[CHAPTER XXII.]
THE SIGHTS OF RIO.—PUBLIC BUILDINGS, AQUEDUCT, CHURCHES, MIRACLES, AND FUNERALS.—VISIT TO TIJUCA AND PETROPOLIS.—THE SERRA.
The party remained several days in Rio, and had abundant occupation for eyes and ears. One of the days was devoted to a religious festival; there were processions on the streets and services in the churches, and the whole population seemed to give itself to idleness in honor of the saint to whom that date of the almanac belonged. Rio Janeiro is a Catholic city, but less intense in its religious feeling than Bahia. Many adherents of the Catholic Church regard Bahia as an American Rome, from which all religious dogmas and teachings affecting the continent are expected to proceed.
Rio is well provided with churches, and some of them are admirable specimens of ecclesiastical architecture. The youths visited the cathedral and perhaps half a dozen of the principal churches, but did not take the trouble to go through the entire list. The churches of Rio are never closed; at almost any hour service is going on in one of the chapels of the cathedral, and the stranger who desires to see the people at worship has no lack of opportunity.
Votive offerings are as numerous in the churches of Rio as at Para, if we may judge by the accounts of the youths. Frank made a sketch of one collection of these offerings, while Fred recorded the inscriptions relating to them.
VOTIVE OFFERINGS IN A CHURCH AT RIO.
The sketch included busts, arms, legs, hands, and faces, moulded in wax or carved in wood, perhaps twenty in all. There was a representation of a large tumor on the neck of one of the faithful, who was cured by the interposition of the saint, and below it was a painting of a ship being driven on the rocks at the base of a steep cliff. The ship and crew seemed doomed to certain destruction, but though the ship was lost all the crew escaped, in consequence of an appeal to the patron saint.
Another painting showed the saint appearing in the form of an angel, to an invalid sitting in an arm-chair; the inscription says he had not been able to walk for years, but by following the direction he received he was a well man on the following day. Another picture represented a similar visit to a man lying on a sick-bed, and the legend below it records a similar miraculous result.