Note 111 — BUSACO.

“It is the only place in that kingdom where the bare-footed Carmelites possessed what, in monastic language, is called a desert; by which term an establishment is designated where those brethren, whose piety flies the highest pitch, may at once enjoy the advantages of the eremite and the discipline of the cenobite life, and thus indulge the heroism of ascetic devotion in security. The convent, surrounded by an extensive and almost impervious wood, stands in what may be called the crater of the loftiest part of the ridge; its precincts, which included a circumference of about four miles, were walled in. Within that circuit were various chapels and religious stations; and on the summit of the mountain, which is within the enclosure, a stone cross was erected of enormous size upon so huge a foundation that three thousand cart-loads of stone were employed in constructing its base. The cells of the brethren were round the church, not in a regular building, but accommodated to the irregularities of the ground, and lined with cork, which was everywhere used instead of wood, because of the dampness of the situation. Every cell had its garden and its watercourse for irrigating it, the cultivation of these little spots being the only recreation which the inhabitants allowed themselves as lawful. In one of these gardens the first cedars which grew in Portugal were raised. It was indeed one of those places where man has converted an earthly paradise into a purgatory for himself, but where superstition almost seems sanctified by everything around it. Lord Wellington’s head-quarters were in the convent; and the solitude and silence of Busaco were now broken by events, in which its hermits, dead as they were to the world, might be permitted to partake all the agitations of earthly hope and fear.”—Southey.