he circular basin in the middle--a basin which gives it a
truly Eastern look. Inside a round shallow hollow there stands a
many-sided block of marble about six inches high. The sides are concave
as in a small section of a Doric column, and within it is hollowed into
a beautiful cup, shaped somewhat like a flower of many petals. In the
middle there now is a strange object of gilt metal through which the
water once poured. On a short stem stands a carefully modelled dish on
which rest first leaves, like long acanthus leaves, then between them
birds on whose backs sit small figures of boys. Between the boys and
above the leaves are more figures exactly like seated Indian gods, and
the whole ends in a cone. It is so completely Indian in appearance that
there can be little doubt but that it is really of Indian origin, and
perhaps it is not too much to see in it part of the spoils brought to
Dom Manoel by Vasco da Gama after he had in 1498 made his way round
Africa to Calicut and back.

Returning to the Sala das Sereias and passing through the servery and
another room an open court is reached called the Pateo de Diana, from a
fountain over which Diana presides, and on to which one of the
dining-room windows looks. A beautifully tiled stair--these tiles are
embossed like those of the dining-room, but besides vine-leaves some
have on them bunches of grapes--goes down from the Court of Diana to the
Court of the Lion, the Pateo do Leao, where a lion spouts into a long
tank. But the chief beauty of these two courts is a small window which
overlooks them. This window is only of one light, and like the
dining-room window near it its framing has Gothic bases. The capitals
are smaller than in the other windows, and the framing partly covers the
outer moulding of the window arch, making it look like a segment of a
circle. But the cusps are the most curious part. They form four more or
less trefoiled spaces with wavy outlines, and two of them--not the
remaining one at the top--end in large well-carved vine-leaves, very
like those at the ends of the cusps on the arches in the Capella do
Fundador at Batalha. To add to the charm of the window, the space
between the top of the arch and the framing is filled in with those
beautiful tiles embossed with vine-leaves.

Going up again to the Sala dos Arabes, a door in the northern wall leads
to a passage running northwards to the chapel. About half-way along the
passage another branches off to t