CHAPTER X.
Rio de Janeiro.
November 2d.—This is “All Souls day,” an anniversary of the church of Rome in commemoration of the dead, when masses are specially said for the repose of their souls; or, as an Irish servant, in explaining its character to me, says, “the day when all the dead stand round waiting for our prayers.” It is one on which here, as in other Catholic countries, the living also visit the tombs of their departed friends. As the observance is universal, and all the churches are open, we thought it a good opportunity, not only for viewing the interior of the principal edifices themselves, but also for observations of the people; and a party left the ship for this purpose early after breakfast.
The number of churches in the city amounts to forty-five or fifty. Scarce a half dozen of them, however, are worthy of notice either for their external architecture or internal decorations in sculpture and paintings, especially to those familiar with the treasures, in these respects, of the churches of Italy, Spain, and other European countries. The imperial chapel and a church adjoining it, formerly belonging to the barefooted Carmelites, and now a cathedral; the church of the Candelaria, so named from its being the chief place for the consecration of candles on Candlemas Day; and that of San Francisco de Paulo at the head of the Rua de Ouvidor, are the principal.
Having been told that the Emperor and Empress would attend mass at the church of San Antonio, where the remains of their infant children are deposited, we made our way first there. This church is attached to the convent of that name, and forms one end of the extensive and imposing establishment which so conspicuously crowns, with its lofty and massive walls, and terraced gardens and shrubberies, the hill to which it gives name in the centre of the city. The broad platform in front of the church and convent, paved and parapetted with stone, commands magnificent views of the city and bay; as does the entire front of the convent. This is three stories in height, with a tier of balconied windows running the whole length of each. Within, each story opens upon a cloistered quadrangle; while the church with two or three smaller chapels, various vesting rooms, sacristies and corridors form another end of the pile. Every part of the building on this occasion was open to inspection. The floors of the corridors surrounding the quadrangle, and those of the churches and chapels are formed of loose planks, six feet in length and of the width of a grave; each being fitted with a mortised hole at one end, that it may be the more readily lifted for the deposit beneath of body after body of the dead: so that none walk here without literally
“Marking with each step a tomb.”
That which first arrested the eye on entering was the range, on either side through the church, chapels and corridors, of miniature cabinets, urns and sarcophagi of ebony and other valuable wood, containing the bones of the dead thus preserved, after having been freed from the flesh by the action of quicklime. These receptacles are of various sizes, forms and degrees of elaborate workmanship. Each bears a plate of silver or gold with an inscription, and is furnished with a door which gives access to the ghastly memorials. They were arranged—some on rich tables and platforms and others on the pavement and floor—with more or less display of ornament: lighted wax candles in massive candlesticks of silver, interspersed in some instances with other pieces of silver plate, were clustered around them, and the whole garlanded and festooned with wreaths of the purple globe amaranthus and other flowers of the tribe “immortelle.” Each cabinet, or urn, was in charge of a well-dressed negro servant or other humble domestic of the family to whom the relics appertained. I was forcibly reminded by the scene of the custom of the Sandwich Islanders, in their heathen state, of preserving the bones of the dead in a similar manner. It was this usage, and the care and veneration with which the relics of their monarchs and chiefs were guarded, that enabled Rihoriho—Kamehameha II—to restore to England, on his visit to that country in 1825, the skeleton of Captain Cook. After his assassination the principal bones of his body were prepared according to their custom, and placed with those of their race of kings.
The principal church and the adjoining chapels were decorated profusely with artificial flowers, and with hangings of silk and velvet, and of gold and silver tissue; the high altars, shrines, tribunes, and organ-lofts of all were one blaze of wax lights. One of the chapels is covered throughout with elaborate carvings in wood trebly gilt. In the centre of this a lofty catafalque was erected, surmounted by a colossal sarcophagus covered with a superb pall. A mass was in progress as we entered; after which a procession of monks headed by a party of ecclesiastics—each bearing a wax candle of the size and length of a stout walking stick, and all vociferating a chant—marched slowly from chapel to chapel, and from shrine to shrine, through the corridors lined with the memorials of the departed, stopping at various points to scatter incense and utter prayers for the dead. Every spot was thronged with spectators; but I could detect no feeling of devotion, no sensibility in the affections, no solemnity in any one. The only object of the assemblage seemed to be to witness a show, and to examine with the curiosity observable at a fair, or the exhibition of an institute, the varied ornamental display. Three fourths of the crowd were negroes, male and female. Here and there, in two or three instances, I recognized a party of ladies in full dress in black with mantillas of lace, but a majority of the Brazilians and Portuguese present was evidently of the lower orders. We afterwards entered the churches of San Francisco de Paulo, the Candelaria and the Carmelites, where the bishop of Rio was officiating, but without witnessing any thing essentially different from what we had already seen.
