Breakfast was served soon after their return, and they sat down to the meal with good appetites. After breakfast they busied themselves with letters and journals, and with the contemplation of a happy family of monkeys and other Brazilian animals in a large cage in the court-yard of the hotel. One occupant of the cage was an armadillo; as nature had not adapted him for climbing, he wisely remained on the floor and allowed the monkeys a monopoly of acrobatic feats. The upper half of him was protected with scales like plates of mail, and when alarmed he closed himself together till he resembled a cocoa-nut. At such times there was little else than the mail-plates presented to outside view, and he could be tossed around with impunity, at least to the tosser. The monkeys had a way of rolling him from side to side of the cage, and occasionally they carried him to the top and let him fall. This application of the laws of gravitation did not affect his gravity, and when they wearied of the performance he opened out his iron-clad coating and looked as serene as ever.
Frank wished to know the uses of the armadillo; Manuel told him it was an excellent article of food, and was liked by both native and foreign residents of Brazil. The youth was sceptical until he had the opportunity of tasting the new diet, whereupon he declared that he would be a friend of the armadillo as long as he remained in South America.
From Tijuca they went to Petropolis, a summer resort higher in the mountains and more distant from the sea than is the former place. They took the carriage-route by the Union and Industry road, a magnificent highway, which was built by private enterprise, and is a model of engineering skill. It penetrates the coffee district back of Rio, and until the railway was built from the capital to and beyond the mountains of the Serra it had almost a monopoly of transportation. It still has a large business, and the company which controls it runs a line of stages and freight wagons, in addition to collecting tolls on every private wagon and every pack animal that passes over it.
ROAD OVER THE SERRA, NEAR PETROPOLIS.
The scenery along the road, where it crosses the Serra, elicited the warmest expressions of admiration from the Doctor and his young companions. Frank said it was a combination of the Corniche road from Nice to Genoa and the mountain journey from Colombo to Kandy, in Ceylon. Fred was reminded of the passage of the Alleghenies in Pennsylvania, and the Simplon in the Alps, though he missed the snow-clad peaks of the latter, and the pines and other northern trees of the former. They unanimously agreed that the engineers who made the road understood their work thoroughly, and had constructed a route which would endure through everything except the demolition of the mountains by an earthquake, or the outbreak of a volcano beneath them.
They were caught in a storm while ascending the Serra; one is generally caught in a storm in some part of the day in the mountains near Rio. The rain falls in such quantities as to drive the wayfarer to the nearest shelter, and if he is not quick to reach it he is drenched to the skin. Rain falls every afternoon at Tijuca, and so certainly may it be expected that the sojourners so time their excursions that they may be indoors when the showers come. The moisture from the ocean is driven against the mountains, where it is condensed into rain, and by this daily rain the streams around Tijuca have an unfailing source of supply. The morning is clear and comfortable; from ten or eleven in the forenoon until three hours after the meridian it is too warm to stir about; and at three o'clock the clouds gather, and the rain falls an hour or so later. At sunset the clouds roll away, and the night sees the canopy of the heavens glistening with stars.
The storm on the Serra had the peculiarity of rolling below their route and leaving them travelling above the clouds. It began at the summit of the mountain and then descended; it wrapped them in its misty folds; lightning played about them; they met wagons and pack-mules looming suddenly out of the fog as though literally dropping from the clouds; then the mist became less and less dense; and at length they emerged from it into the open sky, and looked upon the storm sweeping over the valley below. From the Alto do Serra, the highest point of the road, they had a view of immense extent. The mountains rose above and around them; the valley, visible through occasional breaks in the clouds, was a picture of serene loveliness, disturbed only by the lightnings and the rain that fell copiously. Far off was the Bay of Rio de Janeiro, dotted with its many islands, dominated by the mountains that encircle it, and lighted by the afternoon sun.