RIO DE JANEIRO
New York G. P. Putnam & C^o.

O. CATETE
New York G. P. Putnam & C^o.

BRAZIL AND LA PLATA:

THE

PERSONAL RECORD OF A CRUISE.

BY

C. S. STEWART, A. M., U. S. N.,

AUTHOR OF

“A RESIDENCE AT THE SANDWICH ISLANDS,” “VISIT TO THE SOUTH SEAS,”

“SKETCHES IN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND,” ETC., ETC.

“Sail forth into the sea, O ship!

Through wind and wave right onward steer!

The moistened eye, the trembling lip,

Are not the signs of doubt and fear.—

Sail forth, nor fear to breast the sea!

Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee!”

Longfellow.

NEW YORK:

G. P. PUTNAM & CO., 321 BROADWAY.

1856.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856,

By G. P. PUTNAM & CO.,

In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States

for the Southern District of New York.

John F. Trow,

Printer and Stereotyper, 377 & 379 Broadway,

Corner of White street.

TO

MY DAUGHTERS,

THIS VOLUME

DRAWN FROM MANUSCRIPTS ADDRESSED TO THEM,

IS AFFECTIONATELY

Inscribed.

PREFACE.

Two inducements have led to the publication of the following volume: one, the favor with which similar works from my pen have been received; the other, the belief that a book of fact, for light reading, would be welcome to many, amid the floods of fiction of the present day.

It was with no purpose of making a book, that the record from which the volume is drawn was kept; on the contrary, the chief difficulty I have found, in fitting it for the press, has arisen, from its being so strictly personal and private. To remodel the manuscript so as to change its character in these respects, would have been a labor which I was unwilling to undertake; and to select from it such matter as might be at once suitable for publication, and acceptable to the general reader, without affecting the connection and unity of the whole, has proved a task not easily accomplished. In attempting it, I may have erred in judgment by putting into print, in some instances, what might better have been omitted; and again perhaps, in others by omitting what would have been welcomed by the reader.

Besides such matter as was essential in giving an outline of the cruise of the Congress, and such observation of the places visited by her, as would be expected in a work of the kind, I have thought it proper to retain of that which related specifically to the ship, sufficient to convey a general idea of life on board a man-of-war; and also, of that which referred to myself in my office, enough to throw light upon the position, duties, and influence of a chaplain in the naval service.

Should the volume meet with any degree of acceptance from the public in general, I shall be grateful; and should its circulation be limited to the decks of a man-of-war, or to the forecastle of a merchant-ship, the object in its publication will not be entirely lost.

C. S. S.

Riverside, 1856.

CONTENTS.

BRAZIL AND LA PLATA.

CHAPTER I.

U. S. Ship Congress, Capes of Virginia.

June 8th, 1850.—The time for my promised record has arrived: the Congress is at sea. This afternoon, with light and baffling winds, in a most lazy and listless manner she gained a distance of ten miles outside of Cape Henry, where, a breeze springing up sufficiently fresh to insure an offing before nightfall, the pilot took his leave for the land and we filled away upon the sea.

The 8th of June thus becomes for a second time an anniversary with me. Twenty years ago to-day, amid the bright beauty of a summer’s afternoon, I entered the bay of New York from a voyage of the world. But, in what wide contrast were the feelings of that hour with those of this in which I now write! Then, the sunshine of the soul, beaming from face to face and reflected from eye to eye, outrivalled the brightness of the joyous scene around. We were safely at home, after a long and adventurous absence, and within reach of the salutations and embraces of those we most loved. Now, there is sunshine neither without nor within: without, a thick and gloomy haze obscures its smiles, and within, the sadness of separation for years from home and country, with all the uncertainty of its issues, entirely beclouds them. There is nothing joyous to us in the “glad sea:” it does not dance in our eyes as it was wont, or as we have, at times at least, imagined it to do.

Little do they who may envy the lot of an officer in the navy—in its opportunities of varied travel, the knowledge it affords of men and things, and observation of nature in her most impressive forms—know at what a sacrifice of the affections, in their choicest exercise, and by what a penalty of wearisome duty, in irksome routine, the privileges of the position are bought. A sacrifice and a penalty which, when the novelty of travel and

“The magic charm of foreign land”

are passed, and the enthusiasm of youth is chastened by the experiences of maturer years, are felt with a keenness which, to be justly appreciated, must be personally known. The long conviction of this has been impressed afresh upon my mind by an incident of the passing hour. Mr. B——, a gentleman of wealth and distinguished social position in one of our principal cities, has for some days past been a guest of the ward-room mess, as the close friend of a fellow officer. He chose to accompany us to the open sea, and risk the discomfort of a night on board the pilot boat in a return to the shore, rather than take leave at an earlier moment. While the little craft was still hovering around us, waiting the signal to approach and take off its master and his passenger, the officer referred to, in momentary expectation of this second leavetaking of home, as it were, in parting from one who was going directly to his family, approaching me, exclaimed, in a spirit of half desperation—“Oh! Mr. S——, if I were in circumstances to live on shore with my family independently of my profession, I would go straight over the sides of the ship into that boat, and throw my commission to the winds. When I think of my wife and children, I feel as if I would dig and grub—do any thing for an honest living—rather than thus for three years leave them for a drudgery so distasteful to me as life on board a man-of-war in time of peace, with scarce an object but to get through an irksome duty.” Such must be the feelings, in a greater or less degree, of every sea-officer who has reached the meridian of life; and such would be my own, were there not connected with my office and its duties, issues, in hope at least, sufficient to outbalance all earthly considerations.

June 10th.—Little worthy of record, even in a journal for home, can be anticipated in a passage to Cuba; yet an incident has already occurred, which I would not pass over without notice. When Mr. B—— and the pilot left us on Saturday, the shades of a sombre evening were settling around us, and, as is customary on board a man-of-war in ordinary cruising, we reefed topsails for the night. This done, as the lighthouse fires began to gleam over the dark waters, from Cape Henry at one point and from Cape Charles at another, all hands were called to our first evening prayer on the quarter-deck. The deep twilight and the gloomy sky made the service the more impressive. Few on board, even among the officers, knew of the intention of Captain McIntosh with the sanction of Commodore McKeever, to have daily evening worship. One or two of those who did, had never witnessed such an observance on board ship, and doubted its expediency. But the impression made by it was at once effective and conclusive on the minds of those even who had most doubted. This they readily admitted to others as well as to myself: and while saying that it was the first time they had ever been present at such a service in the navy, added a hope that it would never be discontinued on board the Congress.

I was cheered by this frank avowal from those whose judgment I prized, and whose high-toned character carries with it predominating influence among their associates. Long experience warrants me in regarding this appointment as a most important auxiliary in the work of a chaplaincy, and an efficient promoter of discipline and good order on board a man-of-war. It is honorable to the principles and moral perceptions of those who framed the existing laws of the navy, that the second article in the code enjoins a daily service of worship on board every ship having a chaplain; and it is to be regretted that an injunction so salutary, in the moral economy of a crew, and in its general tendency, should in so few instances have been carried into effect.

The evening worship of the Cotter’s fireside—where,

“Kneeling down to Heaven’s Eternal King,

The saint, the father, and the husband prays,”

presents a picture which might well call forth the inspiration of the poet. In every grade of life, the social altar, encircled in the sincerity and simplicity of the Gospel, is in like manner an elevating and a touching sight. But if impressive in the comparative security of the shore, far from the fitful changes and dangers of the sea, how much more so when exhibited in the floating dwellings of those whose “home is on the deep.” If He, who alone “commands the winds and the waves, and they obey”—He, who “rides upon the whirlwind and directs the storm,” is the receiver of our thanksgiving and the only hearer of prayer, who sooner than the sailor should be found in supplication, or who be more frequent, or more fervent than he in praise?

Whatever may be the ultimate results in individual cases of such a service, few persons have for a first time witnessed it, without bearing testimony to its impressiveness on the eye, whatever may have been the influence felt upon the heart. But, it is not without cause, that I ever look for something more from it. The man-of-wars-man with all his recklessness, and, too often, degrading vices, has, in many cases, moral sensibilities and affections which bring him, where the means of grace are enjoyed, within the pale of hope; and I have never yet been long on board a ship where, to the preaching of the Gospel on the Sabbath, there has been added this daily evening prayer, without hearing from some troubled spirit the inquiry, “What shall I do to be saved?” followed, not unfrequently, by the resolution of the repenting prodigal, “I will arise and go to my Father, and will say to him, Father, I have sinned against Heaven and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.”

The excitement incident to our departure and the tedium of a listless day, with little progress till we were at sea, disposed all on board not on watch, to retire early; and for the most part such were soundly asleep, myself among the number, when suddenly aroused at midnight by the cry, “A man overboard!” There was little wind and not much sea; but the darkness was Egyptian; the rain poured in torrents; and while the booming thunder of an approaching gust rolled heavily over the deep, occasional flashes of vivid lightning added double intensity, in the intervals, to the blackness around. The rescue of the perishing man seemed hopeless. Supposing him of course to be one of the crew—perhaps the most active and gallant of their number, who had lost his foothold in some effort of duty in preparation for the coming squall—I felt disheartened by so sad a casualty at the very outset of our cruise. I thought of our evening prayer, and of the deep feeling with which, in its brief worship, we had supplicated the defences of the Almighty, and in confiding trust committed ourselves to his protecting care. Had the Lord not had respect to our offering—had the Almighty not regarded our prayer?

In the midst of thoughts such as these, it was a relief, though a melancholy one indeed, to learn that the wretch overboard was not any of the fine fellows whose physical aspect and general bearing had already won from me, in my position, a deep interest, but a poor drunkard, who had been brought on board in a state of delirium tremens, from the receiving ship, the day we left Norfolk; and who had at once been consigned, in care of the surgeons, to the sick-bay. In a paroxysm of madness, he had now rushed from his keepers below to the gun-deck; and, knocking down with a billet of wood caught up at the galley, one in pursuit, had plunged headforemost through an open bridle-port, to be seen and heard of no more.

The life-buoys were cut away, the ship put about, boats lowered and sent off, at the risk of life both to officers and men, in the pitchy darkness and rapidly approaching squall: blue lights were burned, and repeated shouts through a trumpet made, in hope of some response, but all in vain, in rescuing him from his doom. After the first plunge, nothing was seen or heard from him. A miserable madman from strong drink, the accompaniments of his end on earth—the midnight gloom, the angry lightning, the muttering thunder, and the moaning wind, were befitting the fate of an immortal spirit “unanointed—unannealed,” thus passing into the eternal world. He was an old man-of-wars-man, and, three years ago, in a similar condition and near the same place, jumped overboard from a frigate the first night from port, and was with great difficulty saved. How faithful the admonition, “He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.”

