The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-12-16

of country produce, from flowers, fruits
 and vegetables to living pigs, kids anc
 chickens dangling from the wooden sad | dle-yokes; rye and corn are brough'
 down from mountain farms in pannlers | tree-trunks, to be converted into tim
 Der. are attached to a cross- beam la1c l over the backs of two donlSeys; and sc
 it goes to the end of the chapter all the
 work of this lazy people depending
 largely upon the tireless and patient | beast of Balaam
 In the cumbersome saddle, with their huge wooden yo1es at the front and
 back, even men do not sit astride. They
 ride something as in the wild Irish jaunting-car with both legs dangling | over the right side, and in moments of
 peril clutch the front yoke with their
 hands. Undertaking a donkey jaunt in
 these parts, you might as well lay aside
 your dignity in the beginning, for an
 attempt to assume either 6 graceful or stately attitude is to render yourself
 unnecessarily ludicrous. It Is better, by | far, to copy the Portuguese style of
 riding, doubled up in the form of a | printers Interrogation mark reversed,
 maintaining precarous equilibrium by
 the under side of the knee joints
 Thus up hill and down dale you plod' | past farms and orchards and vineyards,
 with the distant mountains always in l view. Through a constant succession
 of sleepy hamlets, lying close together
 each with it's central fountain surround ed by lettering donkeys peasants and | Water-carriers: past frequent Wayside shrines where Nossa Senhora COur | Lady'O, with outstretched hands, in-
 vites to prayer; and occasional wooden
 crosses each erected to mark murder,
 probably by brigands; every cross is surrounded by it's heap of stones, denot- ing the petitions of passing travellers for
 the repose of the unshriven soul. and you add a pebble to the collection, lest
 your own meet similar fate at the
 next turn of the road. As the end of
 the day approaches, you elect to pass
 the night in one of the villages-no
 matter which, you will wish you had
 gone further in any event. A descrip-
 tion of one rural inn answers for all the rest. It is the posada of Don Quixote's day, with no alterations. Originally
 built to withstand a siege hundreds of years ago when abbots, friars and mer- chants travelled with treasure, liable to
 be attacked at any minute by such grand robbers as Giraldo, its sleeping rooms no larger than the cells of aus tere monks, and its doors of rivited and bolted chestnut, with iron-latticed gates behind them. Your apartment has al- ways the same meagsre furnitshings-a bed of four stout posts set into huge frame, laced across with rawhide thongs, on which is laid a shapeless sack of corn-husks and several woolen blankets hand-woven by the women of the district. At the head thereof hangs an iron crucifix, and perhaps little brass or pewter font for the holy water which you have surely brought along in bottle to ensure safety on the journey. The one chair or stool is of piece with the bedstead-a hollow frame laced across with rawhide; upon the floor, in one corner, is tin basin filled with water for washing, and-near it lies q hand-woven linen towel coarse, but clean. You may watch the cooking of your breakfast and supper over small blaze of faggots in the open court yard. There is no public dining room, and q table, bare of cloth, will be spread in your room. The center piece will be brown earthen plate with thick slices of Portuguese bacon, hanked with boiled yams big as your fist. There is also a basin of stew, savory and delicious, whose mysterious com ponents would better not be inquired into an enormous frasca para vinho, or wine fagon. containing gallon or two of cheap Aemtejo wine and moun- tain of broa (bread). yellow as saffron and hard as rock, This coarse but nu- tritlous bread, of mingled corn and rye. which seems to have been constructed simultaneously with the several-hun~ dred-year-old casa, is the staple luxury of the Portuguese peasantry, and to it they owe their hardness. as well as their strong white teeth When the corn crop has been bad and is therefore scarce and dear, less of it in proportion to the rye can be used in the loaf, and vice versa. In the corn-producing pro- vince of the minho, and in the lowland | districts generally. the usual propor- | tions are eight parts of corn to one of | rye; and in the rye lands where less corn is grown, the proportions are re- versed.
 Since farming has moved very little in Portugal in the last fourteen centuries it may safely be said that there is con- siderable room for improvement. For every hundred bushels of corn now pro- duced fifty more might just as eas be raised, and everything else in propor- ton. Corn has been grown on the same lands, summer after summer, for hun dreds of years with no change of crops. Few Portuguese farmers own an acre of land, but families hold the same tracts generation after generation. un- fer various different tenures, hard for the foreigner to comprehend. For ex- ample, there is the Allodial tenure, which prevails in the wide and fertile plains of southern Portugal. The hold ar of the fee simple of the land either ills his own acres with the minimum of 'apital, energy and knowledge or let's t on short and uncertain leases to ten ants who farm it in his stead, almost to IS little purpose as he would have done The Parcerja rural tenure is not unlike what we call ''on shares and akin to he Metayer system of France and Ita- v, whereby the owner finds the land n d g.rNND jI,D Il n-xs,-