Page:Lisbon and Cintra, Inchbold, 1907.djvu/65

Rh from 1892, accommodates no less than 8,700 spectators. The seats are divided into logares do Sol and logares da Sombra, but, needless to say, the shady seats are considered the most desirable, and above them are private and the royal boxes.

This peculiarly national entertainment, one for which the Portuguese display unwonted enthusiasm, can be witnessed with none of the repugnance experienced by English people at a Spanish bull fight. In Portugal the beasts are not killed, only irritated for about ten minutes or so by wonderfully skilful riders mounted on fine, superbly trained horses. The sport consists in their dexterity in placing barbed darts, decorated with ribbons, into the neck of the bull which when it declines to show fight is allowed to withdraw, and another take its place. Some oxen, peaceable and mild, are driven into the arena, bells jingling at their necks, and the badgered bull finding himself suddenly in their midst calms down, and goes quietly away with them. There are various modes of diversifying the entertainment, and it is worth one's while not to miss the opening scene, called the cortesias, when the cavalleiros as highly picturesque as the Spanish picadors make skilful display of their horsemanship.

The Campo Grande, a mile beyond, is the fashionable corso, the "Bois de Boulogne" of Lisbon society. The ceaseless service of electricos brings crowds of pedestrians, especially on a Sunday afternoon, to watch the stream of carriages and motor cars which pass up and down the bordering boulevards of the Campo under the shadow of trees that were planted a century ago. The whole area between these parallel avenues, which are a mile long, is traversed by winding paths and shady roads, where leaf and gaily-coloured blossoms again lend beauty and perfume to gladden sight and scent. A pretty artificial lake 41