good-humoured, and plain-living Mamelucos formed the bulk of the population, the white immigrants there, as on the RioNegro and Upper Amazons, seeming to have fraternised well with the aborigines. In the neighbourhood of Santarem the Indians, I believe, were originally hostile to the Portuguese; at any rate, the blending of the two races has not been here on a large scale.
I arrived at Santarem on my second journey into the interior, in November, 1851, and made it my headquarters for a period, as it turned out, of three years and a half. During this time I made, in pursuance of the plan I had framed, many excursions up the Tapajos, and to other places of interest in the surrounding region.
The passage from Santarem to Abrantes offered the inconvenience of an immediate attack from the enemy in possession of that town, recently fortified by General Hill. It was resolved to wait for the arrival of Marshal Soult, or for the reinforcements which he had been ordered to send into Portugal.
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