Lisbon with the river is the goodliest situation that ever I saw; the
city old and decayed; but they are making new walls of stone, which
will contain six times their city. Their churches and chapels are the
best built, the finest adorned, and the cleanliest kept, of any
churches in the world. The people delight much in quintas, which are a
sort of country houses, of which there are abundance within a few
leagues of the city, and those that belong to the nobility are very
fine, both houses and gardens. The nation is generally very civil and
obliging. In religion divided, between Papists and Jews. The people
generally not handsome. They have many religious houses, and
bishopricks of great revenue; and the religious of both sexes are for
the most part very strict.
Their fruits of all kinds are extraordinary good and fair; their wine
rough for the most part, but very wholesome; their corn dark and
gritty; water bad, except some few springs far from the city. Their
flesh of all kinds indifferent; their mules and asses extraordinary
good and large, but their horses few and naught. They have little wood
and less grass.
At my coming away I visited several nunneries, in one whereof I was
told, that the last year there was a girl of fourteen years of age
burnt for a Jew. She was taken from her mother as soon as she was
born, in prison, her mother being condemned, and brought up in the
Esperanca; although she never heard, as they did to me affirm, what a
Jew was, she did daily scratch and whip the crucifixes, and run pins
into them in private; and when discovered confessed it, and said she
would never adore that God.
Pages:
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155