week
without making any further demands upon the commissariat department.
This military service does not affect the nation much, either morally
or physically, and the only economical effect is probably that it
provides a fruitful source of plunder to corrupt officials. As any man
can free himself of the three years' service with the colours by paying
a sum of about L24, it may be imagined what an opening this affords for
special peculation.

The navy consists of about five thousand men, and of a few modern
war-ships, and of some old boats whose seaworthiness is questionable.
The best ship at present on the list is the cruiser _Dom Carlos_, which
was sent to take part in the naval pageant which formed the first
portion of the funeral of Queen Victoria. The sailors, who are much to
be seen in Lisbon, where the great naval barracks are situated, look
smart enough, and as the Portuguese have always been good sailors, it
may safely be predicted that, in case of necessity, they will make the
most of the limited means at their disposal, or of such of them as have
not been utterly ruined by official indifference or worse.

In the towns one meets men in various employments, such as the police,
who have served in the army, and still retain some sort of soldierly
appearance, but once get into the country, and it is vain to look for
any evidence of military service amongst the rural population.

The country-folk are a patient lot; most of them ruminants, like their
own oxen. Sleepy always, and slow in their movements, they are often
devoted to the farm, or _quinta_, on which they work, and are, perhaps,
slightly more honest than their fellows in the towns. They are frugal
enough, and enjoy their huge junks of dark bread, washed down with
water, at their midday meal, and a sound sleep under the shade of an
orange tree or a eucalyptus, or a bit of a wall, until it is necessary
to begin work again. The peasant costumes are not inviting; they are
simply squalid. Costumes in the towns are much better. Still, on festal
days the village women deck themselves out with bright-hued shawls, and
the men wind brighter scarfs round their waists to keep up their
patchwork trousers, and thus relieve what would otherwise be the
intolerable dinginess of the whole scene. The farmer himself, mounted on
his mule, with high-peaked saddle and enormous wooden stirrups decorated
with brass, his cloak, with the bright scarlet or blue lining folded
outwa