CHAPTER XIII.
Rio de Janeiro.
December 18th.—On the morning of the 17th inst. I was called to officiate at a marriage on shore. The ceremony took place at the American Consulate, where a déjeuner a la fourchette was given to the party by Gov. and Mrs. Kent. The groom, a native Brazilian, a young physician, had attended a course of medical and surgical lectures in New York. He became there a member of the Protestant Episcopal church; and was altogether so much interested in our institutions, as to file, in the proper office, an intention of becoming a naturalized citizen of the United States. These circumstances led him to desire a marriage ceremony in the Protestant form, under the American flag, though, the bride being a Romanist, they had already been united by the rites of her church.
While on shore on this occasion, I came near being a spectator, accidentally, of a more interesting scene of the kind. In passing the foundling hospital, which fronts an open, irregular space not far from the ordinary landing, beneath Castle Hill, I perceived the grated windows of the second and third stories to be filled with females of different ages, from childhood to maturity, in holiday dress, evidently awaiting the occupancy and departure of a couple of private carriages, drawn up before the principal entrance. Stepping into the open vestibule of the building—in one corner of which is the roda, or turning-box, for the deposit of the infants clandestinely left—I rightly conjectured from the white gloves, waistcoats, and breast-knots of two or three young men present, that the occasion was one of marriage, and learned that the ceremony had just taken place in the chapel of the hospital. This, which opened from the vestibule, was, however, now empty. An aged female of dignified appearance, in a monastic dress of white, was walking back and forth in a small corridor behind a grated door. She appeared to be waiting to unlock this. Almost immediately the bride and groom, in the significant garb of the newly wedded, were seen to approach from the interior. They were both quite young. An elderly lady, evidently of distinction, attired in purple velvet with a display of rich laces, jewelry and ostrich plumes, accompanied them, and was herself followed by a dignified and well-dressed gentleman, who appeared to be her husband. A crowd of the inmates of the institution quickly filled the entire corridor behind. The bride was in tears, as she hurriedly gave a farewell embrace to one and another of the youthful companions crowding around her, and, on coming to the aged female at the door, dropped on her knees, and covered her hands with kisses and tears. The groom hurried her from this scene to the first carriage, and drove off rapidly, followed by the second containing the fine folks, probably the god-mother and god-father, or the patron and patroness of the bride. The whole explained to me a usage, in connection with this establishment, of which I had heard. A recolhimento, or female orphan asylum is an appendage of the foundling hospital, many of its éleves being selected from the inmates of the latter. In addition to the nurture and education of the orphans, care is taken to provide for their settlement in life, with the bestowment of a marriage portion, varying from one to two hundred dollars. That an opportunity may be afforded for young men of respectable character to make choice of a wife from the inmates, the establishment is open to visitors one day in every year—that of the anniversary of St. Elizabeth, the patroness of the asylum. Before a union is sanctioned, however, satisfactory testimonials of good character in the applicant for marriage must be furnished, and guaranties of ability to support a wife be given. Such was the origin of the marriage which had just taken place. The dress and lady-like bearing of the bride, the respectable appearance and manners of the groom, the rich attire, equipages, and evident position in life of those under whose patronage they appeared, all indicated, in this case, something in her lot above the destiny of common orphanage.
While the establishment of a home for the friendless young is one of the most self-commending of charities, the philanthropy which provides an asylum for the secret reception of foundlings is no longer questionable, in the judgment of the wisely benevolent and truly good. It is but to foster vice, and to encourage the unnatural and depraved in the abandonment of their offspring. This is well known here, and readily admitted to be the effect. The number yearly left in the roda, or turning-box, of this hospital, amounts, I am told, by those best informed, to five and six hundred—white, black and mongrel of every degree. More than half of these soon perish from diseases seated upon them before being abandoned; from the impossibility of securing natural nourishment for the feeble; and from the various ills to which early infancy under the most favored auspices is subject.
