I do not wonder the Brazilians are deficient in enterprise and energy. No physical force can withstand the enervating influences of this climate, and that listlessness which it induces. Not one exhilarating pulse heaves the heart. You feel as one walking in a half-exhausted receiver. The heat at this season is intense; the atmosphere often humid, and your whole frame yields to lassitude. How can a man attempt any thing great, when the least exertion throws him into perspiration, and even to dream seems an effort! It is as much as I can do to muster up resolution enough to pen this feeble page; and as for the reader he will probably fall asleep over it.
Saturday, Jan. 10. We had to-day a forcible specimen of Rio showers. We were in Rua d’Ouvidor, which is lined with the most fashionable shops in the city, when a black cloud, sailing down from the Corcovada peak, rolled out the lake, which lay in its bosom. The street was immediately filled with a flood of sufficient depth to float a family canoe. The inclined plane of the street carried it off in a rapid torrent. The sun again struck the pavement, and we were at liberty to renew our walk. Were such a flood to rush down Broadway, our New Yorkers would think their Croton reservoir had burst its last boundary. But here it creates as little commotion as the breaking of a bubble on the public fountain.
The fruits of Rio are delicious; richer oranges and bananas the houri never shook from the blooming boughs of Mahomet’s horticultural heaven. But the milk here, or the liquid sold under that name, has less of the lacteal element in it than water filtered through the “milky-way.” For this attenuated dilution our steward pays twenty cents the quart. Rumor says it is procured from the maternal functions of a tribe of slaves, who are wonderfully endowed in this particular, and who act as a class of wet-nurses to the community. Be the rumor true or not, it was very difficult to use it after this idea had once entered the imagination. It was hurrying one rather too fast into his second childhood. Would it bring back our first infancy, with its innocent glee, it would do. But life’s current has no refluent tide.
Sunday, Jan. 11. Mr. Wise and family, with several other ladies and gentlemen from the shore, attended divine service on board. We assembled on the spar-deck under an awning that protected every one from the sun’s rays. The leading points in the discourse turned on the value of the soul, as asserted in the nature of its powers and capacities, and in the humiliation and sufferings of the Son of God in its behalf. At the close of the service we all joined in singing the missionary hymn; the sacred music swelling up full and clear from so many deep-toned voices, floated far and wide over the still waters of the bay.
The Protestants in Rio have but one place of worship—the English chapel. They have been very unfortunate in the appointment of their chaplains. These appointments, and those of a diplomatic and political character, emanate substantially from the same source. Warm, devoted piety, in its unobtrusive meekness, seems to be overlooked in the glare of other qualities, or the erring partialities of private friendship. The last chaplain who served here for a time and left, went into one of the West India islands and set up a gaming table. The English chaplain at Trieste, as I had occasion to observe, was one of the most accomplished waltzers in the place. Such men have their place, perhaps, in this varied world, but it is not in the missionary field. He will bring very few sheaves home with him who has converted his sickle into a fiddle-bow; and he will find even these few made up mostly of those tares which the devil sowed while he frolicked or slept.
Monday, Jan. 12. A Brazilian gentleman of some note sent his card over the side of our ship this morning, and was invited on board by Capt. Du Pont, who received him and his lady at the gangway. He was tall, well proportioned, and in his carriage combined dignity with ease. His dark locks rolled out from under his chapeau in rich profusion. His face had that calmness and strength in its features which express force of intellect and benignity of heart. His dress was rich, but not gaudy; sable in hue, and well fitted to his stately person. He spoke in French, with a slight Brazilian accent. His questions were relevant and shrewd; his admiration of our frigate undisguised.
His lady was slightly below him in height, and more delicate in form. There was something peculiarly feminine in her air, and yet something which betrayed strength of character. Her small foot rose and lit on the deck with precision and airy lightness. Her countenance constantly changed in the tide of its expressions. The features were extremely regular, but you forgot their well-defined lines in the harmony of the whole. Her eyes were large, soft, and floating, and were shaded by long silken lashes, from which light and darkness seemed to fall. When some thought of deep animation struck her, the emotion flushed in her cheek like the blush of morn on a soft cloud. Her voice, though not deep, was musical, and flowed like the low sweet warble of a bird. Such was she, and such the one in whom her affections confided. They left the ship as they came, without ostentation. I have been told since that he is one of the first statesmen in Brazil.
Tuesday, Jan. 13. Visited the shore for the last time, as we are to weigh anchor to-morrow morning. Walked through Rua d’Ouvedor, the Broadway of Rio, which displays in its fancy shops the fabrics and fashions of foreign capitals; and where you can purchase every thing from a camel’s hair shawl to a shoe-string, and from a Damascus blade to a toothpick.
Crossed into the Rua d’Ourives, which flashes with all the jewels of Brazil. Their rays bewilder the eyes, and sometimes the wits. Doubloons, that are wanted for bread, are here parted with for a little pebble, that has nothing to recommend it but its light, and even that is a stolen ray. When Franklin’s niece wrote to him at Paris to send her some ostrich feathers for her winter bonnet, the republican minister wrote her—“Catch the old rooster, my child, and pull the feathers out of his tail, they will do just as well.” What is true of the rooster’s feather, in comparison with the plume of the ostrich, is equally true of the common pebble by the side of the diamond. The brightest ray is that which flashes from intellect; the warmest that which melts from the heart.
Of the hotels in Rio the best is the Pharoux—an extensive establishment, under Parisian arrangements, and evincing a great want of cleanliness. If by good fortune your tester-bar keeps out the mosquito, you fall into the hands of a still worse enemy in the shape of the flea. Besides these annoyances, the night tubs, emptied on the beach of the bay, waft to your window odors which make you prefer heat to air. The goddess Cloacina ought to visit this place and order her altars under ground, where they belong, instead of having them transported on the heads of negroes, under the shadows of night, and sending up their exhalations, which are enough to make the man in the moon hold his nose. But let that pass. Flowers spring from corruption. Man pollutes, but nature purifies.