Yesterday, the Sabbath, was a bright and beautiful day, with favoring winds and a smooth sea. The quarter-deck, screened from the sun by awnings, was our chapel; the capstan, spread with the stripes and stars of an ensign, our reading desk and pulpit; and the band, with sacred music, both our organ and choir. My sermon, suggested by the incident of the preceding night, was an exposition of the evils, physical, moral and spiritual, of intemperance, and the frightful condition of such as become its hopeless victims. The fatal proofs of the truths advanced, in the bodily and mental state of him who had just perished before our eyes as it were, caused the most fixed attention to be given to what was said, both by the officers and men.

I was happy to be told by the captain, immediately after the service, that it had been officially reported to him the day before, that more than three hundred of the crew, or two thirds of the whole number of foremast hands, did not draw the ration of rum furnished them by the government: this of their own voluntary choice, no persuasion having yet been used on board to influence any one on the subject. An encouraging fact certainly, at the offset, in this essential point in the morals of the sailor, and one that ought to be suggestive to our national legislators of the duty of striking at once from the list of naval allowances, a poison tending to the destruction of both body and soul. The day was a happy one to me, in the retirement of my own little room, as well as in the public discharge of my duties. A long and kind letter from an officer, in answer to a note with which I had returned one given to me to read, was so encouraging to me in my office, and so full of promise spiritually for himself, as deeply to affect me. I could but regard it as a token of grace from Him in whose hands are all hearts, and as an intimation of the good that may be accomplished on board, even in the most influential quarters.

Our worship, at sunset, was commenced, after an air of sacred music from the band, by the reading of Addison’s beautiful hymn—

“How are thy servants blest, O Lord!

How sure is their defence!

Eternal Wisdom is their guide,

Their help, Omnipotence.”

To-day we are crossing the gulf stream under a fresh breeze amounting almost to a gale: a “smoky southwester” with a short and high sea, into which the frigate plunges deeply, taking in large quantities of water forward. This rushing aft, as the ship rises, makes the gun as well as the spar-deck wet and uncomfortable. The wardroom, with all the stern and air-ports closed, is dark and stifling in its atmosphere, and every thing on board partakes largely of the disagreeable at sea. The motion is so great that nothing can be left by itself; and, at breakfast, each of us secured, as best he could, the very indifferent fare that came in his way: bread like so much lead; biscuits which, bagged and netted, might have passed inspection as grape-shot; rancid butter; addled eggs; and execrable stuff under the names of tea and coffee! As I cast my eyes over the mess-table and its surroundings, in the gloomy twilight falling from the hatchway above, and upon a disconsolate-looking and silent set of companions, I could not avoid contrasting the whole, involuntarily, with a breakfast room in my mind, on shore, in the fresh beauty of a morning in June—with a brightly gleaming lawn in front; the mingled bloom of the rose and the honeysuckle at the windows; the cheerful family group; and the varied fare fresh from the garden, the farm-house, and the dairy—and sigh at the difference in the pictures. Such a day as this, on shipboard in the gulf stream, with its discomfort in almost every form, would be enough to make a landsman content, for the rest of his life, with the blessings of the shore.

Apropos of our steward. We have been sadly imposed on by the professed qualifications of this important functionary. Claiming to be perfect in all, we find he knows nothing of any of his appropriate duties. The day we left Norfolk he gave a characteristic proof of his fitness for the office. It was at dinner, our guest Mr. B—— being of the number. Among the courses was a salad dressed by our maitre d’hôte. Mr. B—— was first served with it. I was the next to take from the dish, and in doing so, happening to look towards the visitor, was struck by a very peculiar expression of the eye and countenance as he tasted it—a blending of surprise, comical inquiry, and effort at self-command, while the fork was very quietly returned to his plate, as if he were done with it. Suspecting the salad to be the origin of all this, and hastily testing the point by a mouthful, I found to my utter disgust, that, in obedience to the direction of the caterer to use plenty of oil in the dressing, he had, in ignorance of any other, dashed the whole most copiously with the vilest lamp oil! The effect upon the palate can be more readily imagined than described.

June 12th.—A breeze from the north-east, which set in last night, promises to prove a regular trade-wind, and we are running rapidly before it on our course. You may easily follow our track, by marking, on a map, a pretty straight line from the mouth of the Chesapeake to the channel of the sea, between the Islands of St. Domingo and Porto Rico. It is our intention to pass between these, by what is named on the charts of the West Indies, the Mona Passage, and then lay a course by the south side of Cuba to Havana. Should it be asked why we go, seemingly, so much out of our way and so far round; I answer, that for a large ship, it is not only the safest, but, in point of time, the shortest route. The strong and adverse current of the gulf stream, and the intricate and hazardous navigation of the Florida channel, are the objections to the direct course along the coast. The weather is now fine—in strong contrast with that last described; and, at night, we have a splendid moon, enticing to constant visits in thought and affection to Riverside. Beautiful as moonlight is at sea, I must confess to a preference, in the enjoyment of it in the month of June, for the south-west corner of a verandah on the banks of the Hudson.

I have, thus far, been giving my time chiefly to visits through my floating parish—from the quarters of the Commodore to those of “Jemmy Ducks,” and “Jack of the dust,” as the feeder of the pigs and poultry, and the sweeper of the Purser’s store-rooms, in shipboard nomenclature, are respectively styled. Almost every day, since coming on board, I have discovered here and there a shipmate of some former cruise; and perceive hourly evidence of having through these—in part at least—already gained the marked good will of the crew. I am quite at home in all my walks among them; and have every reason to be more than satisfied—to be truly thankful—in my official relation with them.

The Congress, a fifty-gun ship, is one of the finest vessels of her class. She is a model of strength and symmetry in hull and spars, and of imposing and effective equipment in her batteries and armament; never failing to attract the notice of all who have an eye to appreciate a chef d’œuvre in naval architecture. She is, too, a swift messenger over the waters, as well as a tower of strength and beauty on the sea.

The intellectual and moral tastes of many of my immediate associates and equals in naval rank, are such as not only to make them agreeable companions, but also to give to our mess in general, by their example and influence, a high-toned and elevated character; and I regard it a providence of special kindness that, in those chief in authority and executive power, I find cordial friends personally, and firm supporters in my duty officially. Their views, too, and their purposes, in regard to discipline and naval reform, harmonize with my own, in the persuasion that kindness is the surest key to the human heart; and that, in government, the law of love is more effectual than the rule of fear. I felt this particularly, in a long conversation with the commodore this morning, during a walk on the quarter-deck, and at breakfast with him afterwards. On this point I like his views much; and augur great good from them, in the support they will lead him to extend, officially, to the executive officer of the ship, in carrying out a system of internal rule based upon the principle of kindness and good will, of the practical well-working of which he is entirely persuaded.

The crew, physically, are a fine set of men: healthful, athletic and young, the average age of the four hundred foremast hands scarcely exceeding twenty-five years. This general youthfulness of the ship’s company encourages me to hope much from them as subjects of moral culture. They are more likely, than seamen of a more advanced age, to have had the benefit of a religious training in the Sabbath schools now so universally established in most sections of our country; and, thus, be more susceptible to moral impressions and persuasion, should they not have already felt the influence of the general improvement in the character of sailors which, confessedly, has taken place within the last ten or fifteen years. Still, at best, a man-of-war is a sterile and rocky field for spiritual labor. There is ever on board a large ship of the kind, a greater or less number of reckless and desperately wicked men: some who have been convicts and the inmates of state prisons and penitentiaries, and more who, long under the surveillance of the police, and pressed by close pursuit, have sought refuge at the rendezvous and receiving ship, from the merited penalties of the law. Of these last we are certain of having quite a company, composed pretty equally of ‘Southwark killers,’ ‘Schuylkill rangers,’ ‘Baltimore rowdies,’ ‘Bowery boys,’ and ‘Five Pointers.’ The whole number of both these classes, however, does not amount to more than fifty; the hundreds of others on board are either honest-hearted and true sailors, or inexperienced and raw landsmen: ‘good men,’ according to the ethics of the sea. The “baser sort,” though comparatively so few in number, are ever first in gaining prominence and notoriety on board, by bringing themselves, through a manifestation of their evil propensities, in contact with the discipline of the ship, while the true sailor and old man-of-wars-man, in the quiet discharge of their duty remain for a time unappreciated, and perhaps personally unknown.

To an inexperienced eye, a man-of-war with her crew of five hundred, seems only like a bee-hive full of confusion and uproar, while, in truth, there is throughout in every department perfect organization and order. Every individual has his class, his number, and his station; the duty of each in his place is clearly defined; and whatever is to be done is accomplished with much of the regularity of a machine operating through the same number of wheels. To the same eye there would appear no signs of caste or grades of distinction, moral or social, in the general mass: there would be only so many hundred sailors, seemingly alike in all respects. Little would be dreamed of the extremes, not only of moral character, existing among them, but of social distinction also—from the exclusives of the “upper ten,” priding themselves on moving only in the first circles, through three or four marked sets to the canaille, utterly below recognition or social intercourse. There is a marked difference, too, among many, in the outer man. Though the dress of all is uniform in color and general material, still there is often the widest difference in the quality, fitting, and make of the entire wardrobe; and, while one is so careless and slovenly in his attire, as to require the daily inspection of an officer, others are perfect sea-dandies, as fastidiously neat and clean in person, as the whole series of brushes known to the toilette-table can make them; and as fond of being assured of this, by repeated inspections and last glances in the miniature mirrors carried in their hats, or about their persons, as a beau of the first water on shore, before a Psyche in preparation for the ball or opera.

After the public worship of the last Sabbath, Mr. T——, the first lieutenant, who has had long experience in Sabbath schools, both as a teacher and superintendent, aided me in the formation of one among the twenty-four boys on board, from ten to fifteen years of age: each of us taking charge of a class of twelve. The value of a voluntary agency of this kind, from an officer of commanding influence, can scarcely be over-estimated. My next attempt, as a means of good, will be the establishment of Bible classes among the men. If successful in this, I am happy to know that others of the officers stand ready to assist me in the like manner.

It is an interesting fact, and one strikingly illustrative of the improved and elevated tone of morals in the navy, that of the fourteen gentlemen constituting the wardroom mess, five are professedly religious men of consistent and exemplary character.

CHAPTER II.

At Sea.