All observation of the day confirms me in the impression before received, that a great change has taken place, since 1829, in the respect paid by the people to the superstitious ceremonies of the religion of the country. There is now little in the general aspect of things in the streets, even on days of religious festivals, to remind one of being in a Romish city. A monk or even ecclesiastic is scarce ever met, and whenever I have entered a church during service, a few poor negroes, sick persons, and beggars have constituted the principal part of the assemblage.
November 4th.—I have just accomplished quite a pedestrian feat, in the ascent of the Corcovado. After two days of such rain as the tropics only often witness, the weather this morning was as fine as possible, the atmosphere clear and transparent, very like the most brilliant days of June in the Northern States, when the wind is from the north-west. Lieutenant R——, Mr. G—— (secretary of Commodore McKeever), Prof. Le Froy of the British flag ship, and I, were induced by it to attempt the excursion, though it was not in our power to set off before two o’clock in the afternoon—a late hour for the accomplishment of a walk of nine miles, to the top of a mountain, two thousand three hundred and six feet high, according to the measurement of Beechy, and two thousand three hundred and thirty-nine, by that of Captains King and Fitzroy.
The Corcovado is one of the lofty shafts of granite which, in a greater or less degree of isolation, are characteristic of the geological formation in this region. Its relative position to the range of mountains of which it forms so conspicuous a part, and the height to which it towers above it, can best be compared, perhaps, to a colossal buttress standing against a massive building, with a pinnacled top rising high above the adjoining roof. As looked up to, from its eastern base in a green valley by the seaside, it appears, as if there really is, an utterly inaccessible mass of perpendicular rock. On the west, however, it is so joined to an angle of the general range for two thirds of its height, as to be comparatively easy of ascent. The first half of the distance from the city may be made by either of two ways: the one, through the valley of the Larangeiras, and the other, by the spur of mountain along which the aqueduct descends into the heart of the town, near the nunnery of Santa Theresa. We chose this last. At the outset, the ascent is a sharp pitch, but after gaining a height of one or two hundred feet, is so gradual for four miles as scarcely to be perceptible. The way leads along the flattened ridge of the hill by a bridle path immediately beside the aqueduct, the refreshing sound of whose waters, as they murmur and rumble in their covered channel, is a pleasant accompaniment to the sea-breeze sweeping by. It is overhung by embowering trees which, while they form a screen against the sun overhead, are too lofty to interfere by their branches with a full view of the prospects on either hand. These, for the whole distance, surpass in beauty and variety any of a similar nature I recollect ever to have met. As we gradually gained terrace after terrace of the spur, the pictures opening immediately beneath us in the ravines on the right—up which the suburbs straggle in tasteful dwellings and blooming gardens; in the broad and bright valley of Engenho Velho beyond, thickly sprinkled with the country residences of the wealthy, and adorned by the imperial palace; in the city itself—the upper bay and its islands; the Organ Mountains and whole panorama, are beyond the powers of description. At the end of two and a half or three miles, the aqueduct, sinking to a level with the surface of the ground, crosses the ridge which it has thus far been following, and leaving the course of this, runs along the face of the mountain at an elevation of a thousand feet. The pathway follows it, and I can compare the suddenness in the change of the prospect to nothing that will give a better idea of it, than a new combination in a kaleidoscope, by a turn of the instrument. It is entire. By a single step, as it were, in place of the above pictures, which are at once lost sight of, you have the southern sections of the city—Gloria Hill, Flamengo, Catètè, Larangieras and Botafogo, the lower bay with its moving imagery, the Sugar Loaf and its companion at the entrance of the harbor, the islets in the offing and along the coast, and the boundless sea. The walk for a mile here, with this picture beneath you on one side, and the beautifully wooded mountain cliffs above, on the other, is a terraced avenue worthy of fairy land itself. Of it Dr. Walsh justly remarks—“Without exaggeration, it maybe said, that there is not in the world so noble and beautiful a combination of nature and art, as the prospect it presents.”