December 20th.—One source of agreeable excitement with us, is the daily anticipation and frequent arrival of sailing vessels and steamers, governmental and mercantile, from the United States and various parts of the world. The number of vessels entering the port of Rio annually, besides those engaged in the coasting trade, which are very numerous, averages about eight hundred: importing cargoes to the amount of some two hundred thousand tons. Of course, scarcely a day passes without the entry of two or three foreign vessels in the regular trade, besides such as merely touch for repairs or refreshment.
It is a remarkable fact—especially in view of the achievements in navigation, of the Portuguese of old, and the boldness and enterprise with which for centuries they sustained their part in the commerce of the world—that their descendants here should have yielded that of the empire, which is foreign, entirely to the vessels of other nations. It is extremely rare for a Brazilian ship to cross the Atlantic, or double Cape Horn, or the Cape of Good Hope; and I learn, from Gov. Kent, that not a single vessel of the country has cleared for the United States, since he has been consul here. Their trading vessels, though small, are generally well built, strong, and well modelled; and are navigated with care and safety along the extended coasts of the continent, from the Plata to the Amazon. But, as the consul remarks, “the native navigators seem afraid to compete on the high seas, with the vessels of this age of hurry and locomotion—with the reckless driving of the ‘Flying Clouds’ and ‘White Squalls,’ the ‘Sea Witches,’ and other wild birds of the ocean, and yield, without a struggle, the enterprises in foreign commerce to the hardy northmen—the unwearied and ever-present Yankee, and the pushing and exacting Englishman.” The truth is, as he adds, the Brazilian is not by nature a trader or experimenter. He thinks it sufficient for him to raise coffee and get it to a market: he lacks the energy, the industry—the earnest, long-continued, unwearied effort which leads one willingly to sacrifice present ease, comfort, and quiet, to the prospect of future gain, and which makes the successful merchant. “Go ahead,” “strive,” “struggle,” “compete”—are words not belonging to his vocabulary. He shrugs his shoulders at the very mention of them—not in contempt, but in despair; and prefers sitting in his easy chair, or lolling out of the window, to the tussle of life common with us, of which the very thought would throw him into a perspiration. “Let the negroes work,” is his motto; “and let what they cannot do remain undone.” The Yankee character, as exhibited here within the year or two past, in the rush by of the thousands of emigrants on their way to California, struck the people with astonishment. They were looked upon as most reckless and daring adventurers, who, born in snow-drifts and cradled in ice, had a hardihood and enterprise it was in vain to attempt to rival. But I am forgetting the subject with which I commenced.
The telegraphic station on Castle Hill, to and from which the appearance of all sail in the offing is reported, is in full view from our moorings. The quarter-masters of the Congress are furnished with explanations of the various flags used, and the combinations by which the nation, character, and position of the sail in sight are made known. Few moments of the day pass without a turn of the glass in that direction. The distinguishing flag for an American vessel is a long, pointed pennant of white and deep blue in closely-arranged perpendicular stripes, giving to it the appearance, as it flutters in the wind, of being ring-streaked. With a Yankee fondness for sobriquets having a political or national import, Jack has dubbed this pennant “the coon’s tail,” from a fancied resemblance to the well-known emblem of the party of which the great statesman of Kentucky was so long an illustrious leader; and, “the coon’s tail is up!” or “there goes the coon’s tail!” is the regular announcement of an American ship in the offing.