June 19th.—Two days ago, at noon, land was descried from the mast-head. We were approaching the Bahama Islands, not in the direction of the Mona Passage, but in that of the Caycos, more to the west, the wind having headed us off from our first course. During the previous night, we had passed over a point on the ocean, memorable in its historic interest, where, on the very eve of joyful triumph, the illustrious discoverer of the western world suffered the severest trial of his daring voyage. It was here that the discouragement and fears of his followers in their frail barks, approached desperation and open mutiny; and confident hope had well nigh ended in disappointment, and triumphant success in failure. It was impossible to traverse the same waters, without recalling vividly to mind the scene of trial and conflict which they had witnessed more than three hundred and fifty years before, and sympathizing afresh with the great navigator in his distress; or to hear the cry, “land ho!” without recurring in thought to the devout exultations of his heart, when, in the watches of the night, the interrupted glimmerings of a distant light peered upon eyes eagerly searching its gloom, dispelling for ever the fears of his companions, and crowning his adventurous enterprise with imperishable honor.

The land descried aloft, soon became visible from the deck. It was the great Caycos, the most eastern of the Bahamas, a low, flat island of sand, surrounded by extensive shoals. There was little to interest in its appearance; a mere tufting of bushes on the water, along the line of the horizon, of which we soon lost sight. The next morning, and for the rest of the day, the west end of St. Domingo was in view, furnishing in its turn abundant subjects for musing in the tragic scenes of the revolt of 1791. Before nightfall the eastern extremity of Cuba was also in sight. Both are lofty and mountainous, but less picturesque in general outline than the islands of the South Seas. The sail of the afternoon and evening was delightful,—the perfection of its kind. The trade-wind was fresh and balmy, and so steady, that the lofty mass of canvas we spread to it was as motionless as if it were a fixture on the sea; while the ocean, of the most beautiful tint of marine blue, was every where gemmed with white-caps of the brilliancy of so much snow.

June 20th.—Hitherto the duty of the ship has been carried on admirably under a kind and humane discipline. The lash, formerly in such constant requisition on board a man-of-war, in bringing a new crew under ready control, has neither been heard nor seen. A fight, however, which came off a day or two since, between two of the marines, led to a kind of drumhead court-martial, yesterday, and to the punishment of the parties this morning, with the cat-o’-nine-tails. It is the first instance with us of such a revolting spectacle, and I most devoutly hope it may be the last. I am sure it will, unless there be those on board so incorrigible and so determined to subject themselves to it, that no other mode of discipline will meet their case. Before we left port, Captain McIntosh, in an excellent address, after the first reading in public of the “articles of war,” assured the crew with deep feeling, that nothing could give him greater pleasure than to return to the United States and have it in his power to report to the Navy Department that a lash had never been given on board the Congress during the cruise. He reiterated the same sentiment this morning to the ship’s company, mustered to witness the punishment, with the fresh avowal of his utter unwillingness to resort to so degrading a mode of chastisement: adding “that the existing law, however, made the duty imperative upon him as an ultimate means of enforcing his command, and protecting his ship from insubordination and misrule; and that it should be remembered by all, whenever the necessity was forced on him of administering this punishment, that it would only be through the deliberate purpose and choice of any one subjecting himself to it.”

The cat-o’-nine-tails, as a mode of punishment, is a relic of barbarism disgraceful to the age in which we live, and antagonistic to its entire spirit. The wonder is, not that men-of-wars men are scarce, and recruits for the navy few, but that, with such a barbarous punishment legalized, an American sailor can be found willing to place himself in a position in which he can, by any contingency, be exposed to the disgrace of its infliction.

In place of attempting a description of the spectacle, as just witnessed by us, I will substitute one, which happens to be before me, of a similar scene, from the pen of an officer in the British Navy. It is more graphic than any I could furnish, and as truthful to the reality, in its leading features, as can well be pictured. It is drawn from his early experience as a midshipman. “I had not been many days on board,” he says, “before I heard a hollow sound reverberating round the frigate’s decks, and which seemed to bring a shade of gloom over the faces of all around me. Again the words were repeated, ‘All hands, Ahoy!’ I eagerly inquired the meaning of this mystery, and was answered by a lad about sixteen years of age, ‘It is all hands to punishment, my boy; you are going to see a man flogged.’

“The idea of a man being flogged at all, under any possible circumstances, had never before entered my brain. I had as yet no notions that such a degree of barbarity could exist; I had indeed known that boys were flogged, but how they could horse a man was to me a mystery. My reflections were broken in upon by observing all my messmates busily engaged in putting on their cocked-hats and side-arms. And as this was the first time I had sported my new dirk, I felt very strange and mingled sensations, as I stepped forth on the quarter-deck. The marines were drawn up on the larboard side of the deck, with their bayonets fixed, and their officers with their swords drawn, and resting against their shoulders. On the main deck the seamen had all assembled in a dense crowd around the hatchway, and the said hatchway was ornamented with several gratings fixed up on one end, evidently for some purpose which I had never yet seen accomplished. The officers in their full uniforms, with swords, and cocked hats, were pacing the decks: but all was still and solemn silence. At length the captain came forth from his cabin, the marines carrying arms at his first appearance on the quarter-deck. The first lieutenant, taking off his hat, approached him, and reported that ‘all was ready.’

“As the captain came up to the gangway, he removed his hat; which was followed by all the men and officers becoming uncovered. Then, taking a printed copy of the articles of war, he read aloud a few lines, which denounced the judgment of a court-martial on any person who should be guilty of some particular offence, the nature of which I did not understand. This done, he ordered Edward Williams to strip; adding, ‘You have been guilty of neglect of duty, sir, in not laying in off the foretopsail yard when the first lieutenant ordered you; and I will give you a d——d good flogging.’ By this time the poor fellow had taken off his jacket and shirt, which was thrown over his shoulders by the master-at-arms, while two quartermasters lashed the poor fellow’s elbows to the gratings, so that he could not stir beyond an inch or two either way. It was in vain that he begged and besought the captain and first lieutenant to forgive him; protesting that he did not hear himself called, in consequence of having a bad cold, which rendered him almost deaf. His entreaties were unheeded; and at the words, ‘Boatswain’s mate, give him a dozen,’ a tall, strong fellow came forward with a cat-o’-nine-tails, and, having taken off his own jacket, and carefully measured his distance, so as to be able to strike with the full swing of his arm, he flung the tails of the cat around his head, and with all the energy of his body brought them down upon the fair, white, plump back of poor Williams. A sudden jerk of the poor fellow almost tore away the gratings from their position; he gave a scream of agony, and again begged the captain, for the sake of Jesus Christ, to let him off. I was horror-struck on seeing nine large welts, as big as my fingers, raised on his back, spreading from his shoulder-blades nearly to his loins; but my feelings were doomed to be still more harrowed. For as soon as the tall boatswain’s mate had completed the task of running his fingers through the cords to clear them and prevent the chance of a single lash being spared the wretched sufferer, he again flung them around his head to repeat the blow. Another slashing sound upon the naked flesh, another shriek and struggle to get free succeeded,—and then another and another, till the complement of twelve agonizing lashes was completed. The back was, by this time, nearly covered with deep red gashes; the skin roughed up and curled in many parts, as it does when a violent blow causes an extensive abrasion. The poor man looked up with an imploring eye toward the first lieutenant, and groaned out, ‘Indeed, sir, as I hope to be saved, I did not hear you call me.’ The only reply was on the part of the captain, who gave the word, ‘another boatswain’s mate!’ ‘Oh, God, sir, have mercy on me!’ was again the cry of the poor man: ‘Boatswain’s mate, go on; and mind that you do your duty!’ the only answer.

“The effect of one hundred and eight cuts upon his bare back had rendered it a fearful sight, but when these had been repeated with all the vigor of a fresh and untired arm, the poor fellow exhibited a sad spectacle indeed. The dark red of the wounds had assumed a livid purple, the flesh stood up in mangled ridges, and the blood trickled here and there like the breaking out of an old wound. The pipes of the boatswain and his mates now sounded, and they called ‘all hands up anchor!’ The gratings were quickly removed, and of all the human beings who had witnessed the cruel torture on the body of poor Edward Williams, not one seemed in the slightest degree affected. All was bustle and activity and apparent merriment as they went to work in obedience to the call.”

In this account there is no exaggeration: no exaggeration of the usual manner of inflicting such punishment; no exaggeration of the triviality of the alleged offence; no exaggeration of the earnest asseveration of innocence; no exaggeration of the hardening effect of the scene upon the spectators. I have known men to be thus flogged for acts or omissions equally if not more trivial—not only singly, but, in one instance at least, a dozen at a time, and that, too, where it was known that one only of the number was really in fault. Because some one of a quarter watch in the top did a careless and lubberly thing, in the estimation of an officer, though doubtless, from the circumstances of the case, accidentally, and none of his topmates would give up his name, the whole watch were ordered on deck, and, in succession, received a dozen lashes each.

The entire experience of the writer of the above account, as to this punishment, corroborates fully the opinion I have formed from my own observation as to its effects—that in all its bearings it has a tendency to demoralize and harden rather than to reform. He proceeds to state that the captain under whose command the case of flogging described occurred, changed ships not long afterwards with one who abominated the system of corporal punishment; and adds, “For four years I served under his orders, and witnessed no more of the inhuman practice. The men were allowed to go on shore frequently sixty and seventy at a time, and in all respects were treated so kindly that but one case of desertion occurred during all that period. The captain made it a point to visit the whole crew when at dinner, to see, himself, that they had every thing they required to make them comfortable. This he did every day; and the sick were always fed from his own table. The result of this was that our ship was the smartest frigate on the station, and fought one of the most glorious actions which ever graced the annals of the British Navy.”

His experience in the matter did not end here. He thus proceeds: “I joined another ship, the captain of which was wont to say, ‘I never forgive a first offence—for if there was no first offence there could be no second.’ Profane swearing and drunkenness, he never by any accident forgave. The result was a flogging match every Monday morning, and very frequently once or twice in the week besides. The crew grew worse and worse from this treatment, till, at length, there was scarcely a sober seaman or marine on board the ship, though her complement was about six hundred men and boys. The more drunken they became the more he flogged them; but the crime and punishment seemed to react on each other, and the ship became at last so very notorious for the cat that he was jested upon it by his fellow captains, and the men deserted at every opportunity.”

I believe the experience, thus presented, of these two ships, to be a fair exposition of the general and direct tendency of the two systems. Revolting as punishment with the ‘colt’ and ‘cat’ ever has been to me, and often as my blood has been made to boil in witnessing it, a want of practical knowledge in the case led me, for a time, reluctantly to acquiesce in the opinion universally held, so far as I could discover, by those most experienced in naval rule, that it was indispensable as a means of discipline on board a man-of-war. But the teachings of my nature, that this is an error, have been corroborated by long observation; and had no previous conviction of this been fastened on my mind, the success of the executive officer of the Congress in devising and substituting more humanizing modes of punishment for transgressions of law and delinquencies in duty, would have gone far in persuading me to it. I doubt not that should the law of the lash be abrogated by our national legislature to-morrow,[^[1]] and the change be met by the enactment of a wise and philanthropic code of naval rule, the discipline and efficiency of the service would be more perfect than ever before.

