1880 Facts about Port and Madeira by Henry Vizetelly

98

In the Port Wine Country.

regret. The after consequences will trouble him but slightly^ as the administration of justice is slow and uncertain in this comparatively inaccessible region where only some few years back a thorough spirit oflawlessness prevailed. I was informed by a fi-iend that about a dozen years ago he had occasion to spend several weeks in the neighbourhood of Tua,a miserable little village situated on the banks ofthe stream of the same name that runs into the Douro about ten miles above Pinhao. He was engaged in purchasing white Ports,, which are alike good and cheap in this locality, and had taken up his quarters in a house on the hUl-side which a wine-farmer had placed at his disposal. Before his business was completed he found himself attacked with ague,and had to remove to a village higher up the hills, leaving his feitor, or foreman,to finish the racking of the wines and to pay the growers a con siderable balance remaining due to them. This man was a fine specimen of a Portuguese mountaineer,, six feet two or three inches in height, and powerfully built. The farmhouse in which he was installed was a long, low building, sm-rounded by a vineyard, and containing one large living-room and several adjoining alcoves that served the pur pose of sleeping apartments. The principalroom communicated with the kitchen—in which the men engaged in racking the wines lived—down a small flight of steep wooden steps, while a larger and a steeper flight led from the kitchen to the adega, containing half-a-dozen of the customary huge tonels, resting in a row on stone and wooden frames some couple of feet from the ground. Matters went on smoothly enough until one particular even ing,when the feitor had invited the sacristan of the neighbouring' chapel to sup ■with him. While partaking of this meal by the glimmer of a Bouro lamp, which, fed with olive oil, imparts a dim and depressing light, they were startled by the sudden appa rition of four masked armed men, who proceeded to level their guns at them. Per the moment the feitor was perfectly thundei- struck, but, remembering that the men in his employ were in