Two more days brought us to Rio de Janeiro, full of expectation and curiosity for the pearl of South America. The bay of Rio has been so often photographed, so fully described, that any one who has read much must have a good mental picture of the place, which fortunately squares very neatly with the actuality. The fantastic islands of volcanic origin which peep up through the broad waters of the bay, or impudently flaunt their grassy cones high above sea level, in the most unexpected places, give to Rio, as seen from the bay, an aspect that is unique. The town spreads itself out with picturesque irregularity among the gentle valleys that lie between the many hills, trending swiftly upward some little way inland from the shore, the noble height of Corcovado crowning the whole lively and diversified scene. These hills being mostly tropical in the richness and character of their vegetation, the art of man had no great task to transform the situation into one of the world’s most beautiful cities.
On the whole, man has here done his work well, although it has to be confessed that much of the architecture is paltry and all of the plaster variety. The marine drive will match almost anything of the kind in Europe, and the Avenida Central is admirably devised at once to beautify the town and drain the pressing traffic of the narrower side streets. The suburbs are also spacious and well planned, so that one could imagine life being very pleasant here—when the weather is a little cooler than the norm. Although the summer was supposed to be over at the time of our visit, the atmosphere was enervating in the extreme, and even on the breezy heights of Corcovado, to which we ascended by the funicular, and whence one of the grandest prospects man may look upon rewarded us, we perspired at every step. Everywhere there was the moist, oppressive smell of the hot-house, so that one could guess what it meant to be afoot in Rio in the summer time, if this were autumn.
The Narrow Streets of Buenos Ayres.
The left illustration shows Calle Florida, the busiest thoroughfare of Buenos Ayres; the right is a bird’s-eye view of Calle San Martín, looking towards the Plaza Hotel. These are typical main streets.
As for living here: when we were charged twelve milreis ($6.50) for a dish of fruit that might have cost a dollar in New York, at a very ordinary hotel, where all other charges were proportionately appalling, we had our doubts, even granted a change of weather. One of our party paid the equivalent of four dollars for a tooth-brush, a cake of soap, a small tube of lanoline, and some shaving powder!
Paying an uniformed madman, who was plying for hire with a motor car, a few thousand reis (a milreis or one thousand reis go to 54 cents, so that you part with them in tens of thousands in a forenoon), we drove all around the city and the Marina at fully thirty miles an hour, turning busy corners at that speed. I myself can claim some dexterity at the wheel; but I confess that I sat in terror in that maniac’s car as we sped wildly through the highways and byways of Rio. Yet he was perfectly sane as motorists are accounted sane in that town; his performance evoking no remark. The speed limit is, I believe, eight or ten miles an hour, but, like all the laws of Latin America, that is laid down merely to be ignored. The municipal authorities, however, use the bylaw as a supplementary tax, and regularly fine all the motorists of the town, in succession, for exceeding the limit. A well-known English resident who owns a speedy car told me he had been fined a month before for exceeding the limit on a certain date, when he had been on the high seas returning from Europe. He protested, lodged his plea, and was fined all the same, on the ground that if he did not exceed the limit that day, he had done so in all certainty before or after.
Altogether our impressions of Rio were favourable. Every prospect pleased us; only man was vile, and none viler than the scum that haunt the sea-front to plunder visitors by getting them aboard their small boats for conveyance to the liners in the bay, then, with sundry sinister threats, endeavour (too often successfully) to make their victims disgorge a payment large enough to purchase the boat. The gentry who ply this trade at Naples are mild and benevolent by comparison.