They saw one of the cleanest and best paved cities in the world. New York in the Waring days never had cleaner streets. There was not a foul smell in evidence. There was even no West street or South street odor along the waterfront. Where the streets were not of asphalt they were of wood. There were no beggars on the highways; at any rate the Sun's correspondent did not see one, and he spent hours ashore every day.
The old part of town still has its narrow streets, the chief of which, Ouvridor, is about half as wide as Nassau street and which no vehicles are permitted to enter. But the great surprise of all was the magnificent Central avenue, built within the last four years right through the heart of the city from north to south, just as Napoleon built highways in Paris, connecting at the south with the great sweeping shore boulevards, where the beautiful Monroe Palace stands.
This new avenue rivals anything that Paris can show. It is about 120 feet wide, with sidewalks fifteen feet broad. In the centre are lofty lights on artistic poles, each group set in a little isle of safety filled with flowers and grasses and plants. The architecture along the avenue is harmonious throughout. The effect is imposing and makes a New Yorker think.
But those sidewalks! It is mighty fortunate for New York that she has none like them. If she had, the psychopathic ward in Bellevue would have to be enlarged ten times over for the patrons of the Great White Way.
They are big mosaics, composed of small pieces of black and white granite. The black pieces are used for ornamentation. Every block has a different design. Some have zigzags, others curves and curlycues, others dragons and starfish (at least they resemble such), others swing here and there; others are straight, until you feel that all you need is a brass band to make you march; others take you in swoops this way and that; arrows and daggers point themselves at you; bouquets in stone attract you until you almost feel that you want to stoop to get a whiff; but the predominant feeling is that the designs were sunk for sailors to roll back to the ship on, heaving to occasionally for bearings; or for intoxicated men to take another tack in the hope of finding a shorter way.
One of the bluejackets hit this particular "beach" one afternoon after he had been drinking too much. He stopped short and called to his mate, a few feet away:
"Bill, come here! Take me away! What do I see? Look at 'em! Snakes? Yes, they are snakes! I got 'em! Hit that big feller on the head! It's the brig fer me when I get back. Take me away, Bill! Think o' the disgrace o' gettin' the jimjams in a foreign port. Bowery booze fer me after this! Take me away, Bill! 'Tain't snakes? Honest? Jes' sidewalk? 'Ray for Brazil!"
Then the bluejacket got on his knees and felt to make sure it was "jes' sidewalk" while a crowd of Brazilians gathered around and some of them thought Yankee sailors either had queer ways of investigation or of making their devotions under the effect of libations and smiled, and in Portuguese told Bill and Tom they were good fellows.
As one went to the south on this Central avenue he came upon the nearly finished municipal theatre, one of the handsomest playhouses in the world and probably the largest in the western hemisphere. Then came the new public library and other Federal and municipal buildings that are being erected back of old Castello Hill, where the first settlers squatted, and the remains of their huddled manner of living still present themselves to the eye. And then one came to the white Renaissance pile, the strikingly beautiful Monroe Palace, named after our own Monroe, whose famous doctrine is woven into the woof and warp of the Brazilian institutions.
The building is segregated and is at the very gate of the great boulevard system fronting on the bay. It is conspicuous from the harbor. Brazil's flag—the green field, representing luxuriant vegetation; the yellow diamond, representing the gold and other mineral wealth; the broad, banded globe of blue in the centre, representing the dominion of Brazil, with one star above the equator for its single State in the northern hemisphere, and other stars in the south portraying the southern States, and also the famous constellation of the Southern Cross at a certain significant date in the year—the Brazilian flag flew from the dome and on each corner were large American flags.