Read "Journey to Portugal" by José Saramago online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Arriving at Braga the first thing the traveller does is to go and see the Fonte do Idolo. It's there at the foot of the Casa do Raio, unsigned where it stands, its gate giving onto an unlit paved area, and if you peer into the cave beyond it, you see only a large limestone puddle. So where is the fountain? The traveller descends a flight of steps and at last sees what he has come to see: damp stones, inscriptions and damaged statues. The fountain seems prehistoric although the sculptures date from later, and was dedicated to a god with a Polynesian-sounding name: Tongoenabiago. These are the teachings the traveller carefully retains. What moves him is that there was evidently a time when all the land was uncultivated, the water tumbled among the stones, and whoever came to collect it gave thanks to the god Tongo for the bounties of the siren.
Nowadays we may well have cause to question the purity or otherwise of the water, but the statues continue offering their timeworn faces for as long as they are not yet utterly destroyed.