Among uncounted merchant vessels which have thus been reported since our return from the Plata, there have also been the frigate Raritan, storeship Relief, and sloops-of-war Saratoga and St. Mary of the navy. The St. Mary was especially welcome from the number of officers attached to her, closely associated in friendship with several on board the Congress. Captain Magruder, her commander, is of this number; and is justly held in high estimation. The intercourse on his part with our ship has been most intimate. After an interchange of civilities by various parties on board both vessels, Captain McIntosh and I took dinner informally with him to-day, with the purpose of a drive afterwards to the Botanic Gardens. These lie six or eight miles south-west from the city, on the sea-shore, beneath the range of mountains, of which the Corcovado and the Gavia are such conspicuous points. For three miles the way is the same described in a visit to Botafogo. The remainder does not differ materially from it, except that the suburbs of the place change gradually, by the greater distances intervening between the villas and country houses which adorn the sides of the road, into a thinly-occupied and open country. At the distance of five miles, the interval between the mountains and the sea is taken up chiefly by a lake or lagoon called Rodrigo de Freitas. A short drive hence over a sandy plain brought us to the gates of the garden. This was originally a pleasure-ground of the royal family in the time of John VI., and was appropriated by him to its present use, on the accidental arrival in 1809 of various cases of exotics from the Isle of France, in a vessel which brought to Rio a company of Portuguese prisoners. The collection was afterwards augmented, at the order of the king, by additions from Cayenne, then under his rule; and eventually by the importation of the tea-plant from China, with a company of Chinese laborers skilled in its cultivation and in the preparation of the leaf for use. The attempt proved a failure; not so much from a want of adaptation in the soil and climate, or from the quality of the tea produced, as from the expense above the cost of the imported article. Both here, and at Santa Cruz—an imperial estate fifty miles west of Rio, where also a plantation was formed—the culture has been abandoned; a few plats of stunted, mildewed, and neglected bushes only are left as a botanical curiosity.
The gardens cover some fifty acres of ground—an alluvial flat of rich soil, and constitute a nursery from which plants of the cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, camphor, allspice, and tea, originally introduced here, have been widely dispersed through the empire. Specimens of all these were examined by us.
The cinnamon and camphor trees are of the laurel family—the laurus cinnamonum and laurus camphora;—the nutmeg, clove, and allspice, of the myrtle. The cinnamon grows to a height of fifteen or twenty feet. The stem and branches are of a light green; the leaves, of the shape of the laurel, are also light green, and are pliant and tender. When they first bud forth they are of a light red, and gradually become green as they advance in growth. The blossoms are white. There is no perceptible fragrance, either in the stem or leaf, till bruised or broken, but both when bitten have the cinnamon flavor. The clove is the flower-bud of the caryophyllus aromaticus. The tree was in blossom and the bud very strong in its peculiar taste. Specimens of all these in branch, blossom, and fruit, were readily furnished by a negro in attendance, who expected a trifling gratuity in return.
Long avenues of the Sumatra nut—vernicia montana—furnish abundant shade, and yield great quantities of nuts. The mulberry tree is also introduced for the purpose of shade. The bread-fruit—artocarpus incisa—so familiar to me in the South Seas, was also conspicuous in the beauty of its strongly-marked, shining, and digitated foliage, and its ponderous fruit of light green.
The whole garden, though a national property, for the good keeping of which an annual appropriation is made by the imperial legislature, appeared in a neglected state. There is nothing strikingly tasteful or artistic in the arrangement or embellishment of the ground. At the western end, a mountain stream comes brawling down a rocky channel, and on reaching the level, meanders lazily eastward, between banks beautifully fringed with bamboo, and overhung by the dense foliage of loftier growth. Where this mountain stream enters, there is an attempt, on a small scale, at landscape gardening. A little basin of water with projecting points, and an islet or two, overhung by willows, represents a miniature lake; and near by, on an artificial and terraced mound, is a chapel-like summer house, formed of the flat cedar or arbor vitæ, so planted and so trained as to be perfectly architectural in its outline, and to appear to be an old ruin overrun with living green. That, however, which more than any other ornamental feature of the place attracted our notice, was an avenue of royal palms, a quarter of a mile and more in length, leading in a straight line from the principal gate, and crossed at right angles, midway of the distance, by another corresponding with it. The trees are at perfectly regular distances from each other; are all of one size, and, either by nature or by artificial training, rise from uniformly shaped swelling bases, into perpendicular shafts, forty or fifty feet in height. The silver-gray trunks, marked in their whole length by rings, showing the growth of each year, terminate in plumed capitals of true Corinthian magnificence. The effect of the perspective is very beautiful: strikingly like that which we would imagine a colonnade of equal length in Egyptian or Asiatic architecture to be.
