rtar joints, and each brick, in both orders, is beautifully
moulded or cut at the ends so as to form a series of small trefoiled
cusps, each arch having as many as twenty-seven or more. The whole
building is plastered and washed yellow, so that the contrast between
the bare walls and the elaborate red arches and white shafts is
singularly pleasing. All the outer walls are fortified, but the space
between each embrasure is far longer than usual; the four corner towers
rise a good deal above the rest of the buildings, but in none, except
the southern, are there windows above the main roof. It has one, shaped
like the rest, but now all plastered and framed in an ogee moulding.
Half-way along the north-west wall, outside it, stands the keep, which
curiously is not Arab at all. It is a large square tower of no great
height, absolutely plain, and built of unplastered stone or marble. It
has scarcely any windows, and walls of great thickness which, like those
of the smaller round towers, have a slight batter. It seems to be older
than the rest, and now its chief ornament is a large fig-tree growing
near the top on the south side.[98]

[Sidenote: Evora.]

[Sidenote: Pacos Reaes.]

Of all the towns in the Alemtejo Evora is the one where Eastern
influence is most strongly marked. Indeed the Roman temple and the
cathedral are perhaps the only old buildings which seem to be distinctly
Western, and even the cathedral has some trace of the East in its two
western spires, one round and tiled, and the other eight-sided and
plastered. For long Evora was one of the chief towns of the kingdom, and
was one of those oftenest visited by the kings. Their palace stood close
to the church of Sao Francisco, and must once have been a beautiful
building.

Unfortunately most of it has disappeared, and what is left, a large hall
partly of the time of Dom Manoel, has been so horribly restored in order
to turn it into a museum as to have lost all character.

A porch still stands at the south end, but scraped and pointed out of
all beauty. It has in front four square stone piers bearing large
horseshoe brick arches, and these arches are moulded and cusped exactly
like those at Alvito.

[Sidenote: Morgado de Cordovis.]

There are no other examples of Moorish brickwork in the town, but there
is more than one marble window resembling those at Alvito in shape. Of
these the most charming are found in the garden of a house belonging to
a 'morgado' o