The next morning we were at the entrance to Rio de Janeiro. There was, however, not a breath of wind, and the engine was giving trouble; it refused to run more than a very short distance without becoming dangerously heated—a state of things subsequently found to be due entirely to improper installation. We sat, therefore, for twelve hours gazing at the tumbled mass of blue mountain-barrier, through the narrow opening in which the sea has found its way and formed the great sheet of water within. In front of us was the well-known conical form of the Sugar-loaf, to the west Corcovado, the Hunchback, with its strange effect of a peak which is bending forward, and beyond it Gavea with its table-top. The night fell, lights came out within, we still waited like a Peri at the gate of Paradise. The evening breeze, however, wafted us nearer, and at midnight we passed silently between the dark heights which guarded the entrance and dropped anchor in Botafogo Bay under the shelter of the Sugar-loaf, there to await the dawn.
It is an entrancing experience to wake on a sunny morning and find oneself for the first time among the soft and glowing beauty of Rio Harbour. We went up the bay in the early light, with a man posted at the flagstaff to exchange greetings with the Brazilian men-of-war which lay at anchor; it was always our duty to dip first to warships, as it was the place of merchantmen to take the initiative with us. We finally took up our position some three miles higher up opposite to the old city.
It is the suicidal fate of each visitor to try to describe Rio de Janeiro, and fail in the attempt; but with every warning to refrain the present chronicler must likewise rush on her doom. The first impression is that there is so much of it. It is not merely an enormous and beautiful bay, with a city upon it—it is a huge expanse of water, of which the whole margin, as far as the eye can reach, is used by man for his dwelling. To compare it with the bays of Naples or Palermo, or with the cities of Edinburgh or Athens, is, as far as size is concerned, to speak in the same breath of some picturesque manor-house and of Windsor Castle. There are many places with wilder charm or more historic interest; but for what can only be termed “sleek beauty” Rio is incomparable. Every portion of the scenery is right, there are no parts of it which the eye consciously or unconsciously omits, and in whichever direction the gazer looks his æsthetic sense is satisfied. The shore line disdains monotony and breaks itself into bays and islands. The great mountains, though they may lose in quiet dignity, range themselves in weird and striking shapes which attract the eye, while the verdure fulfils its purpose of showing off their beauty, here clothing a hillside with forest, there leaving bare a towering cliff. The white buildings which wander up hill and down dale are clean and prosperous, neither too new nor too old; they surround bays and stretch out to islands, not in oppressive continuity, but broken with the surface of the ground, while the gardens and boulevards with their tropical foliage know just how to intersperse themselves at the right intervals. The sun and air also appreciate their share in the situation, and flood mountain and water, verdure and the work of man, with wonderful transparent light, till the whole shines pure and soft, blue and green, like an opal. The night is not less beautiful; then the summits of the mountains show dark against the sky, myriads of lights outline the near bays, shine out from the islands and twinkle irregularly up the hillsides, while from the further shore another galaxy are reflected half-way across the still dark water. The whole gives the impression of some magic scene in the Arabian Nights lit up for a great fiesta. Rio is wonderful, marvellous; it leaves one like the Queen of Sheba; and yet—when I am dead I hope that I may return and visit the little bay of Santa Cruz, I know I shall pass by Rio de Janeiro.
The old part of the city is composed of narrow and noisy lanes, but the new boulevards are fine and broad. We did the usual sightseeing, with the details of which it is not proposed to trouble the reader. We had the pleasure of enjoying the hospitality of our Minister, Sir W. Haggard; but to my disappointment, for I had been looking forward for weeks to some feminine society, Lady Haggard was in England, and everyone else seemed to be a bachelor. By the most kind care of the British Consul, Mr. Hamblock, we had a memorable motor drive of some seventy miles through the mountains to the west of the bay, including the tract of forest reserved for the public by Dom Pedro. It has left us with a bewildered impression of roads winding below great crags, amongst tropical vegetation, and opening at intervals on vistas of rocky coast and deep blue sea. We visited the botanical gardens, admiring their marvellous avenue of palms: similar ones, and but little inferior, may be seen in many directions, rising amongst streets and houses like the pillars of a Greek temple. We ascended the Sugar-loaf by aerial railway, and gained a panoramic view of the harbour. Finally, a day was spent at Petropolis, a small place among the mountains at the head of the bay, which is reached by a railway with cog-wheel gauge and is the special resort of the diplomatic colony. We lunched at an inn of which the walls were adorned impartially with portraits of the Hohenzollerns and French Presidents, the host turned out to be an Alsatian.