Five miles from the city, near a natural reservoir in a ledge of granite where the aqueduct originally commenced, the direct pathway to the summit leaves the water-course and strikes steeply up the mountain. Here it is stony and rough, and was now wet from the recent rain. The angle of elevation, equal to that of an ordinary staircase, made the ascent fatiguing: but it is adorned at points by noble specimens of the primeval growth of the forest, reminding me of the finest of the old elms occasionally left standing by the pioneer settlers in Western New York, as I recollect to have been impressed by them thirty years ago. A mile and a half through this wood brought us to a clearing of some extent, with a rancho or cottage, formerly a place of refreshment for those making the ascent. It has been purchased recently by the Emperor, and the land is designed by him for a plantation of foreign pines and other evergreens, which he is introducing. It lies in a dip or notch between the general chain of mountains and the peak of the Corcovado; and the cottage, in full view from the city and harbor, forms a picturesque object from the anchorage of the Congress, though seemingly, in its airy height, but a bird’s nest clinging to the wooded cliffs.
Here the ascent of the Corcovado proper commences—the distance to the summit about two miles. The way is steep and wearisome, especially after so forced a march over the preceding part, as we had made; but we pressed on, notwithstanding the heat and fatigue, cheered by the exhortation and promise of the poet—
“Let thy foot
Fail not from weariness, for on the top
The beauty and the majesty of earth
Spread wide beneath, shall make thee to forget
The steep and toilsome way. There thy expanding heart
Shall feel a kindred with that loftier world,
To which thou art translated, and partake
The enlargement of thy vision.”
In less than three hours from the city, the bare peak rose directly before us—a pinnacled platform of rock scarcely twenty feet square, separated from the general mass by a broad and deep fissure, over which a rude wooden bridge is thrown. As the peak has been known to be frequently struck by lightning, it is supposed that this chasm was originally caused by a thunderbolt. A rail, supported by iron posts soldered into the solid granite, furnishes a guard on three sides to the precipices descending perpendicularly from them.
The panorama commanded by it, embracing as it does all the imagery that combines in securing to Rio de Janeiro its world-wide celebrity for wonderful beauty, could not fail—under the advantages of the brilliant atmosphere, bright sunshine and lengthened shadows in which we gazed on it—to meet our expectations. The entire city and its suburbs lay at our feet; and, like a map, the bay—near a hundred miles in circuit—its many picturesque headlands and islands and the Organ Mountains and chain along the coast, the peak of Tejuca, the Sugar Loaf reduced to insignificant dimensions, the Gavia, the outer islets and the illimitable sea! The silence one is disposed to keep, in view of such a scene from such a point, best expresses perhaps the kind of admiration felt. Had Bryant in an inspiration of his genius stood with us, he might possibly have given utterance to a description more sublime but to none more graphic or minutely true to the scene, than one already recorded by his pen—
“Steep is the western side, shaggy and wild,
With mossy trees, and pinnacles of flint,
And many a hanging crag. But to the East,
Sheer to the vale, go down the bare old cliffs—
Huge pillars, that in middle heaven up bear
Their weather-beaten capitals, here dark
With moss, the growth of centuries, and there
Of chalky whiteness, where the thunder bolt
Has splintered them. It is a fearful thing
To stand upon the beetling verge, and see
Where storm and lightning, from that huge gray wall,
Have tumbled down vast blocks, and at the base
Dashed them in fragments, and to lay thine ear
O’er the dizzy depth, and hear the sound
Of winds that struggle with the woods below,
Come up with ocean murmurs.”
There is danger, in the impressiveness of a scene of such mingled beauty and sublimity, of forgetting the risk of taking cold, even in the finest weather—after the unavoidable heat and temporary exhaustion of the ascent—from the reduced temperature of the elevation, and the freshness of the sea-breeze sweeping over and around the rock in strong eddies. But reminded of this by a sense of chilliness, and aware of the lateness of the day, at the end of a half hour—grateful for the favorable auspices under which we had enjoyed the view—we gave a farewell gaze and turned our faces for the descent.
