ur months of the year
the inhabitants of the Algarve have little to eat but raw figs. This
causes a disease called _mal de veriga_, which sweeps away numbers of
the people." Says Doria: "All the women work in the fields;" and Dr.
Farr[7] tells us that "when women are employed in any but domestic
labors they discharge the duties of mother imperfectly, and the
mortality of children is high." Says Forrester: "Leavened bread
is beginning to be known in the principal cities, but not in the
provinces. Gourds, cabbages and turnip-sprouts, with bread made from
chestnuts (which are always wormy), form the peasant's diet." "In
Algarve carob-beans are commonly roasted, ground into flour and made
into bread." Says Da Silva:[8] "The growth of the peasantry is stunted
by insufficient nourishment, which consists largely of chestnuts,
beans and chick-peas."

[Footnote 3: _Prize Essay on Portugal_, London, 1854.]

[Footnote 4: _Parliamentary Papers_, London, 1870.]

[Footnote 5: _Estudos Estatisticos, hygienicos e administrativas sobre
as doencas e a mortalidade do exercito Portuguez_, etc., by Dr. Jose
Antonio Marques, Lisbon, 1862.]

[Footnote 6: Doria, p. 184.]

[Footnote 7: The Registrar-General of England.]

[Footnote 8: L.A. Rebello da Silva (minister of marine), _Economia.
Rural_, Lisbon, 1868.]

The utmost area of land which the average Portuguese peasant can
cultivate is two and a half acres: in the United States the average of
cultivated land per laborer is over thirty-two acres; on prairie-land
sixty acres is not uncommon. Forrester writes: "In the Alto Douro, the
richest portion of the kingdom, the villages are formed of wretched
hovels with unglazed windows and without chimneys. Instead of bread or
the ordinary necessaries of life, one finds only filth, wretchedness
and death. Emigration is the one thought of the people."

Now for the moral, intellectual and physical results of the
destitution thus evinced. The work entitled _Voyage du Duc du Chatelet
en Portugal_, although usually quoted under this title, was really
written by M. Comartin, a royalist of La Vendee, and written during
the French Revolution. If it had any bias at all, that bias was all in
favor of Portugal, yet this is his description of her people: "Il est,
je pense, peu de peuple plus laid que celui de Portugal. Il est petit,
basane, mal conforme. L'interieur repond, en general, assez a cette
repoussante envelope, surtout a Lisbonne, ou les hommes