1880 Facts about Port and Madeira by Henry Vizetelly

Somefamous Quintas on the Bouro and the Bio Torto. 81

of his quinta, has a band of a couple of hundred men regu larly employed every spring in planting additional vines. The buildings ofthe quinta are most commodious,the casa is large, the lagares and adega well arranged,and the eight capacious tonels which the latter contains wUl hold 240 pipes of wine. At several quintas in the Rio Torto and other parts of the Alto Douro it is the custom to have a priest in the capacity of cazeiro, or superintendent, and Barao da Roeda has even an old monk for his overseer. It is considered that a priest is able to exercise far greater influence over the people employed than an overseer taken from their own class would be capable of maintaining. The rm-al clergy here have notlost their hold upon the peasantry in the same way that their Spanish brethren have lost theirs in Andalusia; and instead of the little chapels attached to the vineyard casas being deserted and desecrated as they are in the neighbourhood of Jerez, on Sundays and saints'- days the clerical overseer invariably summons Ms flock to early massin the chapel of the quinta before the pickers roam through the dew-covered vineyard or the treaders tui-n into the grape- strewn lagares. From the Quinta da Soalheira one wound round the lofty hills which form the boundary ofthe Rio Torto district,encoun tering on the way the customary files of pack-laden mules and troops of nimble little donkeys carrying skins full of wine. Following a deep cutting through the mountain we reached the bleak plateau which stretches in the direction of Sao Joao da Pesqueira. Here the cultivation of the vine abruptly ceased. The air, which was chilly in the shadow of the hills, became bitter cold on the bi'eezy mountain summit. The distant peaks rose cold and barren, or fringed with pines, against the clear blue sky. All the land around was covered with brush wood—merelya few little patches in favourable situations being under tillage—and it was not until Pesqueira, with its red- roofed houses, was seen spread out before us that vines again appeared in sight. Pesqueira, both in its outskirts and narrow streets, boasts several ancient palatial-looking edifices with