’Mid many things unsightly to strange ee;
For hut and palace show like filthily:
The dingy citizens are reared in dirt.—”
The city of Rio occupies part of an irregular triangular tongue of land, which is situated on the west side of the Bay, about three miles northward from the entrance. The ground on which it stands is, for the most part, level, but towards the north, the west, and the south-east, it is bounded by a series of hills. The long narrow streets run at right angles to each other, by which the houses are thrown into great square masses. The new town stretches out in a north-west direction, and is separated from the old one by a large square called the Campo de Santa Anna. Beyond it a narrow branch of the Bay runs inland, to the left of which is the extensive suburb of Catumbi, and farther on those of Mataporco and Engenho Velho. Besides the Campo de Santa Anna there are two other large squares, one before the theatre, and another at the landing-place, in which is situated the palace formerly occupied by the Viceroys. The Royal Palace of S. Cristovão, the residence of the Emperor, is a great and irregular mass of building, situated a little way beyond the new town.
Not only are the streets narrow and dirty, but they are also badly lighted and worse paved, notwithstanding the city is immediately surrounded by mountains of the most beautiful granite. The houses are very substantially built, for the most part of granite, consisting principally of only two or three stories. It contains several fine churches, but few of them are so situated as to be seen to advantage. That of Nossa Senhora da Gloria is one of the most conspicuous, being placed on a rounded hill of the same name, that juts into the sea between the city and the Praia de Flamengo. Besides the churches there are many other public buildings, among which may be mentioned the Monastery of San Bento, near the harbour, the Convent of Santa Thereza on the brow of a hill, beside the noble aqueduct by which the water for the supply of the city is conveyed from the mountains, a Mint, an Opera House, a Theatre, a public Library, which is said to contain about one hundred thousand volumes, a Museum of Natural History, a Medical School, two Hospitals, and, what the inhabitants boast very much of, the Camara dos Senadores, which is equivalent to our House of Lords. It is a very handsome building, which was erected a few years ago on the north side of the Campo de Santa Anna. Scattered through the city there are some fine fountains, to which water is conveyed by an aqueduct. One of them is in the palace square, for the supply of the ships in the harbour. The aqueduct itself is upwards of six miles in length, and is terminated city-wards by a magnificent row of double arches.
From an eminence within the city, called the Castle Hill, a fine view both of the city and bay is obtained. It also commands a delightful prospect of the country on the opposite side of the bay, with the city of Nitherohy, or Praia Grande, in the foreground, and the lofty Organ mountains towering in the distance to the left. There are many parts of the country in the immediate neighbourhood of Rio, which remind a Scotchman of some of the highland scenery of his native country, but with this difference, that, whilst there the mountains are bleak and barren, here they are covered to their summits with a luxuriant tropical vegetation.
The great desire of the inhabitants seems to be to give a European air to the city. This has already been accomplished to a great extent, partly from the influx of Europeans themselves, and partly by those Brazilians who have visited Europe, either for their education or otherwise. It is but seldom now that those extraordinary dresses, both of ladies and gentlemen, which we see represented in the publications of those travellers who visited Rio, even in the early part of the present century, are to be seen in the streets. A few old women only, and those mostly coloured, are observed wearing the comb and mantilla; and the cocked hat and gold buckles are also all but extinct. Now, both ladies and gentlemen dress in the height of Parisian fashion, and both are exceedingly fond of wearing jewellery. One of the finest streets in the city is the Rua d’Ouvidor, not because it is broader, cleaner, or better paved than the others, but because the shops in it are principally occupied by French milliners, jewellers, tailors, booksellers, confectioners, shoe-makers, and barbers. These shops are fitted up with an elegance which the stranger is quite unprepared to meet. Many of them are furnished with windows formed of large panes of plate glass, similar to those which are now so common in every large town in Great Britain. Indeed, it is the Regent Street of Rio, and in it almost any European luxury can be obtained.
A few years ago omnibusses were started to run from the city to the different suburbs. Small steamers ply regularly between Rio and the city of Nitherohy on the opposite side of the bay, and one runs daily to Piedade at the head of it. There is a yearly exhibition of the fine arts, in which are exposed many tolerable pictures, both by native and foreign artists. Music is very much cultivated, and the piano, which at the time when Spix and Martius visited Rio, in 1817, was only to be met with in the richest houses, has now become almost universal. The guitar was formerly the favourite instrument, as it still is all over the interior. There are excellent schools for the education of boys; and boarding schools have been established for young ladies, which are conducted on the same principles as those of a similar nature in England. Being the capital of the empire, and there being residents at the court from most of the European nations, Rio is the scene of much greater gaiety than is generally supposed by those who have never visited it. But as all these matters have been more learnedly “discoursed of” than I profess to be able to do, I shall pass over in silence the levees, the opera, the theatres, whether French or Portuguese, and the balls, public as well as private, which engross quite as much of the attention of the fashionable world here as elsewhere.