A fit suggestion; for next follows a detachment of Portuguese
troops-of-the-line,--twenty shambling men in short jackets, with hair
shaved close, looking most like children's wooden monkeys, by no means
live enough for the real ones. They straggle along, scarcely less
irregular in aspect than the main body of the procession; they march
to the tap of the drum. I never saw a Fourth-of-July procession in the
remotest of our rural districts which was not beautiful, compared to
this forlorn display; but the popular homage is duly given, the bells
jangle incessantly, and, as the procession passes, all men uncover their
heads or have their hats knocked off by official authority.
Still watching from our hotel-window, turn now from the sham
picturesqueness of the Church to the real and unconscious
picturesqueness of every day. It is the orange-season, and beneath us
streams an endless procession of men, women, and children, each bearing
on the head a great graceful basket of yellow treasures. Opposite our
window there is a wall by which they rest themselves, after their
three-mile walk from the gardens. There they lounge and there they
chatter. Little boys come slyly to pilfer oranges, and are pelted away
with other oranges; for a single orange has here no more appreciable
value than a single apple in our farmers' orchards; and, indeed,
windfall oranges are left to decay, like windfall apples.
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