[1]. Flogging was abolished, both in the navy and mercantile marine, a few months after the above was written.

June 24th.—

“The twilight is sad and cloudy,

The wind blows wild and free,

And like the wings of sea-birds

Flash the white caps of the sea.”

So sings Longfellow, and such is the imagery around us from the passing of a heavy squall. The rushing wind and the dampness brought with it, from the approaching rain, are welcome and most refreshing, after two or three days and nights on the south side of Cuba, sultry almost to suffocation. Whether correct in our recollections or not, all hands agree that, in no part of the world in which we have been, either on land or at sea, have we before suffered so much from the intensity of the heat. Notwithstanding, I was never in the enjoyment of more vigorous health or in more elastic spirits.

In the afternoon of my last date, we had a distant view of a part of the island of Jamaica, as well as of San Domingo and Cuba: a sail, too, was in sight, and the smoke of a steamer marked on the horizon—all taking much from the solitariness of our position. The next morning we were slowly advancing westward, along the lofty, but mist covered and cloud obscured mountain range of the Sierra de Cobra, beneath a point in which lie the port and city of St. Jago de Cuba. At sunset the same evening we were directly abreast Cape de Cruz, in full view of the coast, but at too great a distance to make out the distinctive features of the landscape, even with the best glasses. We are now off the Isle of Pines, famed in the annals of the Buccaneers of the olden time, and a haunt of pirates in our own day.

Light and baffling winds, with alternate calms, have made our progress slow. The tedium of the time has been relieved in part by a first interchange of dinner parties between the wardroom mess and the commodore and captain. The kindest feeling exists among the officers of all grades on board, and these reunions, where the formality of official intercourse gives place for the time to the free interchange of thought and feeling, and of sympathy in intellect and taste, are salutary in their influences on both mind and heart. The Sabbath is the day usually chosen on board a man-of-war for these courtesies; but it has been unanimously decided, by our mess, that the entertainments given in the wardroom shall be on a week day.

During the continuance of moonlight in the evening and early part of the night, the enjoyment of it on deck in quiet musings, after the heat of the day, seemed the prevailing mood of the ship’s company. The band in whole or in part, at times, added music to the sympathies which were sending our thoughts and affections homeward by the way of the moon. But now that she is on the wane, and reserves her beams for the later watches of the night, the sailors cheer themselves in the darkness, by singing on the spar-deck, grouped in their respective limits from the fife-rail to the forecastle. Last evening, even the quarter-deck was invaded, under the sanction of an officer, by a party of negro minstrels: not such mock performers as are heard on shore under the name, but of the genuine type, consisting of the servants of the wardroom. For half an hour or more they sang, in practised harmony and with effect, many of the more sentimental and popular of the negro melodies; while forward and in the gangways there was echoed forth, in varied song, the feats of warrior knights and the love of ladies fair. Others of the crew were, at the same time, listening in groups between the guns along the entire deck, to a rehearsal by their shipmates of tragic stories of shipwreck, piracy and murder; to recitations from tragedies and comedies; to close arguments on various topics—navigation and seamanship, politics, morals and religion—and, at one point, to a lecture on history, of which I overheard enough to learn the subject to be the life and achievements of the brave Wallace, dilated upon in the broad dialect of the “land o’ cakes!”

Light-heartedness and contentment seem every where to prevail, and all manifest by their conduct, as well as by word, that they feel themselves to be on board a favored ship.

Had I time for the record, you would be amused by many things I hourly hear and see, in my walks of leisure. To-day, while on the quarter-deck after the men’s dinner, I overheard one of the messenger boys, who had just come from this meal, say to a companion, “I tell you what, Jim, I couldn’t eat much of that dinner: old mahogany and hard tack, is what I call pretty tough eating. To-morrow too is bean day, and I wouldn’t give a penny for a bushel of them.” A sprightly young sailor who completed an apprenticeship in the service, happening to pass at the time, stopped for a moment, and with an assumed air of indignant reproof, exclaimed, “Why, you ungrateful young cub!—you growling at Uncle Sam’s grub? why you ought to be down upon your knees thanking God that you have so good an uncle to give you any thing!”

Just afterwards, I fell into conversation with an old salt who had been with me, in the Delaware line-of-battle ship, in 1833. After mutual inquiries of various officers and men who were shipmates with us then; what had become of this one and what of that—he said, in all honesty of heart, and with a most lugubrious expression of face, “And there was Lieut. M—— too: they tell me, sir, he stepped out entirely, the other day at the Hospital!”—meaning that he had died there. I never heard the expression in such a connection before, and could not avoid being struck, not only with its oddity, but also with its force.

June 29th.—Just at nightfall, on my last date, we doubled Cape Antonio, the extreme westerly point of Cuba, at a distance of ten or twelve miles. It is long and low, covered with dark woods, and, in general aspect, not unlike the coasts of Long Island and New Jersey, as seen from the sea. As soon as our course was turned northward for Havana, the regular wind became adverse to us, and the next morning we were in the Florida Channel, far from the land and a hundred miles and more from our port. The tediousness of a dead beat to windward was relieved, however, by the greater freshness and elasticity of the air, in comparison with that on the south side of Cuba. For two or three evenings, here, the sunsets were among the most gorgeous I recollect. The whole western hemisphere, filled with fantastic and richly colored clouds, glowed with a brilliancy and glare of crimson light, as if the entire sea beneath were one vast bed of volcanic fire.

After two days we again made the land, with fine views during the afternoon, of two lofty ranges of mountains in the interior of the island—the Sierra del Rosario and the Sierra de los Organos or Organ mountains; but it was not till last night that we reached the parallel of Havana. At 10 o’clock the Moro light, at the entrance of the port, was descried, some fifteen miles distant. Its brilliant flashings, through the darkness of an unsettled sky, came cheerily upon the sight over the troubled water, in the assurance they gave of our true position, amid the changing currents and hazardous navigation of these straits.

Before daybreak this morning we fell in with and spoke the sloop-of-war Germantown, Captain Lowndes, cruising off the harbor. I was early on deck. The morning was fresh and beautiful, but the shores less bold and striking than I had anticipated; and the mountains in view were more remote. Still the landscape was pleasing in its verdure, though neither varied nor picturesque in its outline. Having been lying to for the night, we were still eight or ten miles from the entrance of the harbor; but the Moro Castle and city were in distinct view—the former, surmounted by its pharos towering loftily on a precipitous cliff of rock on the left of the entrance, and the latter stretching beneath it to the right, in a long line of whiteness on a level with the sea.

The scene increased momentarily in interest. A fresh trade-wind, creating a sea which, in the brightness of the sun, tossed up jets of diamonds on every side, hurried us rapidly forward, under topsails and topgallant-sails only: the Germantown, a beautiful craft, followed closely in our wake, fluttering over the water with the lightness and buoyancy of a bird. There were besides some eight or ten square-rigged merchant vessels in sight, under various degrees of sail—some entering and others leaving port. While in the midst of these, the Germantown and Congress interchanged salutes, with pretty effect on the general picture.

The wind had now increased to a half gale; a pilot had boarded us, and we bore away with a rush for the Moro, which immediately overhangs the entrance to the port. This is narrow—very narrow; seemingly a mere creek, a few ships’ length only in width. It runs at right angles with the line of coast along which we were flying. This made it necessary in entering, to haul suddenly, from a free course, closely on the wind. We did so, at the speed of a race-horse, almost grazing the surf-lashed rocks over which tower the frowning battlements of the Moro, and within biscuit throw, as it were, of the batteries of the Punta on the opposite side—the pilot, momentarily alternating the exclamation “Hard a port!” “Hard a starboard!” “Steady—steady!” kept the men at the helm on the full spring in shifting the wheel from side to side; while at the same time the yards were filled with the crew reducing sail to bare poles, as if by magic, under the trumpet orders of the first lieutenant. I thought it one of the most exciting moments, and one of the most beautiful sights, in the navigation of so large a ship, I had ever witnessed.

In less time than is required thus to state it, we were transferred from the tossings of a rough sea, to the glassy surface of an apparent river. The scene on either hand was picturesque and animated. On one side, were the terraced heights adjoining the Moro, grim with the defences of war, relieved here and there by sentries and groups of soldiers, lounging about the batteries; and, on the other, level with the water, a range of stone quays, lined with shipping and coasting craft, and covered with sailors, boatmen, negro porters, and stevedores. Beyond rose the buildings of the city, painted in every variety of light and gay colors, and overtopped by the time-stained domes and towers of the churches and other public structures. The aspect of the whole was so entirely transatlantic, that I could scarce resist the illusion that I was again in old Spain, and that it was “fair Cadiz” I saw stretched before me. The gallantry of our entrance had attracted the gaze of the thousands crowding the quay in its whole length, and murmurs of admiration were every where heard at the beauty of our frigate, and the dashing style in which she glided rapidly along under the headway brought in by her from the sea.

At the end of half a mile, the straight and narrow inlet expands into a round basin, five or six miles in circumference. Near the centre of this we dropped anchor: having the city and its defences towards the sea on one side of us, and green hills tufted with palm-trees and dotted with cottages and country seats on the other. The harbor is a gem of beauty, capable of containing the navies of half the world. Five Spanish men-of-war, including a ship-of-the-line, are moored within pistol shot of us, and the Germantown immediately at our stern. The dropping of the anchor was followed by salutes from our batteries of twenty-one guns to the flag of Spain, seventeen to that of the Spanish admiral, in command, and nine in honor of Mr. Campbell, the American consul, who soon boarded the Congress.

CHAPTER III.

Havana.

July 1st.—The object of a visit by the Congress to Cuba, before proceeding to her station on the coast of Brazil, is to bring to a close the negotiations which have been for some time pending with the authorities here, in reference to our filibustering compatriots, the prisoners of Contoy.

The report made by Captain Lowndes of the Germantown, on boarding us in the offing, and by Mr. Campbell afterwards, of the state of public feeling in reference to these, and to the citizens of the United States in general, led us to apprehend there would be great difficulty in securing an amicable arrangement of the point at issue—the disposition to be made of the prisoners. The excitement and indignation of the Spanish population of the city, on the subject of the attempted invasion, had been great; and manifested especially, within a few days, against Mr. Campbell, for sentiments on the subject, exposed in a correspondence between him and the Secretary of State, recently called for by Congress, printed in the newspapers in the United States, and republished here. At one time the consulate was believed to be in great danger of violence from the mob; and the excitement is still far from being allayed. In view of this representation we apprehended a long delay. The first interview, however, between Commodore McKeever and the captain-general, the Conde d’Alcoy, relieved us from all fear of this. Every disposition was manifested to receive favorably the mission of the Congress; and the belief is that the special matter of negotiation will be speedily adjusted.

