Lisbon

Population and Communications.

Lisbon has various railway stations—for the lines to Cintra, northern and central Portugal, Madrid via Valencia de Alcantara ; and for southern Portugal and Andalusia. In 1902 the railways north and south of the Tagus were connected near Lisbon by a bridge. In the previous year an extensive system of electric tramways replaced the old-fashioned cable cars and mule trams. Electric and hy draulic lifts are used where the streets are too steep for trams. Lisbon is lighted by both electricity and gas; it has an admirable telephone service, and is connected by the Carcavellos cable station with Cornwall (England), Brazil, Vigo in Galicia, Gibral tar, the Azores and Madeira. There are extensive quays with hydraulic cranes, graving docks and warehouses on both banks of the river, and Lisbon has long been one of the principal ports of debarcation for passengers from Brazil and of embarcation for emigrants to South America. The fisheries have always been im portant, and in no European fishmarket is the produce more varied.

The population of Lisbon, in 1878, rose to 301,206 in 1890 and 356,009 in 1900, while the last census in 1930 gave It includes a large foreign colony, composed chiefly of Spaniards, British, Germans, French, Brazilians and immigrants from the Portuguese colonies, among whom are many half-castes. The majority of the Spaniards are domestic servants and labourers from Galicia, whose industry and easily gained knowl edge of the kindred Portuguese language enables them to earn a better livelihood here than in their own homes. The British, German and French communities control a large share of the foreign trade. The Brazilians and colonial immigrants are often 'This figure represents the population of a smaller area than that of modern Lisbon, for the civic boundaries were extended by a decree dated Dec. 23, i886.

merchants and landowners who come to the mother-country to spend their fortunes in a congenial social environment.

The street life of the city is full of interest. The bare-footed fishwives (varinas, women of Ovar) bearing flat trays of fish on their heads; the Galician water-carriers, with their casks; the bakers, bending beneath a hundredweight of bread slung in a huge basket from their shoulders; the countrymen, with their som breros, sashes and hardwood quarter-staves, give colour and animation to their surroundings; while the bagpipes played by peasants from the north, the whistles of the knife-grinders, and the distinctive calls of the vendors of fruit, lottery tickets, or oil and vinegar, contribute a babel of sound. For church festivals and holidays the country-folk come to town, the women riding on pil lions behind the men, adorned in shawls, aprons and handkerchiefs of scarlet or other vivid hues, and wearing the strings of coins and ornaments of exquisite gold and silver filigree which represent their savings or dowries.

History.—The name Lisbon is a modification of the ancient name 0/isipo, also written Ulyssippo under the influence of a mythical story of a city founded by Odysseus (Ulysses) in Iberia, which, however, according to Strabo, was placed by ancient tradition rather in the mountains of Turdetania (the extreme south of Spain). Under the Romans Olisipo became a muni cipiurn with the epithet of Felicitas Julia, but was inferior in importance to the less ancient Emerita Augusta (Merida). From

to 585 it was occupied by Alaric, and thenceforward by the Visigoths until 711, when it was taken by the Moors. Under the Moors the town bore in Arabic the name of Al Oshbfina or Lash biota. It was the first point of Muslim Spain attacked by the Normans in 844. When Alphonso I. of Portugal took advantage of the decline and fall of the Almoravid dynasty to incorporate the provinces of Estremadura and Alemtejo in his new kingdom, Lisbon yielded only after a siege of several months (Oct. 21, 1147), in which Alphonso was aided by English and Flemish crusaders on their way to Syria. In 1184 the city was again attacked, unsuccessfully, by the Muslims under the powerful caliph Abu Yakub. In the reign of Ferdinand I., the greater part of the town was burned by the Castilians (1373), and in 1384 they again besieged Lisbon. It became the seat of an archbishop in 1390; the seat of government in 1422. During the 16th century it gained much in wealth and splendour from the establishment of a Portuguese empire in India and Africa. From 1580 to 1640 Lisbon was a provincial town under Spanish rule, and it was from this port that the Spanish Armada sailed in 1588.

For many centuries the city had suffered from earthquakes, and on Nov. 1, 1755, the greater part of it was reduced almost in an instant to a heap of ruins. A tidal wave at the same time broke over the quays and wrecked the shipping in the Tagus; fire broke out to complete the work of destruction; between 10,000 and 20,000 persons lost their lives; and the value of the property destroyed was about L20,000,000. The shock was felt from Scotland to Asia Minor. Careful investigation by Daniel Sharpe, an English geologist, has delimited the area in and near Lisbon to which its full force was confined. Lisbon is built in a geological basin of Tertiary formation, the upper portion of which is loose sand and gravel destitute of organic remains, while below these are the so-called Almada beds of yellow sand, calcareous sandstone and blue clay rich in organic remains. The Tertiary deposits, which altogether cover an area of more than 2.000 sq.m., are separated near Lisbon from rocks of the Secondary epoch by a great sheet of basalt. The uppermost of these Secondary rocks is the hippurite limestone. It was found that no building on the blue clay escaped destruction, none on any of the Tertiary de posits escaped serious injury, and all on the hippurite limestone and basalt were undamaged. The line at which the earthquake ceased to be destructive thus corresponded exactly with the bound ary of the Tertiary deposits.

At the beginning of the 19th century the French invasion, followed by the removal of the court to Rio de Janeiro, the Peninsular War, the loss of Brazil and a period of revolution and dynastic trouble, resulted in the utter decadence of Lisbon, from which the city only recovered after 1850. Since 1908 Lisbon's buildings were badly damaged in various revolutions, especially by the bombardments of Oct. 1910, May 1915, Dec. 1917 and Feb. 1927, and by the shells of the Monarchists from the Mon santo fort in 1919. (See PORTUGAL : History.)