As a botanical garden, the place is unworthy the name, and useless as such to the cause of science. The realization of one here, such as John VI. projected, would be exceedingly interesting and important. There is no empire in the world in which a botanical garden on a magnificent scale could be more readily established, or whose native vegetable kingdom is so rich, and so full of novelties to the scientific world.
When we left the city the weather was magnificent; the atmosphere clear and pure, elastic and bracing, and the lights and shades on the scenery in perfection. But ere we were aware of it, an entire change occurred. The Corcovado towers in gigantic altitude over the garden, and, almost without warning, a violent storm came rushing down its precipices, bearing with it masses of cloud of impenetrable blackness, surcharged with torrents of rain, which were poured upon us with unabating fury during the entire drive back to the city. Notwithstanding the individual discomfort incident to such showers, they are welcomed with joy by the people in general, as indications of continued health. Previous to the epidemic of the last year, they were almost as regular in their return as the afternoon itself. But during the pestilence they intermitted almost entirely. The regularity of the sea breeze also was greatly interrupted; and lightning and thunder for the most part ceased. Believing that these meteorological changes were connected in some way with the infection existing in the atmosphere, a return of the showers of old is regarded as an indication of the accustomed salubrity of the air.
December 27th.—The little chapel of Santa Lucia fronts the bay at the southern end of the promenade beneath Castle Hill. This saint is a kind of deputy-patroness of seafaring men, under Our Lady of Good Voyages, whose shrine crowns so conspicuously the little islet of Bonviagem. In my usual walk two or three evenings ago, I accidentally fell upon an anniversary fête here; the birthday of her saintship. The chapel is the parish church of the neighborhood, and I could scarcely have believed, without the ocular proof, that within hearing of the hum of the busy metropolis a gathering of people so entirely rustic and village-like, could have been brought together. Great preparation for the celebration had been made. Long avenues of young palm-trees, twenty or thirty feet in height, and from which brilliant lamps were suspended, were planted beside the road along the water; alternating with these, were lofty flag-staffs, from which varied colored banners and streamers floated in the breeze. Frameworks with complicated pyrotechnic preparations were placed thickly around, as in the parks and squares of New York on the Fourth of July. Indeed, the whole aspect of things—the crowds of people in holiday dress, the many venders of refreshments in fruit and confectionery, cakes, orangeade and orgeat, the talk and the laugh, and the general hilarity—was that of a general muster, or other similar holiday, in the United States. The little chapel was in a flutter of flags and gay hangings without, and within, gaudy in the profusion of gilt paper and tinsel, and coarse artificial flowers. It was, too, one blaze of light from a pyramid of wax candles on the high altar.
An animated sale of engravings of Santa Lucia was going on. These were in different degrees of artistic execution, and on various qualities of paper to suit the taste and finances of the purchasers. Men, women, and children, black and white, master and mistress, freeman and slave, crowded with equal earnestness around the priest, seated behind a counter for the sale, all seeming alike delighted to secure the consecrated likeness, as, depositing their money, one after another were served with it, and then struggled back through the throng.
A service of music took place at eight o’clock; and as this hour approached, the little church became crowded to suffocation. The females were admitted to a portion of the nave, nearest the chancel, separated from the rest of the area by a rail. They sat in full dress on the carpeted pavement, as closely crowded as possible, while the men outside of this separating line stood as thickly packed. The music, both instrumental and vocal, was that of a regular opera, and delightfully performed. The festivities continued till midnight: and, as we returned by boat to the ship at a later hour than usual, rockets in constant succession were seen rushing to the sky, and bursting in glittering coruscations of colored lights; balls of fire were flying through the air; Chinese crackers every where exploding; and fiery serpents hissing along the ground. But there was no intoxication, no quarrelling, no rudeness; in their stead, general civility, decorum, and light-heartedness.