The commodore and suite were received, at the vice-regal palace, in the most frank and cordial manner, and the personal relations of the treating parties placed, at once, on a friendly footing. The governor-general treated lightly the fear that had been suggested, of violence to the consulate, avowing that all property and life in the city and island were in the keeping of the government; and that safety in both was more sure to none, than to the representatives and citizens of the United States. Summoning the chief of police at once to his presence, the following dialogue in substance took place between them. “Have you heard, sir, of an apprehended attack by the populace upon the American consulate?” “No, sir.” “Do you believe, sir, that any such danger exists?” “No, sir.” “Could a project of the kind be in agitation without your knowledge?” “No, sir.” “See to it, sir,” added the count, with an intonation of voice not to be mistaken, as he dismissed the functionary, “that nothing of the kind takes place!”

The truth is, the warmth of sympathy felt by some of our fellow-citizens for the would-be revolutionists within Cuba and the marauding filibusters without, backed by visions of national and it may be personal aggrandizement, through annexation, lead them to magnify every grievance imaginary or real, and to fan into a flame each spark of ill will elicited by the collisions that occur, in the hope of embroiling our government with the crown of Spain; and, through conflict and conquest, of making sure to us this choicest gem left in her colonial tiara.

That the Cubans are most fearfully oppressed by the vice-regal rulers here, and that the government under which they suffer is the most rigorous military despotism in the civilized world, no one with the slightest knowledge of the condition of the island can doubt. The simple fact that twenty-four millions of dollars are annually wrung, by various forms of taxation, from a white population of little more than six hundred thousand, proves it, without an enumeration of the different unjust monopolies, the prohibitory imposts upon the first necessaries of life, the depreciating levies on all the products of labor, and the vampire presence of a foreign soldiery, sufficient to furnish a constant sentinel, it is said, to every four white men in the country; or, a reference to the fact that there are no common schools—no liberty of the press, no liberty of speech, and scarce the liberty of thought. Still, sad as the truth of such a condition is, it does not justify piratical invasion from without, or agitating and revolutionizing influence on our part within.

The probability is that the stay of the Congress will be very brief; and that, consequently, my personal knowledge of Havana and the Habaneros will be limited to a hasty glance, through such loop-holes of observation as I may accidentally light upon.

The beauty of the panorama from the anchorage is so varied and so striking, that in the enjoyment of it, I have been satisfied thus far without a visit to the shore, though this is the third day, including the Sabbath, since our arrival. While examining closely with a glass again and again, every feature of the open country to the east and south, I could but indulge in many a reminiscence of tropical life at the Sandwich Islands and South Seas, awakened by the plumed palm and broad-leafed banana, the brightly gleaming hill sides and velvet-like slopes characteristic of the scenery. On the opposite sides of the harbor, the city and its fortresses,—its private dwellings and public buildings, its towers and domes and embattled walls,—are open to like inspection through the same medium, a sea-telescope of surpassing excellence.

While in the midst of these observations this morning, screened from the mid-day sun by the well-spread awnings of the poop-deck, my attention was drawn to a movement near at hand on board, occasioned by a succession of visits of ceremony from the “powers that be” in this viceroyal dependency, to our commander-in-chief and our captain. I am told, whether correctly or not, that the same policy which of yore prevented Ferdinand and Isabella from keeping faith with Columbus, in his appointment as viceroy of the New World with undivided power, is still adhered to by the Spanish throne. The supreme authority, in place of being vested in one representative of the crown, is distributed among three—one at the head of the civil affairs, another chief in those that are military, and a third supreme in the control of the marine. Each is in his own department independent of the other, and keeps check on his compeers in any assumption of undue authority. The captain-general, however, has precedence in matters of ceremony, and is the nominal head of the government. He does not visit vessels of war, and the courtesy on his part is expressed through an aide-de-camp. The visitor in his stead on this occasion, was the Conde Villeneuva, a fine-looking young man, in a richly embroidered dress of blue and silver, but without military decorations. He had scarcely been ushered on the deck, with the usual ceremony, when a barge, still more stately in the number of its oarsmen and the dimensions of its banner of “blood and gold,” than that by which he had arrived, was reported by the quarter-master. This bore the Intendante, or Military Chief, who crossed the gangway in full costume, with a magnificent star on the breast and three or four crosses and badges of knighthood at the button holes. Neither name nor title was announced with sufficient distinctness to be heard, and in view of the number and brilliancy of his decorations, I felt authorized in giving him precedence of the count, by at least one grade in the peerage, and set him down for a marquis: especially as the state in which the next dignitary approached would lead to the supposition that he could be nothing less than a duke—a grandee of the first rank. He came in a superb sixteen-oared barge of the purest white, picked out in gold. He was a most stately old gentleman, portly in person, fresh in complexion for a Spaniard, and of the most courtier-like and finished manners. Three magnificently jewelled stars decorated his left breast, with the crosses of twice as many orders pendant beneath, and over all the broad ribbon and insignia of the Golden Fleece. It was the Commandant-general of Marine, or Naval Chieftain. These visits of mere ceremony were brief, referring in conversation to the most common-place topics, followed by a departure in the order of arrival.

The weather since we have been here has been like that of the finest days in June on the Hudson: the sun very hot, the sky glowingly bright, the breeze fresh and seemingly pure, with heavy showers occasionally in the afternoons. In the evenings and at night the scene from shipboard is striking and impressive. Long lines of brilliant gas-lights, marking the walls of the city abreast of us, with the gleamings of others from fortress and tower reflected by the glassy waters of the bay in streams of gold, and a glorious canopy of sparkling stars above, compensate in a degree for the absence of the moon; while a fine military band stationed on the ramparts nearly opposite us discourses eloquently, till nine o’clock, the compositions of the masters in opera.

July 8th.—My first visit on shore was in company with my messmate F——, after the heat of the day had begun to pass. The low quays of a yellowish stone which face the water, are thickly lined with the smaller craft, engaged in the commerce of the port. We made our way along these for some distance, through an atmosphere redolent of tar and pitch and cordage—coffee and tobacco,—amid soldiers and sailors and throngs of brawny negroes, more than half naked and reeking with perspiration, in the labor of loading and unloading cargoes. On turning into a narrow street leading into the city, we soon discovered, that the buildings which from our moorings meet the eye so strikingly in their gay tintings of sky-blue, pea-green, peach-blossom, lemon and straw colors, with their mouldings, cornices and balustrades of the purest white, are thickly interspersed with others, dingy, shabby, decayed and dirty: barn-like, stable-like and prison-like. To an untravelled visitor from the Northern States, this last characteristic would be the first peculiarity in the aspect of the houses to attract his attention. Every man’s dwelling here is literally his castle, the defences of which give to its exterior, on the ground floor especially, the appearance of a jail at home. The heavy doors opening on the street, are of the most massive make, and bossed and studded with iron so as to be bullet-proof, while the lower windows are universally guarded from top to bottom by strong bars and network of the same material. The general style of building is the Spanish-Morescan, many of the dwellings being only one story in height. The streets are straight and regular, but very narrow, scarcely admitting two vehicles to pass each other, while the sidewalks, as termed by us, are on a level with the way for carriages, and a foot or eighteen inches only in width.

A short walk from the point at which we left the quay, brought us upon a small but pretty and artistic square, called the Plaza de Armas. It is enclosed with a handsome iron railing, is regularly laid out in walks, bordered with gay flowers and shrubbery overhung by the silvery trunks and long pendant branches of the palm-tree, and ornamented in the centre with a fountain and statue of Ferdinand VII. of Spain. Its southern side is faced in its whole length by the palace of the governor-general, a spacious and handsome quadrangular structure of stone, stuccoed and painted sky-blue, with pilasters, cornice and balustrade around its flat roof, of white.

Our chief object in going on shore was the enjoyment of a drive outside the walls. The vicinity of the Plaza furnished us with the opportunity of a choice of equipage for the purpose. Lines and groups of vehicles were standing along its sides and at the corners. An omnibus of American fashion and manufacture was seen on its route, and a carriage of modern style passing here and there, but those on the stand were exclusively the common vehicle of the city and country, the volante—a two-wheeled clumsy-looking machine of by-gone times drawn on ordinary occasions by one horse. The body is larger than that of an American gig or chaise, hung very low like an old-fashioned phaeton, and so delicately poised on springs of great elasticity as to sway about, under the slightest impulse, with a most buoyant and luxurious motion.

I find even a pen-and-ink sketch so much more satisfactory than verbal description, in conveying just ideas of novelties such as this, that I am more than half disposed to attempt one here, at the double hazard of defacing my paper and bringing in contempt my skill in the arts. I will try it. The experiment is not quite so successful and effective as I could wish it to be, but it will answer the purpose. Do not think it, however, defective in the proportions exhibited, either in regard to man and beast, or to the distance of both from the body of the carriage. The wheels in their size and height, in comparison with the top of the volante, the length of the shafts, and the bulk of the black calesero, or postillion, in contrast with that of the little pony he bestrides, are all true to the reality, rather underdrawn than exaggerated. You must not suppose either that the little horse is without a tail: for though not very distinctly visible in the sketch, the tail is there; neatly plaited and closely twisted round the hip, like the braid of a lady’s hair around her ear, and made fast by a gay ribbon to the postillion’s saddle.

The colors of these carriages, in body, shafts and wheels, are more varied than those of the rainbow: scarlet, yellow, blue, green—in endless tintings, contrasting showily with mountings of silver or silver-gilt, in greater or less profusion and massiveness, according to the rank or riches of the owner. The harness to our eyes appears complicated and heavy. It also is ornamented more or less elaborately with silver or gilt platings. As to the postillion, picture to yourself the most perfect personification of Congo blackness you ever saw, in the form of a stout muscular negro, with features and heels to match; put him in a very short-waisted jacket—scarlet, blue, yellow or parti-colored, and gay with worsted lace for livery, and into very high riding boots, large enough for Goliath, and with the sketch, you will have a tolerable idea of the equipage in which F—— and I set off from the Café Dominica, not far from the Plaza de Armas, for a drive in the suburbs.

At the end of a half mile, it may be, through the narrow streets, with shops and counting-rooms and dwellings on either side, widely open and within reaching distance by the hand, we came to the principal gateway in the western walls, leading directly upon the Paseo de Isabella II., the fashionable promenade and drive without the walls: the Hyde Park and Champs Elysee of the Habaneros. This extends the whole length of the western side of the city, and is garden-like and beautiful in its trees, shrubbery and flowers. Two broad carriage ways run from end to end with four or more gravelled walks between them; a fountain ornaments either extremity, and in the centre is a statuette of Isabella II., erected shortly after her succession when a child: the more welcome from associations of purity and innocence, which an image of her majesty in later years would be little calculated to suggest.

