A few degrees before we crossed the line, the sky became overcast with heavy dark clouds, which French sailors call "le pot du noir" and our English tars "the doldrums;" the barometer ceased to indicate any atmospheric changes. It was on the 26th, in the evening, we passed the equator, and for more than forty hours we had violent squalls and occasional tremendous downpourings, which made us all uncomfortable: for staying on deck was out of the question, and the heat below was very oppressive. Flocks of a species of large wild goose, which came flying round the ship, announced the proximity of the land; and on the 28th toward dusk we passed off the rocky and picturesque island of Fernando de Noroñha. It was at too great a distance to distinguish anything, but it is said to contain features of great natural beauty. This island is now used as a place of transportation for the convicts of Brazil. These were formerly detained in the southern island of Sancta Catharina; but that spot afforded the prisoners too many facilities of escape, being so near the mainland, and within easy reach of the foreign state of the Banda Oriental. I could collect but meagre notions concerning the number and the lot of the unhappy convicts, mostly all blacks, who have only exchanged one kind of slavery and labor for another. In most cases, when the crime committed has not been of the most heinous nature, the convict after a year or two's confinement is drafted into the army or navy. I have heard officers of both services bitterly complain of this system. The island of Noroñha is mountainous, and difficult of access.
At last, on Sunday, March the 29th, at sunrise, we touched the New World, and the Magdalena cast anchor in Pernambuco roads, about three miles from the land, for the harbor, whose entrance is narrow besides, is inaccessible to ships of large tonnage. The fishermen of this place boldly navigate in those roads, and sometimes many leagues into the offing, on strange-looking and perilous rafts made of a few crossed bamboo-sticks, somewhat resembling the catamarans used at Madras. It is inconceivable how those daring sailors are not devoured by the sharks off those flimsy machines, which the least wave upsets. It does not much concern them when this happens, for they all swim like fishes, and the tiny craft is soon put to rights again. There is, however, a tradition in the port that once upon a time a man was snatched off his dancing catamaran by a monstrous shark, which devoured him before the eyes of his affrighted companions. Pernambuco is a place of great trade, the third city in the Brazils for population and the importance of its productions: it is one of the great sugar-markets of the world. It possesses some good churches and public buildings, and a school of law, the first in the empire, where Pombalist and Jansenistic traditions have obtained much less adhesion than at Sao Paolo or Bahia. A thesis was maintained there with great applause a short time ago, which astonished all the lawyers of Brazil, namely, that the pope needed not a general council to decide infallibly any doctrine of faith; his ipse dixit was sufficient; and all true Catholics ought at once to bow interiorly and exteriorly to it as to the word of Christ himself. This was probably the first time this had been so boldly proclaimed in South America since the banishment of the Society of Jesus.
The town is cut up by a number of lagoons, crossed over by bridges like at Venice; and its first aspect from the sea reminds one very much of Hamburg. There is, of course, the difference of a glowing sky and large tropical vegetation. The land lies low, and the presumption is that it must be unhealthy; but it is not so, I believe, owing to the regular sea-breezes, which greatly cool the air and dissipate the vapors. The heat cannot but be intense at times on a spot only six or seven degrees south of the line.
It is not always easy to land at Pernambuco, for the entrance of the harbor does not give more than fifteen or sixteen feet of water in the best tides; and there lies across it, and for hundreds of miles up and down and parallel with the coast, a dangerous low coral-reef, against which the mighty Atlantic waves dash with fury. This reef, which in many places barely rises above the surface, would prove an excellent defence against invasion; but it was not apparently thought sufficient in former times, for there stands on the beach to the north of the town a square bastioned fort, built by the Dutch under Maurice of Nassau when they occupied the country at the beginning of the seventeenth century. To the north of this again, on a bold rocky hill, is situated the ancient city of Olinda, so called from the exclamations of the first Portuguese discoverers when this enchanting land broke upon their sight: "O linda terra! lindos outeiros!" "O beautiful country, charming hills!" It was formerly a bishop's see and the capital of the country. It contains several churches and convents, as well as old residences of governors and magnates, of a rather massive and imposing architecture. The surrounding country is one vast forest of palm, cocoa-nut, and other trees of the torrid zone. There are many flourishing sugar and coffee plantations, surrounded by nopal and banana groves, and a multitude of superb creepers, amidst whose luxuriant growth and glowing flowers rise the white-walled houses of the owners. As we rode along, we purchased some pine-apples and mangoes of immense size and exquisite flavor. When we returned on board, numbers of Pernambuco boatmen surrounded the ship with loads of oranges and bananas for sale, as well as tame parrots and monkeys; but none of them, with the fear of the sharks before their eyes, would imitate the blacks, whom we had seen at St. Vincent diving into the sea, nine or ten fathom deep, to pick up small pieces of money which the passengers would throw in, to witness their astonishing power of swimming.
From Pernambuco to Bahia we had thirty-six hours' passage. We were not nearer the land than ten or twelve leagues, the Royal Mail Company forbidding their commanders of ships to hug the coast any closer. On the 30th of March, about noon, we met the fine steamer La Navarre, of the French Messageries Company, on its way to Bordeaux. It was crammed full of passengers, among whom I saw several Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul. These venerable religious women serve various hospitals in the Brazils—at Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, and other places. They are everywhere, I need not say, worthy of their holy founder and of their country. They have not escaped, however, in this New World the calumnies and persecutions which they have had to endure in some parts of Europe, and notably in Portugal and Piedmont. Almost the first Brazilian journal I saw contained an infamous diatribe against them; but they would very likely themselves prefer contumely to honor, as assimilating them more perfectly to their Divine Lord, the Man of Sorrows.
