CHAPTER III
THE Central Railway Station, a really fine building in which the Manueline architecture veers strongly to Mauresque forms, lies back from the Rocio on a small square called the Praça de Camões, not to be confounded with the Largo of that name on the hill above. Beyond the station is seen a noble monument in clear relief against the sky, and a park-like profusion of leafage; right and left are palms, and rows of Judas trees decorating the gardens of the Praça dos Restauradores. This pretty square is the beginning of the beautiful boulevard of the Avenida da Liberdade.
Restauradores, liberdade—liberty, the restorers—two words very precious to the heart of the Portuguese, who is fond of giving expression in nomenclature of streets or objects to that passion for liberty which has always been one of his strong characteristics. It is that noble sentiment of independence which has enabled this small country to stand apart from absorption into the bigger nation of the peninsula, which has ever spurred them on to break free from thraldom in any shape or form, and which is almost a sure guarantee, that, given time for development of national capabilities after so many stupendous obstacles in the struggle for existence they will still hold their own among the great nations of the world as in their golden age of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Lest they should forget, or lose sight of high aims in the maelstroms of workaday and social life, they set up this pyramidal monument as a perpetual commemoration of the victories which freed the land from Spanish rule, of the forty strong men—dos Restauradores—who dared to create the Portuguese Day of Independence on December 1, 1640. It consists of an obelisk, ninety
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