Morning journal and courier., 1892-01-09

tai, that one awakens from the weird fan
oies conjured by sight and scene, in q sort
of half dismay that in this spot, where
our own wondrous civilization had its yery
beginning, everything seems q thousand
years behind even the drowsy progress Of
the Europe to-day.
Here and there throughout the stresss
beyies of giggling senhoritss, never alone
and always conveyed by some frightened
old duenns, pass from shop to shop, ever
seeming to avoid, but ever In reality, COM
pelling most ludicrous antics on the part
of all males from eighteen to eighty.
Roaring and tearing down from the heights
as If pursued, comes one of the cocheiros
of the town with his ramshackle barouche,
to which are often hsrnsssed three donkeys
abreast. He has been nowhere. He is
going nowhere. He lashes and screams
and vents maledictions upon his beasts.
Suddenly the outlandish outfit comes to a
halt. In an instant the violent cocheiro Is
asleep on his box, and the donkeys' heads
droop dolefully between their knees.
Now and then strange horse and rider
will be seen. The horse Is a piebald.
The rider is q gentleman farmer; a 'amor-
gapo" he Is called in Portugal He sits
upon his beast in o emi-military and
semi-cowboy style, holds his bridle rsips
qigh In air, wears spur and mustachois
OF wondrous dimensions, and ambles
through the ehsngeful scene like a hesi-
tant. humbled Quixote. Everywhere arc
little donkeys carrying fat people; bur
densd with furze, brushwood, charcoal.
dried corn-leaves and stalks, rushes and
straw, completely hiding them; packed
with twice their own weight in merchan-
disc going to or coming from the quay; or
driven double with great timbers across
their backs. "Andei-Ande!" their dri-
vsrs shout, as they prod them with blunt,
iron-pointed pixies az long and as heavy as
our own pitch fork handles. These and
OK x-csrts, each with box like a half sec.
tion of huge wicker basket, and solid
wooden wheels with iron-spiked rims
which creak and shrek like q Red River
train on its way to Minneapolis and St.
Paul, in the sixties, are ceaselessly wend-
ing their way along the thoroughfares to
and from the country, the only means sof
freightage; while each donkey aud cart is
accompanied by more able-bodied, ever
yelling muleteers and cartmen than neces-
sary to convey every ounce of produce and
merchandise thus disposed upon their own
backs.
Water is brought into Lisbon in one of
the worlds greatest aqueducts, the aque-
duct of Agoastiores, from the mountain
village of Bellas, ten miles distant. 1t e1-
tends across the near valley of AlcantArs
upon a series of thirty arches, one hun
dred and seven feet from pier to pier, the
point of the highest arch rising two hun
dred and sixty-four feet above the valley
bed. The water is poured from this sque-
duct into an immense covered reservoir,
and is from this conveyed to the many
chsfsriz or public fountains of the city.
From these fountains, since the time of
Joao ". nearly all private houses, public
buildings and shops have been supplied by
water-carriers, men and women. Most of
these, particularly the men, are thus solely
employed. Many of the women are sim
ply house and shop servants of the peas
ant class; and probably the most interest
ing studies for tourist, writer or artist are
to be found among these lowly folk beside
the fountains.
At every one of these moss-covered let
ties groups of barefooted men and women
are constantly gathering. What muscular,
swarthy fellows are the men, and what
graceful attitudes and posings they uncon-
sciously assume as they loiter bit for
chatter and gossip before they shoulder
the huge wooden casks and trot gaily away
with their mighty loads. "Whst splendid
types of Portuguese are thessln you will
e1claim. But ~ are not Portuguese.
They are Gallegans from the ancient SOW
ereignty of GalicisAcomprising the pres
ent four northwesternmost provinces of
Spain named Lugo, Coruna, Orense and
Ponteveda, with population of two mil
lion souls. 0ne-fourth of the entire num-
ber are continuously servants in Spain
and Portugal; perhaps one hundred ~tAou-
sands in Portugal alone; and more than
three thousand are water-carriers here in
Lisbon. know them well in their north
ern homes or chozas and in their southern
work and ways; and they are loveable for
the matchless docility and fidelity, one and
all
When the Gallegan youth has arrived at
the age of eighteen he goes to his drudge
~ at sea, in the army, or as the city meni-
al. He suffers every conceivable indignity
without resentment "Gallsgan dog!" is
the mildest universal epithet applied to
him. Kick him and he will not even
cringe. No power can tempt him to resent
insult, or break law, but TO deprive him of
his earnings. He will not squander doz-
en- reis in a whole year. He will starve to
save. He will do anything but rob or
murder while at service to increase his
hoard; and though his homesickness for
his mountain dulcines, perro and gaita are
SO often so despairing that he dies of
hesrtache and longing, he never will re-
turn to his beloved Galicis until he has
earned enough to possess his own choza
and patch of ground. This is his only
earthly ambition and he seldom fails of its
realization. Thousands of others gain
this accomplishment as segsdors or reap
ers. When the southern fields are ripe
whole armies of Gallegsn respers set out
from their mountain homes armed with
the short hoz or sickle, their wooden shoes
slung over their shoulders, somsthing as
the west of Ireland men annually set forth
for the English hsrvest-fielas, and, carry
ing also their gaitas with them, pipe their
way to the south, where they-reap the
grain for the indolent farmers of CASTLE
and Portugal. Returning on foot as they
went, they wake wild and barbaric echoes
through the Sierra de la Culebre, Sierra de
Banaderio and the fair Montsnos de Leon.
The Gallegan women meantime have cared
for their own little harvests, and from au-
tumn until spring time, save for the occs-
sional droning of the bag pipe, the crack
of the retaco or blunderbuss, and the
wolfsh barking of the mountain dog, sod
den silence and lifeless sleep seem TO have
knit all Galicia into q forbidding and
gloomy web of lesden and obdurate re-
pose.
But see these maiden water-carriers OF
Lisbon, prettiest of all women in the an
cient city-with great dancing eyes, pout.
ing lips ever parting from dazzling white
teeth, their tongues ceaselessly running in
musical staccato. and their supple forms
ever in irrepressible movement from the
boundless life within them Thsir short
skirts disclose limbs which outrival the
Venus of Cos in delicate symmetry. Theil
smart bodices vainly hide bnsts of mar
velous roundness and amplitude, with full
srching neck barred above, and crownins
it snch Q dainty and dimpled chin as ever
Tuscany cannot match; while the line
from tip of little finger up their brown
round arms to beyond the dimpled elbow
is a marvellous study in natures only per
| fect mobile bronze. But they have dAllied
and chatted long enough. With q whisk q
little pad of rushes or cloth Is slapped or
their dainty, shapely heads; in q twink
ling the great cask, half as tall and quit.
as big as they, is resting on the pad; and
with song or roguish laugh they ar,
away, tripping homevard as daintily and
airily as In measures of the contrsdAnzl
or waltz EDGAR L. WAxEMAs.