A range of stately buildings on the west, faces and overlooks this point of aristocratic and fashionable reunion: an opera house and palatial café with other imposing structures, giving quite a metropolitan air to the scene. The first two mentioned bear the name of Tacon, in honor of the captain-general of that name, during whose rule they were built, and whose administration a few years ago, was distinguished by such signal reforms in the police of the city, and the entire suppression of the cut-throat outrages before so common. The enlarged views, public spirit, energy and determination which characterized his measures, stamped his name indelibly on the city; and to these is the population indebted, not only for the effectual suppression of crime, but for much also of the ornamental architecture which it boasts.

South of the Paseo is the Champ de Mars, an extensive parade ground, lined with spacious barracks and other governmental buildings. Passing these we drove three or four miles over a broad and well-kept macadamized avenue, filled with animated life in every form, and lined with suburban residences luxuriant in the richness and beauty of tropical growth in tree, shrub and flower: all in such wide contrast with scenes witnessed in a drive of like length in the suburbs of a city with us, as to excite the wonder, why more of our citizens of wealth and leisure do not take the short trip to Havana in the winter, to be amused and instructed by its novelties, and charmed by the blandness of its climate and the splendor of its vegetable life. Although the soil in this section of the island is of an inferior quality to that of most other regions, there are evidences on every hand of the richness and beauty which have secured to Cuba the proud and winning title of “Queen of the Antilles,” and make her the choicest colonial possession left to Spain.

From the heat of the climate, the construction of the houses, in general, is such as to make them little more than so many open pavilions, from which as you drive by, you unavoidably catch not only the

“Manners living as they rise,”

but many, if not all, the habits of life of the inmates. The eye penetrates at a glance, as it were, the entire domestic economy of the household. The dwellings are, for the most part, one story only in height, with a tower or mirador at one end or corner, for a “look-out.” Externally they seem all door and window. These are very wide, and extend from the ceiling to the floor, on a level with the street. Thrown widely open in the cool of the day, the interior becomes fully exposed: furniture and inmates—the whole family group in full dress or dishabille as the case may be—a scene on the stage of life, as open to inspection as one from a drama on the boards of a theatre. This is as true of the dwellings of the rich as of the poor. In seeing the whole diagram of the interior thus exposed without any appearance of bed or bedroom, the wonder in my mind was where the people could sleep? On expressing some curiosity on this point, I was told that in many cases, the beds of the family consist of mats or mattresses, spread at night on the floor, or in cots in the reception-rooms, while in most houses an inner court is encircled by small sleeping and dressing-rooms.

Many of the residences of the gentry and moneyed aristocracy in the suburbs are luxurious and princely; exhibiting long suites of spacious and elegantly furnished apartments, with floors of polished marble and the oriental luxury of jetting fountains and clustering flowers, endless in the variety of their tint and perfume. The gardens attached to some of these are laid out with taste, and kept in the nicest order, filled with an exuberance of choice plants known to us at the North only in the dwarfish and stunted growth of the conservatory. Indeed, many which are cherished exotics with us, are here seen in rank profusion in the hedges and by the roadside, like the thorn and the thistle of our ruder climate.

By the time of our return, the hour for the drive and promenade of the citizens had arrived; and, as we approached the Paseo, we were met and passed by great numbers of equipages of varied style. Some were altogether American and European in their appointments; but most were the native volante in greater or less elegance and richness—some with one horse only, and others with two. When two are used, the second is placed abreast of the one in the shafts and ridden by the calesero. Each carriage contained from one to three females, in full dress as if at a party—low necks and very short sleeves: to which may be added, very fat figures and very dark skins. Bonnets are not worn of course with this costume, nor indeed with any other. The coiffure at this season is of ribbons, gauzes, laces and other zephyr-like materials, with flowers and jewelry; but, in the winter, I am told, these give place to head-dresses of velvet and satin, with ostrich plumes, pearls and diamonds. As the volantes pass and repass along the carriage drive, salutations are exchanged between the ladies in the vehicles with each other, and with acquaintances and friends among the gentlemen on foot or on horseback, by the eyes, the fan and hat, more than with the voice; but, so far as I observed, the ladies did not alight as is the custom in Europe in many places of the kind, to join in the promenade on foot, or form groups for conversation. At nightfall there is a return to the city, where, for an hour or two, the ladies amuse themselves in driving from shop to shop, to have such articles as they ask for brought to their carriages for inspection, or, proceeding to the Plaza de Armas, again join their associates of the beau monde in display and flirtation by lamp-light or moonlight as the case may be, while a regimental band in front of the governmental palace gives a free concert of instrumental music till nine o’clock. The evening on this occasion was delightful, and we prolonged our stay and observations till that hour.

So well pleased was F—— as well as I with this first peep on shore, that we repeated the visit two days after, driving as far as the Bishop’s garden, the principal attraction of the kind in the neighborhood of the city. Since then there has been much heavy rain. The trade wind at the same time ceased, causing a closeness of atmosphere that has been very oppressive, and made me more than content to remain for the most part quietly on board ship: I say for the most part, for I went once into the city, on a solitary pilgrimage to the tomb of the good and great, and ever to be honored, discoverer of the New World. As you know, his remains were removed at intervals of time of various length, from Valladolid where he died, to Seville, and from Seville to St. Domingo, the resting-place designated for them in his will. On the cession of that island to France in 1796, they were brought to Cuba, and deposited with great ceremony in the cathedral of Havana. A medallion likeness in marble, with a short inscription on a mural tablet, marks the spot in the chancel near the high altar where they have found, as it is to be hoped, a lasting sepulchre. No American can stand near them unmoved: or without a recurrence in thought to the sublime vision of an unknown world, which so long filled the mind, and amid endless discouragements and disappointments sustained the hopes and energies of the adventurous navigator, till it issued in a glorious reality; or without deep sympathy in the vicissitudes and trials of his after life, and the neglect and injustice which brought his gray hairs with sorrow to the tomb. Near by are exhibited—I was about to say the ignominious, but I recall the epithet—the ennobled fetters with which an ungrateful monarch permitted a jealous rival and enemy to manacle his limbs.

On another occasion I left the ship after night, for a row across the harbor with Lieut. T—— in his gig. It had been our intention to pass the evening in the city, in a visit to some families of his acquaintance to whom he wished to introduce me, but the heat and dampness of a debilitating and sickening atmosphere during the day, determined us to postpone this till the return of a more invigorating and elastic air. Our row was from the anchorage of the men-of-war through that of the merchant ships, at another point in the harbor, to a landing near the town of Regla opposite the city; a place of no enviable notoriety, in times past, as a kind of city of refuge through the indulgent winkings of government officials, first for the pirates who once infested these regions, and more recently for dealers in the slave trade. Here also is one of the principal amphitheatres for the exhibition of the favorite national amusement, the bull fight. The special object of the trip, on the part of my companion, had some reference to the disposition of the slush of the Congress, if you can comprehend the import of so elegant a term in a ship’s economy: mine partly the pleasure of his company, and partly to inquire the state of the sick in a private hospital for cases of yellow fever, and to learn the practicability of visiting any American seamen, who might be suffering there from this pest of Havana, already beginning its annual ravages.

The night was very dark for a tropical region, and the most striking imagery discernible, as we threaded our way amidst the shipping, was the black masses of spars and rigging pencilled against the sky above us; the long line of brilliant lights marking the walls of the city reflected in streams of fire on the glassy water; and the alternate dim glimmerings and blinding flashes of the revolving pharos, surmounting the lofty tower of the Moro.

July 10th.—Bright weather has returned, and with it the regular trade wind from the sea. We rejoice in this, not only from the greater comfort it insures, but also from the promise it holds out of continued health in our ship’s company. The change induced Lieut. T—— and myself to make our contemplated visit on shore last evening. For a couple of hours before nightfall, we drove in a volante a circuit of some miles through the environs, amid scenes and scenery of unceasing novelty and endless variety, embracing the attractive and beautiful; the grotesque and ludicrous; elegance and magnificence, filth, nakedness and degradation, strangely commingled. Here, a splendid equipage as perfect in its appointments as any to be met in New York or London; there, a vehicle as rude and clumsy as if belonging to the birthday of invention. Here a caballero admirably mounted, riding a blooded horse with all the stately solemnity of a grandee of the first order; there, a negro or montero, in rags and half nakedness urging onward, at a most sorry pace, as broken down a skeleton of a pony or jackass as ever contrived to put one foot before another. Here a squad of well-equipped soldiers; there a gang of manacled and ruffian-looking galley-slaves—thus without end, exciting alternate admiration and disgust, smiles and pity. Before commencing the visits of the evening, we took a bird’s-eye view of the fashionable movements in the Paseo, from the upper balconies of the Café Tacon which overlook it, and of the magnificent panorama of the city, the surrounding country, and the sea, commanded from the leads of its flat roof, and then proceeded to meet an engagement at the consulate for tea.

July 11th.—It has been known for two or three days past, that the object of our visit was well nigh accomplished, and that the prisoners of Contoy were to be delivered to the keeping of our flag, on the condition of their immediate transportation to the United States. The U. S. steamer Vixen came into port yesterday, bringing Commodore Morris as an additional agent of our government in the negotiation of this matter, but too late for the object of his mission, the work being already done.

At twelve o’clock this morning, the prisoners were brought on board the Congress in the boats of the Spanish ship-of-the-line near us. They are some forty-two or three in number, appearing a sorry-looking set of adventurers indeed, as they crossed the ship’s sides to be mustered in the gangways, and turned over to our charge by the Spanish officer bringing them. Most of them are young—many mere boys—and a majority evidently scapegraces, including a few wild-looking, muscular and wiry Western men, tall Kentuckians and Mississippi black-legs. They have been well fed and well taken care of, it is said; but they all looked pale, and some seemed nervously agitated. This is to be attributed, it is probable, to the uncertainty till the very moment, of the result of the sudden summons they had received from their keepers to prepare for some event of which they were kept ignorant, and which they had more reason to fear might be death under the fire of a platoon of soldiers, than liberty beneath the flag of their country. During their captivity they had been denied all intercourse with others, and had no means of learning their probable fate. At times, the most intelligent among them had been subject to threats of immediate execution, seemingly in the hope of extorting some confession differing from the general attestation, that they had been entrapped into the expedition, under a contract of being conveyed to the isthmus, on their way to California, and on discovering the imposition had refused to take part in the attempted invasion. The most cheering hopes that had reached them were derived from the salutes, in honor of the 4th of July. They inferred from these the presence of American men-of-war of heavy metal, and that their case was neither forgotten nor neglected by the American government. I well recollect thinking and feeling, at the time, that the repeated thunder of the heavy batteries of the Congress, from sunrise to sunset on that day, re-echoed by all the men-of-war in port, must have brought them hope with no uncertain sound, whether it reached their ears in the hold of the guard-ship or the dungeons of the Moro castle: for even the place of their confinement was withheld from us. At three o’clock this afternoon, the whole number was transferred to the sloop-of-war Albany, for passage to Pensacola. She is to sail to-morrow morning at daybreak, and it is announced that the Congress will leave the harbor in company with her, and proceed to her destination on the coast of Brazil.

