1880 Facts about Port and Madeira by Henry Vizetelly

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In tlie Port Wine Country.

yielding its 120 pipes, wWle a few miles fartlier on,at Bertello, we pass tlie extensive Quinta do Dr.Avelino,where 200 pipes of Ihe best Baixo Corgo wine is vintaged, and the smaller one of Antonio Osorio producing its 120 pipes. While we halt at Cumieira to replace a shoe which one of om* horses has cast, a couple of the typical old beggars common to the Peninsula -earnestly plead and pray for a tostas or a vintem. These mendi cants are the precise counterparts of the hoaiy knaves hit off so cleverly in all their rags and dht by Callot's truthful burin,with their rheumyeyes and grizzly beards,slouched hats and tattered gaberdines,long staves and ragged shoon,and bent frames and ■shambling gait. The Baixo Corgo vineyards may be said to end at Cumieira, and while winding up the road to Villa Real we caught a final glimpse of the vintage girls roaming over the receding ten-aced slopes, and heard their melancholy monotonous chant for the last time. ViUa Real is perched on the summit of a steep mountain, and from the adjacent cemetery you look over a lofty ■precipice into the wild gorge, through which the turbulent waters of the Corgo fume and foam on their way to the Douro. The town is of great antiquity, and from its proximity to the Paiz Vinhateiro is necessarily of considerable importance,being, indeed, the capital of the province of Traz-os-Montes. It claims to have been founded in the 13th century by Dom Diniz, the E'ing Denis of the popular rhyme, " who, as every one knows, did what he chose," and the low massive-built granite houses still standing around the church belong, it is said, to this -early epoch. Like Pesqueira, Villa Real boasts several of those palatial-looking oldmansions, the origin of which is somewhat ■^of a puzzle. In the present case wealthy vineyard proprietors may have been the builders, still their erection is generally attributed to obscure adventurers, who, on their return toPortu gal ladenwith the treasures of India and theBrazils, were intent upon dazzling their former fellow-townsmen with tangible evi- ■dences of the wealth they had amassed.