of us have found a welcome addition to the bills of fare of our breakfast and supper tables. As I have now done justice to the good qualities of the mackerel as a table fish, I will hasten for the present to take leave of my readers.
OUR RIDE TO BUSACO.
In the spring of 1859 I was stationed at Coimbra, in the Kingdom of Portugal, one of a staff of engineers who were conducting the surveys for a railway, the concession for which had been granted by the government to an English company. Having a day’s leisure, myself and one of our party, whom for the nonce I will christen Smith, determined to avail ourselves of it to pay a visit to the Convent and battle-field of Busaco, at about four leagues distance. Having provided for the commissariat in the shape of a cold fowl, salad, and divers other comestibles, which were stowed in a pair of capacious alforges (cloth saddle-bags) behind my friend’s saddle, we started from Coimbra early in the morning, with the object of arriving at Busaco before the heat of midday. We were mounted on a pair of little scrambling active hacks which we had hired from an alguiere in the town, and were attended by the inevitable arriero without whom no one thinks of going a mile on horseback anywhere throughout the Peninsula. This lad, José by name, had already accompanied me in some previous expeditions, and I had taken a liking to him from his good nature, intelligence, and untiring activity. For about two leagues we followed the main road from Lisbon to Oporto, and then struck off on a track which led us through alternate pine-woods and olive-groves, to the foot of the mountain ridge, on the crest of which, on the glorious 27th of August, 1810, 50,000 British and Portuguese soldiers, commanded by the Duke, then Lord Wellington, met the onslaught of 70,000 French troops under the conduct of the Marshals of France, of whom Massena, the “spoilt child of victory,” was the chief, and drove them broken and discomfited down its rugged slopes with fearful slaughter.
On arriving at the convent, which nestles deep amid the thick cork forest which clothes the western side of the Serra de Busaco, we proceeded, before setting forth to explore the battle-field, to examine our resources, and discovered that we were without wine or any other potable, and that none was to be procured at the convent (from which the monks have long since been evicted) for love or money. Our arriero José, relieved us from the difficulty by proposing to run down to the village of Luz at the foot of the mountain, and bring back some Vinho do Duque, which he assured us should be something very superior. Girding his loins tightly with his particoloured ciata, he started off down the hill at as brisk a pace as if he had not already run twelve miles beside our horses that morning, and we proceeded to view the battle-field. The day was very hot, and by the time we returned to the convent we were thoroughly tired with our scramble over the steep slopes of the mountain, and were well pleased to find that our messenger had got back from Luz with four bottles of wine, the orange tawny hue and rich aroma of which showed that it was the real old vintage of the Alto Douro, unadulterated with the brandy and geropiga with which it is fortified for the voyage, and adapted to the palate of the British consumer. Smith was still more tired than myself; he professed to be something of a botanist, and had burthened himself with a great armful of weeds which he had collected in the course of our ramble. Having discussed our provisions, we sat lounging over our pipes and the wine until three bottles had disappeared, and the lengthening shadows of the tall cypresses in front of the convent showed that the sun had well nigh run its course. I determined to mount once more to the huge granite cross which crowns the peak of the Serra above the convent, to see the sun set in the Atlantic, but my companion had grown drowsy after his dinner, and I could not prevail on him to accompany me.
I only just reached the cross in time to see the sun disappear behind a mass of dense black clouds which were piling themselves up in the western horizon, and which seemed to threaten to interfere with the pleasure of the moonlight ride back to Coimbra which we had promised ourselves. I therefore at once hastened back down the steeply-winding, densely-wooded path to the convent, and found that Smith had in my absence nearly finished the remaining bottle of port, and had gone fast asleep. He grumbled and complained of feeling very queer on my rousing him up, and I saw at once that the wine had produced a considerable effect upon him. I went out to the stable to hurry the arriero round with the horses, and got back just in time to catch him in the act of finishing a large glass of the raw, burning, fig brandy of the country, which he assured me would set him all right, but which I much misdoubted was likely to produce an entirely opposite effect.
We had scarcely reached the foot of the mountain, before the clouds, which had rapidly spread over the sky, obscured the rising moon; and the lightning which began to play behind the shoulder of the Serra, showed that we were in for one of those tremendous thunder-storms to which anything we ever experience in our more temperate climate is a mere bagatelle. We now entered the dense olive groves, in which our horses stumbled every moment over the knotted and projecting roots, and to my annoyance I found that the wine he had drunk, and the acrid brandy with which he had topped it up, had produced such an effect upon my companion, that it was only by riding close alongside of him, grasping him tightly by the shoulder, with the arriero holding his leg on the other side, that I could keep him upon his horse.
It soon became evident that we could not proceed much farther in this manner, and I therefore consulted José as to what was to be done. After pondering some time, he suggested, and I thought somewhat reluctantly, that there was a small venda on a bye-road at a little distance where we might take shelter for a short time until the Señor had recovered himself a little, and we could pro-