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Updated: June 9, 2025
We did not part till the night was considerably advanced, and the next morning I sent him the books, in the firm and confident hope that a bright and glorious morning was about to rise over the night which had so long cast its dreary shadows over the regions of the Alemtejo. The day after this interesting event, which was Saturday, I had more conversation with the man from Palmella.
These plains of the Alemtejo are supposed to be the least beautiful part of the country, but no one can cross them in April without being almost overcome with the beauty of the flowers, cistus, white, yellow, or red, tall white heaths, red heaths, blue lithospermum, yellow whin, and most brilliant of all the large pimpernel, whose blue flowers almost surpass the gentian.
A sad contrast to the fertility of the Minho is presented by the country opposite Lisbon and the adjoining province of Alemtejo. This Portuguese campagna was in Roman days a fertile plain covered with golden wheat-fields. Now it is a barren, melancholy waste, producing only ruins. It is in and about this region that the most important Roman remains in the country are to be found.
Having arrived at Vendas Novas, and bespoken supper, my new friend and myself strolled forth to view the palace; it was built by the late king of Portugal, and presents little that is remarkable in its exterior; it is a long edifice with wings, and is only two stories high, though it can be seen afar off, from being situated on elevated ground; it has fifteen windows in the upper, and twelve in the lower story, with a paltry-looking door, something like that of a barn, to which you ascend by one single step; the interior corresponds with the exterior, offering nothing which can gratify curiosity, if we except the kitchens, which are indeed magnificent, and so large that food enough might be cooked in them, at one time, to serve as a repast for all the inhabitants of the Alemtejo.
The English were to be speedily dislodged from their famous lines; and, if it was necessary still to blockade them for some time, the Tagus once crossed, the troops would no longer want for resources. The plain of Alemtejo would be open to them; the fine season was approaching; all efforts would become easy. Confidence and cheerfulness spread through all the encampments.
Now, however, it was wiser, even in the early morning, to seek the shade, and breakfast was served within the quadrangle, under a trellis of vine supported in the Portuguese manner by rough-hewn granite columns. It was a delicious spot, cool and fragrant, secluded without being enclosed, since through the broad archway it commanded a view of the Tagus and the hills of Alemtejo.
In his rambles through Alemtejo, a province little visited and not often described by Englishmen, Mr. Hughes exposes some of the blunders of Friend Borrow, of Bible and gipsy celebrity, whose singularly attractive style has procured for his writings a popularity of which their mistatements and inaccuracies render them scarcely worthy.
Although the great province of Alemtejo, which reaches from the south bank of the Tagus to within about twenty-five or thirty miles of the Southern Sea, had more than once been entered by the victorious Portuguese king Affonso Henriques, it was not till after his death in 1185, indeed not till the beginning of the thirteenth century, that it could be called a part of Portugal.
In the whole of Portugal there is no place of worse reputation, and the inn is nick-named Estalagem de Ladroes, or the hostelry of thieves; for it is there that the banditti of the wilderness, which extends around it on every side for leagues, are in the habit of coming and spending the money, the fruits of their criminal daring; there they dance and sing, eat fricasseed rabbits and olives, and drink the muddy but strong wine of the Alemtejo.
Portugal was now to be divided into three very unequal parts: the largest portion, comprising Estremadura, Beira, and Tras-os Montes, was reserved for a future arrangement at the general peace, but meanwhile was to be held by France: Algarve and Alemtejo were handed over to Godoy; while the diminutive province of Entre Minho e Douro was flung as a sop to the young King of Etruria and his mother, a princess of the House of Spain, to console them for the loss of Etruria.
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