acres, the entire area of the country. The destruction of the woods,
to say nothing of its effects upon the rainfall, caused the top soil
to be washed away, and thus impoverished the arable land, filling the
rivers with earth, rendering them innavigable, and converting them
from gently-flowing streams to devastating torrents, which annually
bestrew the valleys and plains with sand and stones.[2] In the next
place, emphyteusis has caused every kind of improvement to be avoided.
The soil has been exhausted by over-cropping; public works, like
roads, wells, irrigating canals, etc., have been neglected; and the
numerous works left by the industrious Saracens have been allowed to
go to ruin. Finally, the tenant, being placed entirely in the power of
the lord, was continually kept at the point of starvation. To escape
this dreadful fate he has committed every conceivable offence against
the laws of Nature and humanity. Tyranny and starvation have made
of him a liar, thief, smuggler, assassin, beast. The very ground is
tainted with his tread, the air is redolent of his crimes.

[Footnote 2: The Mondega annually overflows its banks, changes its
course and buries thousands of once fertile acres under sand and
stones; the Vonga has converted the once productive land between
Aveiro and Ovar into a vast morass; the Douro is periodically
converted into a frightful and resistless torrent which sweeps
everything before it.]

I am aware of the eminently legal, and therefore judicial, mind of
Americans; therefore I shall give nothing of importance on my own
testimony alone. It shall be seen what the Portuguese peasant is from
the descriptions that travelers have written, and from the fragments
of statistical evidence which the deeply-culpable ruling classes have
permitted to be published.