I omitted to state that, before reaching the plantation of the Emperor in the dip of the mountains, we had again fallen upon the line of the aqueduct. At this point it passes to the southern side of the range, which here makes an angle in that direction; and Mr. Lefroy, familiar in his walks with all the region, proposed that before descending we should follow it at least a short distance: with the assurance that we would find it equal, in picturesque wildness and beauty, to any thing we had yet seen. Though already pretty well fagged, and a walk of seven miles yet to be made in reaching the city, we readily assented; and most amply indeed were we rewarded. The scenery on every hand—above, beneath and around us, in the strong contrasts of bright sunshine and deep shade, was like pictures of fancy, with a variety and richness of foliage to be found only in the tropics. The aqueduct and path beside it, scarped on the very face of the precipitous mountain, wind round the head of a deep glen, at an elevation of two thousand feet above the valleys beneath and the surf of the ocean; and command uninterrupted views, far and wide, over land and sea, of indescribable beauty and grandeur. Parasitical plants and running vines add to the rich drapery of the woods overhead and beneath the feet, and hang in long pendants from the rocks and in festoons from tree to tree, while, here and there, the tree fern—a novelty to me till now—rises rankly to a height of twenty and thirty feet: throwing out its closely feathered leaves in an umbrella-shaped top, proportionate in size to the height of the stem.
Tempted from point to point, by one new object of admiration or another, we were led two miles amid this luxury of beauty before aware of it, almost to the very sources of the work. At one point, from the impossibility of securing space in the face of the precipice for stone work, the water is led along in small wooden troughs, and the footpath, constructed of planks supported by strong bolts of iron fastened into the rock, is suspended in the air, with a frightful depth beneath. There is no particular spring or fountain head, from which there is a supply of water, but from the beginning of the aqueduct, the smallest streamlet that trickles down the mountain summit is carefully collected by side troughs, and the drippings of every crevice, as well as the gushings of more abundant springs, fully secured.
This aqueduct is a magnificent work for the period at which it was constructed—a hundred and thirty years ago. It is of solid granite with a semicircular bottom for the water-course, and is four feet in width and the same in height; at places entirely above, and at others partially beneath the ground. It is capped with granite in the form of a roof, is furnished with ventilators protected by iron gratings at regular intervals, and is accessible for the use of the water at different points, by doors under lock and key. The honor of having projected and accomplished so important a work is due to Albuquerque, captain-general of the province at the period—1719-23. A record of this is made on a tablet on the front of the fountain of the Carioca, near the convent of San Antonio, above which is the reservoir in which the work terminates. The inscription is of a rudeness of outline and execution characteristic of the art of writing in Brazil a century ago; and undecipherable, except by an antiquarian like Dr. Walsh, familiar, from his favorite studies, with the abbreviations and readings without a division into syllables and words, of olden times.
The following is the translation of this inscription as given by Dr. Walsh. “In the reign of the high and powerful king Don John the Fifth, Ayres de Saldanha and Albuquerque, being governor and captain-general of this place, by his directions this work was made, which was begun in the year 1719 and completed in the year 1723.”
The most magnificent and costly section of the aqueduct—and one which the now well-known principle in hydraulics, that water will rise to the level of its head, shows to have been useless both in labor and expense—is a lofty arcade, a conspicuous ornament of the city, by which the aqueduct is carried across a deep valley from the hill of Santa Theresa to that of San Antonio opposite. It consists of two ranges of arches one above the other, the lower six hundred and the upper eight hundred and forty feet in length, and forty feet in height. Next to the Roman remains of the Pont du Garde in Languedoc, the aqueduct across the Alcantara at Lisbon, and the High Bridge at Harlem, it is the finest structure of the kind I have seen.
It was near sundown before we reluctantly turned our backs upon the surprising beauty which still enticed us forward. By a forced march we accomplished the stony and staircase descent through the woods, while there was yet sufficient daylight to make good our footsteps over the rough and slippery way. Safely at this point, though the night soon gathered around us, we had no difficulty in keeping the path under the brilliant starlight of the evening, and reached the city at eight o’clock, having accomplished the trip of twenty-two miles in six hours.