Great credit is due to Commodore McKeever for the speedy adjustment of this difficulty. His courteousness and amenity at once made smooth the way to negotiation. He is a man of peacefulness and good will, more disposed to pour the oil of kindness on troubled waters than to cast in any new element of agitation, and to his firmness and gentleness combined, are to be attributed the early and desirable result attained.

Thus terminates this filibustering invasion of Cuba. But is it the end? The enterprise, as projected and fitted out, was most ill-judged and piratical. But is it true that its origin and means of equipment were entirely from abroad? Is there no deep sympathy with such an adventure among the Creole inhabitants of the island themselves? Is the spirit of patriotism and of liberty here dead? Are there no groanings beneath the galling chains of a cruel and grinding despotism? No sense of degradation, no purpose to be free, among the intelligent and aspiring of the native population? It is impossible that there should not be. The prosperity and the glory of the unfettered nation immediately facing them are too near, and too brilliant, not to be reflected eventually in attractive splendor, through every valley, and over every mountain top of this gem of the seas. An atmosphere of freedom so near, must impart something of its elasticity and its power even to the depressing vapors of such a despotism. The Cuban in his summer visits of business or of pleasure to the United States, inhales and carries it back with him, and the American in his winter sojourn here, insensibly bears it wherever he goes. The breath of liberty has been, and will continue to be inspired by the natives of the island; and unless the mother country, with timely wisdom, changes her colonial policy and ameliorates her iron rule, restlessness, agitation and revolt, must be the issue, and Cuba become independent in self-rule, or free by voluntary annexation to the nation to which, geographically at least, she rightfully belongs.

CHAPTER IV.

Gulf of Florida.

July 12th.—True to the announcement last night, all hands were called to weigh anchor at daybreak this morning; and, by sunrise, under the double impulse of a light land breeze, and the oars of a long line of man-of-war boats having the Congress in tow, we made our way, through the narrow entrance of the port, to the open sea.

Many merchant ships also were taking their departure. The shrill calls of the bugle from barrack and fortress; the unfurling of signal and banner from mast-head, battlement and tower; strains of military music from different points; the lively movement in all directions of boats and small craft on the water; and the rising hum of active life from the city, gave exciting animation to the picture, while the purple hues of the morning and its balmy breath, added a fresh charm to the whole.

After enjoying the scene till we were outside the harbor, I went below, intending to return to the deck in time for a farewell view, not only of the island, but of the Moro castle and city also. So rapid was our course, however, from a strong current, as well as a fresh breeze, that, on reaching the poop for this purpose, “the blue above and the blue below” were alone to be seen; and undisguised satisfaction was every where manifested that, not only the sickly, though beautiful port, but the entire island had been left out of sight behind us.

The first object that met my eyes this evening, at the close of our accustomed worship on deck, was the silver crescent of a new moon beautifully defined in the empurpled sky; and, I interpreted the mild and benignant beamings sent down upon us, from its young course, as an omen of good in our voyage across the wide sea.

July 22d, N. Lat. 37°, W. Long. 59°.—We made our way gently and pleasantly through the Straits of Florida: sighting, during successive nights, on either sides of the channel, while making long stretches against a head wind, the lights of Key West and Sand Key, Carysfort Reef, and Gun Key. These numerous beacons speak the perilous navigation of the region. It is peculiarly the empire of the wreckers, whose lives are spent in constant search along the reefs, which for two hundred miles here edge the coast, for the vessels which in great numbers are yearly cast upon them by storms, or the treacherous currents of a calm. The value of the commerce which annually passes through the Gulf of Florida is estimated at four hundred millions of dollars, of which not less than half a million, each year, is lost by shipwreck, notwithstanding the vigilance and prompt exertion of the amphibious and heroic race, whose business is the rescue of the lives and property here endangered.

For three days after regaining a latitude which admitted of plain sailing, we had boisterous weather and a wild sea, but an unclouded sky. The elastic and invigorating atmosphere attending it, was most welcome after the heats of Cuba. At such times the ocean, in its ever-varying forms of beauty and changing shades of prismatic light in the sunshine, often outrivals in attractiveness the still life of a wide-spread landscape on shore. There is, too, a voice of music breathing over it; for, not less truthfully than poetically, has it been said of the ocean, there is

“In its sleep a melody,

And in its march a psalm.”

Now, however, in place of the

“Restless, seething, stormy sea,”

we have on every side an illimitable plain of the deepest blue, with scarce a perception of those giant heavings from beneath, which ever, in a greater or less degree, tell of an unfathomable abyss of waters. Over this we are hurried, without a consciousness of motion, at the rate of ten miles the hour, by a breeze as balmy, if not as fragrant, as the zephyrs of “Araby the blest.” Add to these surroundings, the moon, at night, riding the heavens above in sublime tranquillity, and you will not be surprised, if, at times at least, I am ready with the poet to exclaim—

“Oh! what pleasant visions haunt me,

As I gaze upon the sea,

All the old romantic legends—

All my dreams come back to me!”

July 29th.—Happily I am not unfitted for mental occupation; by being on shipboard, as is the case with many, and, with the prospect of a voyage of fifty or sixty days, I have set myself closely to work. The early part of the day I give to the graver studies of my profession, and the later to lighter reading; visits to the sick, when there are such; exercise on deck with some fellow-officer; and such “walks of usefulness” as I can light upon among the crew, in different parts of the ship in the evening, fill up the intervals of leisure till bed-time.

One of our young officers, Midshipman L——, has the misfortune to be incapacitated for duty, by a nervous affection of the eyes and head, the consequence of three separate attacks of fever in the Gulf of Mexico. The surgeons interdict to him all use of the eyes; and, to relieve the ennui into which he is thus thrown, I have invited him to my room for an hour or two every day, that by my reading aloud he may have the benefit of such works as I am running over; travels and biography—Maxwell’s Russia, Irving’s Mahomet, and the excellent books of Miss McIntosh, the accomplished sister of the captain of the Congress, interspersed with those of a more serious character, such as Angell James’ “Young Man from Home” and Pike’s “Persuasives to Early Piety”—have thus far occupied these hours. The touches of deep feeling frequently met in the writings of Miss McIntosh, in her lifelike and instructive delineations of character, have been the means of bringing into exercise sympathies, the involuntary betrayal of which to each other, has led to quite an intimate friendship, considering the disparity of our years.

For a week after leaving port, we had every reason to hope that it had been with entire impunity, in regard to health, that we had been exposed to the burning sun, and, at this season of the year, pestilential air of Havana. But on the eighth day, just as we were congratulating ourselves on the certainty of our escape from all infection, a light fever made its appearance among both officers and men. Some dozen in number were brought down by it. It was the yellow fever, but of so modified a type, that, in a few days, all were convalescent and no new cases occurred.

Sickness, whether of a serious nature or not, presents an opportunity of approach, and often gives access to the confidence which I am careful to improve. I was much interested, a day or two ago, in an interview with a fine-looking young man of the crew, under the influence of the prevailing epidemic. He had evidently been familiar with better associations than those of a man-of-war; and, I soon learned from him that he was the prodigal son of a pious mother, by whom he had been carefully trained and cherished, and was a child of many prayers. The first glance of his eye, as I approached his cot, told me by the starting tears—not from alarm, for no danger was apprehended in his case, but from remembrances of the past—that he was in a state of mind to open his heart to me; and, in the admissions and confessions of a long conversation, I became deeply interested in the penitence and purposes of future well-doing which he avowed.

In a hammock near by I found a middle-aged Scotchman, of intelligent and respectable appearance, who was equally open to religious conversation. He told me he had been long deeply sensible of his guilt and misery as a sinner, and greatly troubled in mind and conscience; that a conflict had been going on in his soul, as if a good and an evil spirit were ever in contest there for the mastery over him: but that the good at last had gained the triumph, and he was “at peace with the Father, through the Son and Spirit, and feared no evil—not death itself.”

August 7th, N. Lat. 12°, W. Long. 38°.—Delicious seems the only epithet descriptive of the atmosphere we are now breathing, and “delicious—delicious!” is the stereotyped exclamation of every one, as he mounts to the deck from below and drinks in the pure ether, as if it were the very elixir of life. The morning is in all respects lovely. The heavens have a look of infinity. A snow-white cloud alone floats here and there in them; and, as, rushing over the blue sea, before the fresh trade-wind, we dash the foam widely from our prow, unnumbered flying fish spring into the air, and skim the surface of the water before and around us, like so many birds of silver gleaming brightly in the sun.

August 28th, N. lat. 3° 30′, W. Long. 25°.—The region, through which we have been making our way, for the last ten days, is known among seamen by the very unsentimental name of the “doldrums.” The origin of the epithet it might be difficult to trace. It is an equatorial belt, characterized by light weather and head-winds; by alternate calms and squalls, clouds and rain. Hence every thing on board and without, is, and has been, in as wide contrast as possible with that of my last date. The whole ship is saturated, both on deck and below, with rain, and the washings of the sea through the ports and hawser-holes. The air on deck is close and oppressive, and below stifling and musty, and the tossings and pitchings and rolling of the ship any thing but agreeable to the fastidious stomachs of many on board—especially to my friend T——, who, though familiar for more than twenty years with the caprices of the deep, is in a most annoying state of discomfort at every return of rough weather. The progress made on our course is small, averaging not more than twenty-five or thirty miles in the twenty-four hours, though we sail by tacks in that period, from a hundred to a hundred and fifty. We are navigating by Lieut. Maury’s wind and current charts, and notwithstanding the seeming tedium of our progress, in beating against what he denominates the south-west monsoons of these latitudes, are satisfactorily demonstrating the truth of his theory and the correctness of his sailing directions in conformity with it.