If at Rio every prospect pleases it is not altogether free from drawbacks: sanitary conditions have improved; but the pride the city takes in its public gardens and boulevards does not extend to the water of the harbour, which is repulsively dirty, and ships are warned in the Sailing Directions against using it even for washing their decks. When the American fleet visited Rio they consumed so much from the shore for that purpose, that there is said to have been almost a fresh-water famine in the city. When we left the bay our bill of health stated that the previous week there had been two cases of yellow fever, both dead, and two of bubonic plague, who were still alive. Even with our experience at Pernambuco the prices charged at Rio left us breathless: engineering work cost from four to five times as much as in England; even a poor man on the docks complained to our Sailing-master that he could not get a meal under 2s. 8d. One Englishman, professionally employed, calculated that the cost of his passage home every three years was met through the saving effected on buying his clothes in England. Finally, the Stewardess of the Mana was of the opinion that the limit was reached, when one shilling was charged for washing a pair of stockings.
The Brazilians of Rio appear to have more European blood than those who live further north, though a mixture of Indian or Negro is viewed with the same equanimity. The idea of government is democratic, and in theory at any rate the President will give an audience to the humblest Brazilian. The senators are paid £7 a day while sitting, so that an easy way of defraying debt is to prolong the session. The Central Railway belongs to the Government, and is regarded as giving billets for its supporters: engine-drivers, for example, are paid at a rate of from £700 per annum, the consequent large deficit on the working of the line being made good by the Treasury. There had been no political excitement very recently at Rio, but one old man was pointed out to us who, as governor of a northern state, had held his position by force and fraud until about a year previously, when he had been escorted by armed men on board ship and told that if he returned he would be shot.
We left Rio Harbour at daybreak on Wednesday, July 23rd, after a visit of nine days, and to our relief found a good sailing breeze outside. As Buenos Aires, at which we were bound to call for stores and letters, was still some 1,100 miles distant, it was decided to break the voyage, and the Sailing Directions were studied for some out-of-the-way stopping-place en route. We had found by experience that little anchorages were preferable: not only was there more confidence in the water supply than in the case of big towns, but there was no trouble with authorities, and bills of health, and the temptations of a big port were avoided. The smaller places also, if in some ways less interesting, were more attractive. The little bay of Porto Bello was selected, but when its neighbourhood was reached the following Sunday the weather had become rather thick and there was some difficulty in finding our way. At tea-time our Navigator came down somewhat amused to tell us that, during our afternoon siestas, Mana had wandered in and out of a wrong bay, about twenty miles north of our destination; a small steamer in front of us had also obviously been in need of a signpost or kind policeman.
On Sunday afternoon we dropped anchor safely in a sheltered part of Porto Bello Bay known as Aco Cove. Our previous halts, the town of Pernambuco, the coral bay at Santa Cruz, the rocky basin of Cape Frio, and the world-famed harbour of Rio de Janeiro, bore little resemblance to each other, but they had one point in common, that they were all obviously South American. Porto Bello had nothing South American about it save its very unoriginal Spanish name; it might, as far as general appearance went, have been a loch imported straight from the west coast of Scotland: the accent of our Glasgow engineer became unconsciously more homelike, as he remarked that it was “just like the scenery near Oban,” and to add to the illusion the weather, though warm, was a “wee bit saft,” with the nip in the air associated with Scotland in August.
The town of Porto Bello itself lies at the foot of the bay. It will be found marked in the atlas of the infallible Stieler, but it is nothing more than a hamlet, consisting of a few small houses, with a church and one little store; there was no inn visible, but it is apparently connected with the outside world by telegraph or telephone. Shanties, surrounded with banana groves, wandered up the hillsides or clustered round such sandy coves as Aco; some were made of wattle and daub, others of wooden planks roofed with banana leaves or rough red tiles. We made friends with a family who occupied a cottage near the stream which supplied our water, and some of the party, a grandfather, father, and small daughter, came off on their own initiative to pay us a visit on board. They brought presents of eggs and molasses, and three special shells as an offering for me. The gifts which we on our side found were most appreciated, both here and elsewhere, were tobacco, sweets, and ships’ biscuits; the last were specially prized, being often preferred to money. We showed our visitors over the vessel, and expected that such fittings as electric light would produce a mild sensation, but it was proved as usual that the eye can only take in what it has sufficient knowledge to appreciate. The greatest success was achieved by the supply of carpenters’ tools, which excited much admiration, while the pier-glass in my cabin came in a poor second. A rather embarrassing situation arose when the old man, who was getting a little imbecile, found the yacht so attractive that he sat down in the deck-house and declined to depart.
The quiet lives of these people, surrounded by agricultural holdings with tropical produce, reminded us much of the existence of some of the natives in East Africa. They were apparently not above the belief in charms, for opposite our friends’ door was a dried bush about four feet high, which had on the extremity of each bough an eggshell, some fifteen in number; we never succeeded in finding out its precise meaning, for unfortunately our ignorance of the Portuguese language made any real conversation impossible. The appliances of life were simple: an ox-cart had solid wooden wheels, after the manner of an ancient British chariot, the noise made by which was portentous; and the anchors of the boats were of wood, the shank being formed of a frame of sticks, into which rocks were packed.