It Was A Maniac -
A Man About Thirty Years Of Age, And I Believe Deaf And Dumb; There
He Sat, Gibbering And Mowing, And Distorting His Wild Features Into
Various Dreadful Appearances.
There wanted nothing but this object
to render the scene complete; banditti amongst such melancholy
desolation would have been by no means so much in keeping.
But the
maniac, on his stone, in the rear of the wind-beaten ruin,
overlooking the blasted heath, above which scowled the leaden
heaven, presented such a picture of gloom and misery as I believe
neither painter nor poet ever conceived in the saddest of their
musings. This is not the first instance in which it has been my
lot to verify the wisdom of the saying, that truth is sometimes
wilder than fiction.
I remounted my mule, and proceeded till, on the top of another
hill, my guide suddenly exclaimed, "there is Elvas." I looked in
the direction in which he pointed, and beheld a town perched on the
top of a lofty hill. On the other side of a deep valley towards
the left rose another hill, much higher, on the top of which is the
celebrated fort of Elvas, believed to be the strongest place in
Portugal. Through the opening between the fort and the town, but
in the background and far in Spain, I discerned the misty sides and
cloudy head of a stately mountain, which I afterwards learned was
Albuquerque, one of the loftiest of Estremadura.
We now got into a cultivated country, and following the road, which
wound amongst hedgerows, we arrived at a place where the ground
began gradually to shelve down. Here, on the right, was the
commencement of an aqueduct by means of which the town on the
opposite hill was supplied; it was at this point scarcely two feet
in altitude, but, as we descended, it became higher and higher, and
its proportions more colossal. Near the bottom of the valley it
took a turn to the left, bestriding the road with one of its
arches. I looked up, after passing under it; the water must have
been flowing near a hundred feet above my head, and I was filled
with wonder at the immensity of the structure which conveyed it.
There was, however, one feature which was no slight drawback to its
pretensions to grandeur and magnificence; the water was supported
not by gigantic single arches, like those of the aqueduct of
Lisbon, which stalk over the valley like legs of Titans, but by
three layers of arches, which, like three distinct aqueducts, rise
above each other. The expense and labour necessary for the
erection of such a structure must have been enormous; and, when we
reflect with what comparative ease modern art would confer the same
advantage, we cannot help congratulating ourselves that we live in
times when it is not necessary to exhaust the wealth of a province
to supply a town on a hill with one of the first necessaries of
existence.
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