The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-12-16
IN SPAIN AND PORTUGAL
FARM LIFE IN THE HERMAN
 TENNIS ULA,
Among the Portuguese Peasantry.- HOuscs Three Hundred Years Old and Same Period.

Same Period.
 Especial Correspondence of the Journal
 arrr-Taurier]
 Braga, Portugal, Nov. 3-The travel
 CT who comes to this country for pleas
 ure would better time his /r&sit to any
 season than Autumn. He will find here
 none of the calm and stately beauty
 that marks the dying year in the same
 latitude on our side of the Atlantic--no
 smiling landscapes slowly bronzing un-
 der early touches of frost, or glorious in I crimson, russet and gold; no enchanting
 days of summer brightness tempered
 with the breath of coming winter-of
 winter still warmed and mellowed with
 the sun of waning summer. Autumn is
 particularly melancholy in northern
 Portugal, where every field is battle
 ground every tree, vine and shrub the
 denuded victim of elemental strife. 1 The hot Lusitanian sun has stimulated 1 an extraordinary wealth of verdure;
 and the first continued downpour of | equinoctial rain, accompanied by violent
 winds that break and destroy, streWs | the earth with Wreckage of leaves and | branches, sodden and decaying. Il the | most cultivated districts the desolation | is greatest-of naked vineyards un- slightly stubble and rotting corn-stalks The atmosphere-damp, steady, ague- laden-bathes one in precipitation while
 chilling to the marrow. And then the house-hies and mosquitoes! The plaques of Egypt are as butterflies and nightingales in comparison. Always pestiferous in Portugal, they grow more active and envenomed as summer ad-
 vances, and throughout September and
 October render life well nigh unbeara- ble. Toward the middle of November,
 when the brief summer of St. Martin is scheduled to begin, bracing frosts dis
 perse both the winged pests and the de-
 mons of ague and malaria.
 Undeterred by weeping skies and mud hub deep, or to the knees of our don
 keys, we have been Investigating the
 agricultural interests of this queer
 country, whose social financial, politi- cal and even religious interests are bound up in the welfare of the farmers,
 the vine-growers, the shepherds and
 cattle-raisers. If political economy had proper sway in Portugal her population would be almost entirely an agricultural
 one. Yet, strange to say the governing classes, like those of her twin sister, Spain, seem bent on squeezing to death
 the goose that lays the golden egg, n-' couraging certain royal monopolies in the way of languishing manufactories while expressing the people with tariffs so outrageous as to paralyze the more important industries.
 Some of our experiences have been rich indeed. Accompanied by good Galegan guide and his servant (no up- per servant in Portugal is so poor as to be without his humber servant and so down to servants servants servants),- ,-- we have ridden about the province in the curious two-wheeed carriages of the country whenever our excursions led us beyond the railway routes; and where wheels were not practicable we have joined the grat majority on the backs of donkeys. We had thought our selves thoroughly acquainted with those patient beasts of burden from long ex- perience in Mexico, South America and other wild regions where Balaam's long cared beast is king but until now we never learned the a, b, of the useful ness of those indispensable animals. In this whole poverty stricken kingdom there is not a peasant so desperately impoverished as to be without his don key Every human being in the dis trict seems to own from one to a score. Even the multitudinous beggars who accost you for aims a every step on the highwayl are mounted much as Sancho Panza may have been. In front of eve nd b1tI in au cry crumbling archway are dozens of shaggy little donkeys, each caparisoneI with rope around its neck in lieu of halter or bridle, and a huge wooden sad dle upon his back; and most of them | are unhappily accompanied by bare footed drivere,-' also mounted armed | with iron poinnsi goads long as hoe handles. i hey Ire called into requis- | ton fol' the most trhing errands. The ! padre will Tot walk from one square to the next if his own. oi:,another's don key is at hand. The servant rides to maf 6et, the mechanic tv his days labor. If the farmhand has occasion to go from onion field to potato patch, or the farmers wife wishes q bit of gossip with her nearest neighbor, or the coun- try pumpkin a-woong goes, each sets out as on ten days journey, with a kick, a whack and a goad for the poor little beasts that bear them, and never q thought that the four-footed servi- tors may occasionally need food and wa ter. The herders who care for the black bulls that are bred for the pracas das torros in Lisbon and Oporto, are al- ways found with more donkeys than bulls The goatherd in the lonely mountains has his donkey for an insep- arabic companion. If the cattle in the valleys need change of pasture, or the ground is shifted half a mile on the hillside, preparations are made as for a pilgrimage half around the world, and the ragged drovers ride n state to their new station, All the highways and byways are filled with donkey processions. Some are laden with water-casks wearily podding ac- eustomed beats, often driverless and each wearing an ex- oression of sturdy responsibility on his )ld gray face. Bevies of them are com oletely hidden under piles of hay, or ,orn-stalks, heaped so high that the green stacks seem to be Watzing along If their own accord, except for bellsA angling in muffled way under the 1 odder and boys prodding viciously with their soads. Peasant women