At a very early hour on the 31st we doubled the point which juts out on the right of the harbor of Bahia, and the ship fired a gun to announce our arrival. No description can convey a true idea of the beauty of this celebrated bay—Bahia de todos os Sanctos, that is, "All Saints' Bay." Covered to the water's edge with a glowing and gigantic vegetation, the hills which rise above the roadstead are dotted with pretty-looking villas, the residences of the city merchants. It was the commencement of what is here called winter; yet I saw everywhere a superabundance of flowers, especially of roses. Trees with strange forms, fruits yet more strange, a teeming population, two thirds of which at least was composed of negroes, the odd cries and barbarous howlings of these blacks as they hawked their wares or carried, to the number of ten or twelve together, huge burdens swung on the middle of long poles—everything was of a sort to interest a stranger. Carriages there were none, or very few at least; for the city, being built on the steep slope of an abrupt cliff, has no level surface anywhere in its streets, most of which resemble very much the queer uphill lanes leading to Fourvières in the city of Lyons. The intense heat of the atmosphere made me give up the design I had entertained of visiting the town entirely on foot. I hired a kind of bath-chair, of which there are long stands about, and two stout negroes conveyed me successively to the various churches and the public garden of the city. These chairs are very ingeniously contrived to exclude the sun and admit the air, as well as to preserve absolute privacy within them. They swing on a long pole fore and aft, which the blacks carry on their shoulder; but this pole is shaped like an elongated S, to secure the sitter's equilibrium, which would be unpleasantly disturbed by the see-saw tread of the bearers. Notwithstanding the little exercise I took, an abundant perspiration ran from every pore. It was therefore with exquisite pleasure that I came to a house where for a few vintems ( few pence) I could exchange my stewing state for the coolness of a shower-bath. I had previously been told to use the necessary precaution— that is, to rub a small quantity of caixaça, or rum, over my body before coming in contact with the water.
The trade of Bahia appears considerable, and is entirely carried on in the lower town, which stretches along the water-side on the north for more than a league, nearly to the western-most point of the outer bay, crowned by a celebrated sanctuary dedicated to Nossa Señhora do Bom-Fim—Our Lady of the Happy Death. On the eastern promontory of the harbor, on the summit of a bold hill looking upon the Atlantic, is the oldest religious building, perhaps, in all South America. It is the now ruinous church built by an Indian princess, the first of her race who embraced the faith of Christ. The beach below was often hallowed by the footsteps of the venerable Father Anchieta, the apostle of Brazil, who would bare his breast to the sea-breeze to cool the ardor which consumed him for the salvation of souls, and write with a stick on the sand of the shore the beautiful Latin verses he daily composed in honor of the Blessed Mother of God. The blacks still cross themselves at the mention of Padre Anchieta's name, and the country still abounds with traces and monuments of his zeal and wonderful sanctity. The numerous churches of Bahia are generally very richly decorated, but not cleanly kept. I saw some large black rats running across the altar of one of them, most profusely adorned with gilt carving. It was a church dedicated to St. Benedict the Moor, a negro saint from Africa, a monk of the Franciscan order, who lived and died in Sicily, and it is exclusively used by the blacks. A negro priest was loitering about its precincts, and when I told him of the boldness of the aforesaid rats, "We cannot help it, Señor Padre-mestre." he answered; "their numbers are so great we cannot destroy them." The churches have no seats; the men stand round by the side walls, and the women squat down on the middle wooden floor. Sometimes, and when the floor is of stone, the ladies are accompanied to church by a female slave carrying a small square carpet, which she lays down for her mistress to sit upon. I saw again here in the cathedral what I had already seen in Lisbon: on a wooden bench near the holy-water vessel close to the door lay several dead babies, shrouded up with the exception of the face, and covered with fresh flowers. The mothers were waiting hard by until a priest should come to recite the funeral prayers. I had at first mistaken these little corpses for waxen exvotos. Thus adorned, death had nothing sad or repulsive about it, especially when I thought that these, were the remains of little angels—anjiñhos they call them in Brazil—who had flown to heaven with the purity of their baptismal innocence.
The negroes of Bahia are numerous, and the finest in the Brazils. I admire their robust frames, and the seeming indifference with which they carried almost Titanic loads beneath such a burning sun. The landing-place is a perfect Babel; these blacks are so loquacious, and they, moreover, seem to think it adds to their importance to shout as loud as their rough, powerful throats will let them. I have never heard a negro speak to another in a quiet, subdued way. Why should they, indeed? They never attain the sober sense of manhood; they are a mere set of noisy, overgrown children. We had had as a fellow-passenger by the Magdalena, as far as Bahia, a Mr. B——, a little, old Scotchman, long settled in the province of Minasgeraes, who took no small pride in exhibiting a snow-white beard almost a yard in length, and a plentiful crop of hair of the same venerable hue. A sprightly English youth, who was one of the first to land, spread the report among the blacks that we had on board the famous "Wandering Jew." Our ship was soon surrounded by a multitude of boats crammed full of woolly heads, and, when the luckless Scotchman landed, he was, to his dismay, escorted everywhere by a long procession of shouting and screaming blackies. We thought he paid rather dear for his eccentricity.