PICTURESQUE LISBON.

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 39, 9 May 1927, Page 11

PICTURESQUE LISBON.

THE GLAMOUR OF THE P.AST. To be possessed of the peculiar charm of Lisbon, one unrsi be an artist, with an appreciation of the humorous and disreputable. If, in addition to these qualifications, it is one’s first foreign port, as it was mine, the spell is irreMv experience of it was a matter of three days, for v. e called only to unload and load cargo; but to the emotions time is of no account. This perfect little cameo of new scents (and smells) and sun-soaked colour and strange new life, was fitted into a dark frame of starry nights, for it was night when we neared the land, and night again. silent and mysterious, when we slipped away. My voyage of adventure really began towards the morning of our arrival in the Tagus, when I was suddenly galvanised into acute wakefulness (writes H. Rigby in “The Blue Peter”) by tremendous flash of light which fell across mv eyes. It was only for an in-, stant, as the ship rose to the wave, f saw through the porthole the ominous beam of a lighthouse travelling across the black water.

As we neared the narrow mouth of the Tagus the sky flushed with a warmth like wine, anil a cold fresh wind came blowing towards us; an aromatic wind that the Phoenicians must have known, that for centuries had met innumerable voyagers as they put into the Tagus—and now it was meeting me.

The sun came up suddenly, and the flat greyness of the mountains gave place to warm colour. The houses perched along the hills, and congregated above the water, glowed into sunny life, red roofs and white walls reflecting tlie light. Fishing boats with curved and painted prows, feluccas, rowing boats, and all manner of curious small craft, began to come down the river, and from them dark eyes set in golden-brown faces looked up with a fixed gaze as we steamed slowly along. We passed many small sailing vessels at anchor, or lying beside the wharves, little boats like those that unbelievably reached the Indies and the Americas in the past.

The wonder grew »vith the growing light, and culminated when the sun flashed on the rigging of a little vessel of ancient appearance, a dream ship caught bv the rosy enchantment of the morning. The name, half obliterated, reached the brain like a sudden fanfare of trumpets. 1 woke suddenly to the breath of danger and renown; the glamour of the past became the living present, filling the whole sunlit world, and that icy and aromatic wind became a promise. The name was Vasco da Gama.

Our first sight of the city was brief and breathless, being obtained from a powerful motor which dashed round, over, or through everything in the main streets at a speed which in England is usual with the rating track. We negotiated the evil and mountainous roads of the surrounding district in a miraculous manner, which made my hair stand on end.

The surrounding country, with its orange groves and its air like wine, is very wonderful. Cintra, with its camellias and its, palace, end Pena, the ancient palace of the kings of Portugal, high up on its rocky eyrie, are both beautiful ami historically interesting; but of all that can be seen in three days niy heart was most entirely’ enslaved by lhe old, disreputable quarters of Lisbon itself, where wine-shops and barbers alternate in the narrow, crowded, and noisy streets.

At every step a picture presents itself ready made; at every other step there is a poem also, delicate and tender, or perhaps a half-glimpse of some tragic thing.

Going up the narrowest of steep ar.d narrow streets, with washing festooned from every window, and the crowing of cocks coming from the top storeys, one emerges into open spaces full of sunlight. Around them stand old colourwashed houses, white or blue or yellow or cream, no two alike, with painted balconies and Moorish iles In the centre are trees, and •. fountain of stone or marble (very beautiful are many of these founta : ’s, • and women with olive faces and bla„> ban, clad in orange and scarlet and emerald-green and black and rnagenta, and any other colour you can think of, arc sitting gossiping, or washing clothes, or fetching water in big red earthenware vessels. They come and go. barefoot, with a free, swinging walk, their vessels on their heads /it is said that if the people of Lisbon fetch even so much as a newspapei they carry* it on their beads), and crowds of fascinating halfclothed children, with impish or solemn faces, sprawl and play around them, or beg, clamorous and impudent, with wide, infectious smiles. To complete the picture a grey-clad trooper on a white horse emerges from behind the shadow of the church, and clatters down the slope; on his lance a scarlet pennon that flutters in the wind of his reckless progress. Almost every* house lias its little balcony*. «md in the evening women lean indolently over, watching the passersby with great black eyes that are both empty and mysterious. Three days! And yei, if one cannot have a year, three days arc enough. On the last evening we lay at the wharf waiting for the tide, and as the sun sank the men finished loading, cleared up the decks, and the Portuguese officials departed. As the dock hands were paid off at the gates, one had a pretty sample of what a revolution must be like, in the furious argument and arm-waving and ferocious gesticulating that took place. It was a bloodless affair, however, and in course of time subsided, leaving a great quiet.

For a moment the sense of venturing into the unknown brought to life all those other ships which had sailed from the same port, and the running of ghostly feet and the flapping of unseen sails drowned the quiet throb of the engines. Swinging out into the stream among the shipping we left Lisbon behind, a place of lights on a hillside, and the river became a black and perilous pathway to unknown seas.

HAMMER OF 1,000 B.C.

Right Rev. Borcy Mark Herbert, formerly Bishop Suffragan of Kingston-on-Thames, was enthroned with stately ceremony recently as first Bishop of the new diocese of Blackburn, in the local cathedral.

An oak chair, which is Dr. Herbert’s cathedral throne, was formerly used in Blackburn Parish Church. Fifty years ago it was about to be sold to a marine store dealer, when a clergyman bought it for a trifling sum. His heir has restored it to the new diocese, and it becomes the stool of honour.

The Bishop demanded admission to his cathedral by knocking on the door with a stone hammer head, found in a stream at Whalley, and reputed to bo three thousand years old.