Rio de Janeiro.
The next morning no land was in sight, but the weather was delightfully clear with a fair breeze and an easy sea, a happy condition which followed us several days. We have now passed the tropic of Capricorn, are out of the torrid zone, and well on our path across the south temperate zone toward the bottom of the globe. The air is more stimulating, the winds fresh and bracing, more in accord with our polar longings, and altogether we begin to feel our natural vigours and ambitions which the burning heat farther north had withered.
From Madeira to Rio it had been found impossible to sleep in the bunks because of the stifling heat. Hammocks were accordingly swung amidships, in which some sleep was possible for the occupants of the cabins, while those of the forecastle stored themselves on the deck in almost any position offering a breeze and a protection from being washed overboard. These restful open air positions offer a splendid opportunity during the sleepless hours to study and admire the beauty and strangeness of the southern sky. From the time when we crossed the equator to our present position we have been intensely interested in the new constellations which have glided over the southern horizon, while in the north we have been watching, with some regret, the sinking and disappearance of the stars and groups with which we have been familiar from the time of our infancy. This vanishing of the Pole Star, and the many old friends in the heavens brings to us a vivid impression of the vast distance which we have traversed from our native lands. The new firmament has many charms, but it takes time to admire its complex splendour. The grouping of the large stars, the scattered nebulæ rivalling in lustre the Milky Way, and the unfilled spaces, remarkable for their extreme darkness, give the southern heavens a peculiar aspect. With this dome of tropical blue relieved by the new heavenly bodies above, and with a breakneck pitching and tossing at every plunge of the vessel, one is more apt to fall into an admiration of Nature than into a profound sleep. But this easy life on deck has also its drawbacks at times when one’s calm, dreamy philosophy is suddenly and rudely interrupted. Jack runs across the deck and presently stumbles in a heap over some sleeper when a series of grunts and something worse fills the night air with another spirit.
On November fourth, for a short time, the low shore-line of the Island of Santo Catherina was dimly visible under a blue mist in the west. At about this time we also saw the first Cape pigeons, stormy petrels, and albatrosses, and a few days later when there was no land in view an off-shore wind brought us some forms of land life. Among these were butterflies, moths, various birds with beautiful plumage, and some troublesome flies. We met only one voyager on this lonely course, a Brazilian coaster. She was built after a model of the last century, but, having every rag set which could draw, she came through the rolling blue waters with a grace and picturesqueness that would do justice to a modern yacht. We enjoyed the sight immensely as she came towards us, ploughing through hills of foam, her blunt prow buried in white spray, her huge square stern rising and falling nimbly out of one trough into another. It was as if one of the explorers who had gone before us, a Drake or an Anson, who were at once pirates and explorers, had suddenly dropped in our path to examine the men and the methods of less ambitious followers.
On the evening of the seventh we were fascinated by a strikingly beautiful sunset—the first worthy of note since the Belgica left Antwerp and certainly the most remarkable which I had observed since leaving New York. The phenomena was most charming in colour when the sun was about to sink behind the blue outline of Uruguay on our western horizon. The sea was branded by streams and bands and spots of fire which, with the easy undulation of the surface, gave it the appearance of active flames. The sun itself was descending behind a faint purple zone of mist. Its disc seemed out of all proportion to its usual size and there was something sublimely beautiful in the loneliness of its descent. All the sky above it, and far to the south and north was a vivid crimson in zigzag streamers, while over our heads the dome was an exquisite tint of green, which melted in the east into a dark purple blue. Shortly after the heavenly glow of the sunset had vanished, the sky began to assume quite another aspect. A gloomy range of cumulus clouds rose in the north-west, and in a few hours had advanced so far as to project nearly over our heads. The scene was made particularly strange by the even steely colour of the rest of the sky. It was ruled with a line, here and there ragged, but for the most part singularly homogeneous from the confines of the north-eastern mass of horizon. All the central portion of this vast surface of cloud was of a deep leaden hue, while its edges were marked by rapidly changing lines of carbon and luminous grey. By a deception of the eye the entire mass appeared convex, and it looked as wild as any phenomena of Nature I ever saw. At frequent intervals a sharp shower of arrowy lightning whizzed along its lowest fringe, illuminating the decks and the sea with a weird blue light. The lightning had the remarkable peculiarity of not being accompanied by thunder, nor was it followed by rain.
Yesterday at noon the high ridge of mountains in the eastern part of the province of Rio Grande do Sul were feebly discernible under the western horizon. This is the most southern province, the most industrious, and certainly the most promising part of Brazil. It is composed almost entirely of Germans, upon whom the unfair yoke of the Rio Janeiro government fits badly. They are at present engaged in a revolution for freedom and independence. To-day we have the low sandy dunes of the coast of Uruguay on our port side, and through the night we made little progress against the increasing southerly wind which followed the peculiar sky effects. At 6 o’clock on the morning of the eighth, we were off Castillo Island. Here the wind increased with such fury that we began to look about for a harbour.
In a few hours we were off Cape Polonio, but a farther progress into the mouth of the River Plata against the wind was impossible. The bark was turned landward for a little cove at the neck of Cape Polonio which seemed somewhat sheltered by the off-lying seal rocks. To reach this anchorage, however, the bark made difficult work of it. She rose and tumbled over the ugly land swells like a waggon over a rocky road. Her feeble engines were pressed to their greatest force, which heated the spaces above the fireplace to such an extent as to ignite the woodwork, and thus to the anxiety of the storm was added the excitement of a fire.
The fire was soon extinguished, and at noon we dropped anchor in a little harbour where the main force of the wind did not reach us, but the sea continued to rise and fall with a sickening suddenness. Here we rode out the storm, which continued until about noon of the next day. The falling of the temperature, caused by the decreasing latitude and especially by this storm, is daily more noticeable. Already the cold south temperate winds have compelled us to abandon the restful open air berths in the hammocks and driven us into the stuffy state-rooms, where every precaution has been taken to prevent the escape of heat in the icy south. During the afternoon and night, while the ship was bowing to the wind and violently pulling at her chains, we examined the character of our surroundings. From our position the land presented about as barren and lifeless an aspect as any region I ever saw.
On closer inspection we became interested in the mere bleakness, and little by little we found a fascination in the lifeless sterility with which we were first impressed. The torrents of wind moved the sand-like snow, and even deposited it in huge drifts, giving the whole surface a wavy, undulating appearance. In the interior a few ranges of low hills were discernible; but their surfaces were such that the shape could not be easily separated from the vast wavy plain along the coast. Cape Castillo is easily distinguished from the other sandy points by a white round sand hill, one hundred and eighty-four feet high, to which the land gradually rises from the Cape southward. This is Mount Buena Vista, and its peculiar mammary form, with its well defined white nipple and rounded sides marked by dots of cactus plants,—these peculiarities, with the isolated position, give the eminence an impressiveness and a picturesqueness quite in accord with its important geographical position.