Neptune's Initiation on the Louisiana's Fo'c'sle
[CHAPTER V]
BRAZIL'S ENTHUSIASTIC WELCOME
Never Before Did American Ships Have Such a Welcome—The Visit a Continual Exchange of Prisoners Made by Friendship—Americans Found it Easy to Sail Into This Bay of all Delights, but Very Hard to Sail Out—Jack Had a Fine Time Ashore and Behaved Properly—More Than 4,000 of Him on Liberty at One Time—Official Welcome Sincere, and That of the People From the Heart—Vice Admiral's Salutes Greeted Evans.
On Board U.S.S. Louisiana, U. S. Battle Fleet,
Rio Janeiro, Jan. 22.
IN describing the arrival, reception and stay of the American fleet in this port, the impulse is almost irresistible to use superlatives. There can be no error of judgment or of taste in employing the comparative degree, for strict accuracy compels the assertion that never was an American fleet greeted more cordially and never entertained more elaborately in a foreign port than in this port, the "Bay of All Beauties," and in this city, fast becoming the Paris of the Western Hemisphere.
The greetings were unmistakably of the heart. They were far more than official expressions of esteem. It was our old familiar friend of the North, the Vox Populi, that spoke, and no levity is intended when that expression is used. The people acclaimed the fleet and that aspect was so overwhelming, so constant, so omnipresent that it dwarfed everything else. No foreign port and no American port ever saw so many American bluejackets ashore in ten days; no foreign port ever opened its arms more freely to American sailors of high and low degree.