[Illustration: FROM THE BATTLEMENT, BUSSACO.]
On the right hand, as one looked down over the battlements, the pretty gardens of the palace, with flowers and palms, are spread at the foot, whilst, resting humbly under the shadow of the palace, is the ancient church and the tiny monastery, which for centuries housed the silent Trappists, whose loving care made this holy wood to grow upon the spurs and glens of a granite mountain. Beyond the garden, the wood slopes suddenly down in billows of greenery, and then at its foot spreads the vast plain, with towns and villages nestling in its hollows. And as the sun grows in brightness I see beyond the limits of the plain, far away, a long strip of white, and over it, high up, as it seems above the horizon, a deep violet wall. It is the sea, the broad Atlantic, with its fringe of silvery sand many miles distant, and it gives the supreme touch to a scene of perfect beauty. On the other side of the castle the view is just as lovely in a different way. Beyond the palms and flowers at the foot, seen over a hundred carved crockets and capricious stone pinnacles and gargoyles, with the great tower of the castle and its armillary sphere over all, is a far stretch of undulating wood; and then a vast tumble of mountains, range over range, all but the highest clothed to the top with forests, and beyond and above them all the bare granite peaks of the Caramulo range, iridescent now with the morning sun. The domain occupies the whole of the north-western end of a long continuous mountain ridge, some eight miles in total length, running from south-east to north-west and extremely precipitous on all sides. From the earliest times, at all events since the fourth century, the glens and ravines that score these slopes have been jealously guarded by ecclesiastical masters. The sheltered position and soft westerly breezes from the Atlantic endowed the spot with a climate mild, equable, and healthy, even for Portugal, whilst the purity and abundance of the springs and the marvellous fertility of the soil in the deep, moist gorges on the mountain-side made it an enviable place of secluded residence. Whilst the minimum winter temperature is about forty degrees, frost being unknown, the summer heat is tempered by the altitude of the place and by the abundant shade of the woods, so that the temperature rarely exceeds that of a warm July day in England.