Page:Lisbon and Cintra, Inchbold, 1907.djvu/35

Rh a companion or two—squats on the ground, mallet in hand, a pile of stones beside him. From these he selects now a black, now a grey stone with deliberation, and hammers each separately into the pattern for which, like an Eastern weaver, he seems to need no guide nor measurement.

The roads, on the other hand, are badly laid with cobble stones unevenly distributed, and with so many hollows and ridges that a drive in any part but the fashionable "Corso" of the city is an adventure to be remembered. At first sight of the hills mounting so closely from both sides of the lower town, the difficulty of exploring, or of penetrating to the suburbs, seems appalling. Here it is that Lisbon may be compared at every turn with the San Francisco of other days. Just as the famous cable-cars skimmed gaily up and down Nob Hill, and other famous hills of the Californian Paris, so the electric cars of Lisbon bring all parts of the city into touch with the centre and one another. The elaborate system of lines and wires spreading web-like in all directions seems to control the capital. How the Lisbon citizen contrived to exist before it was organized one is puzzled to imagine. The small omnibuses drawn by mules were apt to make unexpected halts on the long hills, halts which only ceased when the passengers alighted and literally put their shoulders to the wheel. The only survival of those days runs now for a few miles along the city front. It possesses the proud name of "Eduardo Jorge," and has a predilection for swaying perilously near the nose—otherwise cow-catcher—of the electric cars with the swagger of an Irish jaunting car, its two rows of high chairs placed back to back, filled with the most picturesque figures of the town—the market and fisher folk.

In every direction the electricos penetrate, bearing life 15