Often a thunder-storm of thick blackness, with forked lightning, is seen raging among the mountain peaks without approaching nearer; and oftener still, magnificently culminating summer clouds, heaped pile upon pile above them, exhibit a play of electric light, of a beauty and splendor sufficient for the pastime of the evening. We had a remarkable display of this kind a night or two ago; the flashes were more vivid and more incessant than I recollect ever before to have witnessed. Masses of black clouds, towering to the zenith on every side, made the night exceedingly dark. In the momentary intervals between the flashes there was a darkness that might almost be felt—utterly impenetrable even at the shortest distance—and making inexpressibly grand and beautiful the more than mid-day brightness which instantly followed, disclosing to microscopic view every object far and near.
From the cause named at the beginning of this date—the heat of the mornings—my visits on shore, for the long walk which you know to be an essential daily enjoyment to me, are chiefly in the later hours of the afternoon and evening. As the last regular boat of the ship leaves the shore punctually at sunset, this necessity of choosing so late a period of the day would subject me to the inconvenience of coming off in a shore boat, and the disgust of breathing the atmosphere by which the vicinity of the common landing is nightly polluted, were it not for the social arrangements of the Commodore. Intimacy with the Ambassador and his family, and other American friends in the same neighborhood, leads him with Mr. G—— to pass most of his evenings at the Praya Flamengo. His barge awaits him regularly, at nine o’clock, at a sheltered and pleasant landing near the Gloria Hill. A seat in this is always in reserve for me; and, whether visiting with him or not, I am sure of a passage in good season to the ship. I am thus left at liberty to range the hills and valleys at my pleasure towards the close of day, and to take my fill of such delights as nature, in her exuberance and ever-varying beauty in ten thousand forms, here affords. A chief drawback to the pleasure is the want of a companion in my rambles. Such of my messmates as have a round of ship’s duty in their order, find sufficient exercise in pacing the decks in its discharge, and are often too much fatigued to start in search of the picturesque; others, though at leisure, less inured to fatigue than I am, think the beauty of the upland haunts I most frequent, scarcely worth the effort required at all points, in the first sharp ascent of a half mile, by which only they are attained. Hence my evening strolls of this kind are solitary: still—
“My steps are not alone
In these bright walks; the sweet southwest, at play,
Flies, rustling, where the tropic leaves are strown
Along the winding way.
And far in heaven the while,
The sun that sends the gale to wander here,
Pours out on the fair earth the quiet smile—
That sweetens all the year.”