Port anD the Douro uP to Date 23Forrester anD the Douro
Joseph Forrester’s arrival in Portugal coincided with the height of the civil war so his
movements were greatly curtailed. Once the war was over, Forrester turned to drawing
and painting and in 1834 (a year after the end of the conflict) he published a remarkably
detailed watercolour of the Rua Nova dos Inglezes with a key identifying thirty-four British
and nine Portuguese merchants. The original painting was destroyed in the London office of
Offley Forrester during the Second World War, but a number of engravings survive.
Forrester also produced two detailed maps of the Douro, the first of which, a relief
map entitled The Wine District of the Alto Douro, was published around 1845. His second,
larger, map is dated 1848 and charts the course of the River Douro from the Salto da
Sardinha (‘Sardine Leap’) on the Spanish–Portuguese border to the mouth of the river at
São João de Foz. On it he portrays the river as:
‘...for the most part a fine stream, of considerable breadth, but impetuous in its course
and abounding in obstacles which render navigation difficult and dangerous. These
obstacles are of very various kinds – some are shallows, some rocks, projecting from the
banks, or rising in the stream, many are sudden falls, in some cases of several feet and
continued during reaches of 80 to 200 yards, causing powerful and dangerous rapids.’Forrester goes on to state the case for improving the navigability of the river ‘as an effective
means for the amelioration of the ... whole agricultural population of the District of the
Douro and the province of Trás-os-Montes’. At the time he records that ‘the voyage from
Oporto to Barca d’Alva [on the Spanish border] occupies, on an average, fifteen days’. He
notes the difficulties of travelling in the Douro region, something that he experienced first
hand. In a letter addressed to his friend Robin Woodhouse he describes the conditions at a
venda or inn on the way to the Douro in December 1846:
‘In the chimney, immediately over the wood fire (for here coal is not known) hung a
few sausages well seasoned with garlick [sic], having on either side a bunch of nettles to
keep off the rats – or other intruders who might attempt to touch this savoury viand,
at unlawful hours... The night being bitterly cold I seated myself in the nook of the
chimney, and with my hostess’ permission commenced cooking my supper – for there was
nothing whatever in the house ready cooked. The only meat that I could procure was
some tough cow beef; this I proceeded to beat with a mallet (rolling pins being scarce)... I
ate my supper upstairs; in a sort of hay loft ... I then retired to rest on a miserable sacking
stuffed with straw... The sheets were coarse but clean; the pillow a cylinder filled with
bran and as hard as a stone, and the night was cold, but in spite of my accommodation
and myriads of active companions, I slept tolerably well. In the morning I rose about 7
o’clock – and had actually to employ at least ½ an hour in freeing my person, linen and
clothes from the intruders which had persecuted me during the past night.’