Today in Postal History

This cover was sent from Vila Nova de Gaya near
Porto on the Atlantic coast about 280 km north of Lisbon.
Seven stamps received seven CDS.

The destination was Frankfurt am Main in Germany.
There are no transit or receiving marks on the front although there might be on the reverse.
The addressee was a wine distributor.
There is no indication of who the sender was but
one might suspect someone who was in the wine business.
Porto is the center of the port wine business.

The cover is franked with stamps from the 1895 issue
commemorating the 7th Century of the birth of Saint Anthony of Padua.
There are four copies of the 2½ r. black, and one each of the 5 r. brown orange,
15 r. chocolate, and the 20 r. gray violet (Scott 132, 133, 135, and 136).
These were early usages of the stamps which were issued on June 13.*
Incidentally, the stamps have Latin eulogy printed on the reverse.

*Thanks to David Benson for providing the issue date of this issue.