On Christmas eve, I visited the cathedral on the Palace Square, and the church of San Francisco de Paulo in the square of the Roscio. The former was first open. It was of course richly ornamented with tapestries of brocade and velvet, and hangings of cloth of silver and gold, and was brilliantly illuminated with wax lights, amid a profusion of artificial flowers. The chancel was filled with the dignitaries of the church, in striking costumes of scarlet and purple silk, with any quantity of the richest lace in the form of capes and togas. The Bishop, wearing a mitre studded with jewels of immense size, and holding a massive gilded crosier, was seated on his throne on one side of the high altar: presenting, with the encircling groups of Dean and Chapter and officiating priests, a scene of hierarchical stateliness and splendor, befitting the palmiest days of papal supremacy. The music here is always of the first order: it was on this occasion, as usual, altogether operatic in style and execution.
The church of St. Francis is much more spacious than this of the Carmelites. The interior is unbroken by galleries or colonnades, and the coup-d’œil, on entering, was now brilliant and effective. A ball-room for a civic fête could not have been decorated with more taste and richness, or with greater regard to effect on the eye. Lines of closely-arranged lights marked the general architecture of the whole interior; while, midway between the pavement and loftily-arched ceilings, beautiful clusters in brackets, gave a dazzling brilliancy to the walls. The display upon and above the high altar was magnificent. The music was fine; and the throng greater than at the cathedral, more mixed in its character, and full of levity. A third of the nave was appropriated exclusively to females. The various personal attractions and deportment of these, seated closely together in full evening dress, seemed chiefly to occupy the attention of the men; while innuendo, badinage, and loose remarks upon them were freely passed in whispers by one and another. The place seemed little like one of devotion, and any other than a house of God.
January 8th.—We are once more at sea. The weather for the last few days, though magnificent in clearness and brilliancy, has been too excessively hot for us to remain longer with comfort at Rio. A rumor, too, of the reappearance of the epidemic of the last year, was becoming prevalent, and the region of the Plata was deemed in every respect most desirable for the ship. At this season of the year, light winds and calms are characteristic of the weather at sea, in the latitudes between Rio de Janeiro and the Rio La Plata: it is probable, therefore, that our passage of ten days or a fortnight thither, will be destitute of any thing worthy of record.
The cordiality which I mentioned as existing between the officers of the Congress and those of the British flag-ship, Southampton, continued to the last. A banquet, surpassing in its appointments any thing upon so large a scale that I recollect to have witnessed on board ship, was given some time since by the officers of her gun-room to those of the Congress—embracing as guests, the commanders-in-chief and captains of both vessels; and night before last, Admiral and Mrs. Reynolds gave a farewell dinner to Commodore McKeever, Captain McIntosh, and one or two others from our ship. It was Twelfth-night, the last of the Christmas holidays; but it was in vain that I attempted to bring into exercise any associations of the season, in connection with my thoughts of home. While suffering here more than midsummer heat, it is difficult to reconcile even the imagination to a picture of festivities on the same occasion, with the accompaniments of howling winds and drifting snows—a frozen river in front of you, and a leafless grove behind.
This farewell entertainment was even more genial in its sympathies than any of those previously enjoyed. The company embraced a number of intelligent and spiritually-minded Christians. A seat between two of these fell to me, and I was most agreeably and profitably entertained. It is ever a delight to me to find intelligent piety openly professed and consistently maintained by a young officer, especially where an elevated position in social life, as well as the military profession, exposes the individual to peculiar temptations from the world. Such is the case with young W——, and such that of his chosen companions. He lent me, a few days since, a memoir of a young friend, an officer in the army, printed like that of your early companion, M—— C——, for private circulation only. Like hers, it is a portraiture from life of gifted and devoted youthful piety. Lieut. St. J——, the subject of it, went to India on duty, in the war of Afghanistan. The cholera broke out in his regiment when on march there. Fearless of consequences, and trustful in faith and Christian hope, he gave himself up at once to unremitted, personal attendance upon the sick and dying soldiers. Though but a youth of twenty-two, the parting breath of many of these was spent in blessings upon him, as a minister of consolation and spiritual grace to them, till seized at last himself, he was carried off at the end of six hours, with the triumphant exclamation on his lips, “All’s well!”