It is now some six or eight years since this distinguished young officer, whose attainments in abstruse and practical science have reflected such high honor not only on his profession but on his country, conceived the idea of collecting as many of the log-books of navigators as could be secured, with a view of collating them, and of projecting upon charts, to aid in the better navigation of the sea, the general experience in winds and currents, at all periods of the year, in the different regions of the ocean. He at the same time urged upon the masters of ships, the importance of adding to the usual subject-matter of their logs, the temperature of the water, the set of currents, and the depth of the bed of the ocean when it was practicable to obtain soundings. As an incentive to the trouble of thus keeping a log, and of furnishing an abstract of it to the National Observatory at Washington, the promise was given that each shipmaster complying with the suggestion, should receive gratuitously from the government, a copy of the charts and sailing directions which might be the result.

Not fully alive to the object or aware of its great importance, the response was slow and imperfect. In the course of a few years, however, sufficient data were secured; and the first practical result was the shortening by ten days of the voyage to the equator, and consequently to Rio de Janeiro. From the earliest times this passage, from North America, had been made by running obliquely across the Atlantic to the longitude of the Cape de Verde Islands, before venturing to strike the north-east trade-wind. A traditionary report and belief in the existence of strong adverse currents along the South American coast, and the fear of not being able to double Cape St. Roque, should the equator not be crossed far to the East, led to this. It required no little moral courage and determination in one of a class proverbially wedded to custom and subject to superstition, to venture the trial of the new route. Such an one was found, however, and the result was most satisfactory. The opinion is now firmly entertained by many of the most experienced navigators, that by following the direction of the wind and current charts, the length of the voyage is diminished one fifth. This is an immense saving of time in a commercial point of view. Doubtless the patient perseverance of the accomplished astronomer, in this new field of discovery, with the aids which are now rapidly placed in his possession, will lead to similar results on all the grand routes of navigation over every ocean, and place the commercial world in indebtedness to his genius for savings in time, and consequently in money, of incalculable amounts.

Last night, from nine till ten o’clock, we enjoyed a beautiful spectacle, in a halo around the moon of colors as vivid as those of an ordinary rainbow, and in concentric circles most clearly defined. The moon, near the full, retained her face of silver in the midst of a field of gold, shadowing towards the outer edge into a delicate amber and then into the deepest maroon. A belt of the purest blue intervened, when the encircling colors were repeated in fainter hues; apparently, though not philosophically, a reflection of the first. The phenomenon was so striking, and so singularly beautiful, that Lieut. R——, the officer of the deck at the time—one ever alive to the poetic and impressive in nature, as well as to the scientific and practical in his profession—dispatched a messenger hurriedly for me. The commodore and captain were also summoned, and soon, with most of the other officers, joined us on the poop, while the whole crew, from different parts of the ship, shared in the admiration excited by the scene. It is the first exhibition of any thing unusual in sky or sea that has thus far marked our passage. A humid atmosphere and a thin fleecy scud were its accompaniments.

August 23d.—In the course of the night of the 22d inst. we took the south-east trade-wind, three degrees north of the equator, and at once bade adieu to the doldrums. We crossed the line at high noon, yesterday, on the parallel of 28° 30′ W. long, without any very perceptible ‘jolt;’ and are rushing on our course at the rate of ten miles the hour.

Just in the edge of the evening, after hammocks had been piped down, the ship was hailed loudly from the bows, and it was reported to the officer of the deck, that “Neptune was alongside and requested permission to come on board.” This was granted, and very unexpectedly to me this monarch of the seas, his queen and suite made their appearance on deck. They were soon enthroned on the forecastle, with an immense bathing tub filled with salt water in front of them, in readiness for the presentation of those of the crew who had never before been in this section of their watery dominions. The sun being long set, and the moon, for the time, obscured, I could not make out very well the costume of their majesties further than to judge it to be of the latest marine fashion. The most conspicuous article in that of Neptune was a full bottomed wig of white manilla grass, closely curled, like that of a lord chancellor on the woolsack, but covering not only his head, face and shoulders, but his entire figure, giving him the aspect in general of a polar bear with the head and mane of a lion. He bore himself with imperial dignity, while Madame Amphitrite, of very sturdy and Dutch-like make, sat meekly by his side, in a fashionably made dress of coarse canvas, or sacking, with a shepherdess hat of the same material, hair in long ringlets ‘à l’Anglaise,’ cheeks highly rouged, low neck and short sleeves, with bare arms which bore a very suspicious resemblance, in muscle and color, to those of one of our most brawny forecastle men.

The commodore, with whom I was walking on the poop-deck, being informed of the presence of the distinguished company, made his way to the forecastle, claiming courteously from the monarch the privilege of the entrée, from having crossed the equator already some dozen of times. This Neptune most graciously conceded, with the flattering remark that he “recollected his countenance perfectly, and was very glad to see him.” The interview, like most others on state occasions, was brief, concluding on the commodore’s part by his saying, “he presumed the presentations of the evening would be numerous,” Neptune replying “yes,” that he had “never seen so many green-horns on board one ship in his life!” A call of the names of candidates for the honor was now begun, and the gentlemen of the court, disguised in dress and with blackened faces, began to drag from every hiding place many an unwilling, but vainly resisting subject, who had never before entered the southern hemisphere. Forced into the presence with good-nature and laughter, by overpowering numbers, and blindfolded and seated on the edge of the tub, the victim was hailed by Neptune with stentorian voice through an immense paste-board trumpet, in the questions—“What is your name?” “Where are you from?” “Were you ever in these parts before?” While in the act of answering each of these respectively, a coarse brush dipped in a mixture of tar, slush, and lampblack was hastily passed over the mouth of the respondent. The court barber was then called to do his duty in shaving the gentleman with No. 5, No. 9, or No. 15, referring to the qualities of the razor; this being determined by the degree of submissiveness and good-nature, or the surliness and resistance of the subject in hand. The lathering brush was something of the form and softness of a broom of split hickory, the lather the composition before described, and the razors, two or three feet in length, of different degrees of edge, from the smoothness of straight wood to the roughness of a jagged piece of iron hoop. When an order for dressing the hair was added, in penalty of special refractoriness and ill-humor, the brush used was formed of long wooden pegs fixed in a board with a handle, like a hatchel for dressing flax; the pomatum, tar; to which, in extreme cases, was added a powdering of flour in the style of “’76,” the whole winding up with a sudden souse, backwards, heels over head into the tub of salt water. The presentation thus completed, the new courtier, half drowned, and dripping like a water god, was left at liberty to free himself at leisure from the tar and lampblack, and dry himself as best he could.

The case of all others, in which the least sympathy was elicited, was that of a young landsman, who, after long impunity, had been detected some time before as a thief—supplying his own wardrobe very freely from the clothes-bags of his shipmates. The answer to the usual question, “who is this?” when he was brought forward, “Jackson the thief!” was received with a general shout of applause, and the following dialogue ensued. “What is your name?” “Jackson.” “Yes, sir; and the sooner you slip yourself out of one so illustrious the better.” “Where are you from?” “O——.” “And a disgrace you are to so respectable a place. Were you ever in my dominions before?” “No.” “I knew it: and take care you are never found in them again; or, if you are, look out how you fill your bag with other men’s clothes for an outfit!” “Barber, do your duty: give him No. 15, and see that you dress his hair in the first style!”

The striking of eight bells and the calling of the first night watch brought the rough sport to an end. I have not time to-night to moralize on the subject or to speculate upon the propriety of the indulgence. By whose authority it was sanctioned I do not know. Many of the officers regarded it I believe with disapprobation, as a species of saturnalia unsuited to the rigid discipline of a man-of-war, and liable to be abused, while others defended it on the ground of old usage among sailors, and as an amusing relief to the tedium of a long voyage. By a little management I succeeded in screening from observation, till all hands were called to duty, two or three youngsters who were anxious to escape the annoying process.

August 25th.—Sailing in the latitudes of the south-east trade-winds is the very perfection of life at sea. The waters, as smooth and level as a prairie, are of the deepest tint of blue, with the addition in certain declinations of the sun, of a dash of rose color, imparting to the whole, for a time, the appearance of a plain of velvet of the true Tyrian purple. Though moving with great rapidity, through a wide and deep furrow of sparkling foam cast up by our bows, the sails of our frigate, fully set from the deck to the royal-mast-heads fore and aft, sleep by the hour, without the slightest apparent motion, as if, in place of canvas spread to the breeze, they were a like quantity of chiselled marble. Then, at night, such a moon! with the southern cross in marked beauty inviting to the sublimest meditations. The Magellan clouds, too, are in sight: small spots of fleecy whiteness in the sky, similar in general aspect to the nebulæ of the milky way. Indeed, with the mercury by Fahrenheit at 66° the whole Southern hemisphere is in brilliant exhibition, many of the most conspicuous stars flashing on the eye, not only with the brightness, but apparently with the varying tints of the diamond.

The smoothness of the sea and steadiness of the wind have afforded a good opportunity for exercise at the batteries, and in the various evolutions incident to an engagement in battle. The station of a chaplain, in action, is with the surgeons in the cockpit in attendance upon the wounded and dying; or, at his option perhaps, on the quarter-deck, in taking notes of the conflict. In these sham engagements, at least, I prefer the deck: and have stood with the commodore and captain, while broadside after broadside has been fired, till the whole ship has been enveloped in smoke, and I found myself at the end as well powdered as a miller, though not in such whiteness. An evening or two since trial was made in throwing shell with the Paixhan guns. The explosion took place eight seconds after the discharge, with beautiful effect. The tendency of all these exhibitions, though only as an exercise, is ever to make me regard with fresh horror and abhorrence the entire system of war—its principles, spirit, implements and cruel results.

August 30th.—The prevailing thoughts and feelings of my mind and heart this morning, traceable to visions of the night, may be best expressed, perhaps, by the familiar quotation—

“Who has not felt how sadly sweet

The dream of home—the dream of home

Steals o’er the heart too soon—too fleet,

When far o’er sea, or land we roam!

Sunlight more soft may o’er us fall,

To greener shores our bark may come,

But far more bright, more dear than all,

That dream of home—that dream of home!”

Little as I may have confessed it, “Riverside!”—“Riverside!” is the constant echoing of my heart, and my home is ever in bright vision before me. I breakfast with you every morning, sit by moonlight with you in the verandah every evening: walk with you every day to “Prospect Rock”—to “Gortlee”—to the upper fields beneath the mountain, and drive with you, if at no other time, at least every Sunday to your little church, along the magnificent terrace of the river-road.

I say, I breakfast with you every morning. Did you know exactly the state of the larder and store-room of our mess, you would wonder that I do not include all my meals in the avowal. For some time past, on each successive day, the giving out of article after article for our table, has been reported, till nothing now remains but salt beef, so hard as fully to justify the sailor’s cognomen of “Uncle Sam’s Mahogany,” and salt pork as rusty as the beef is hard. No potatoes or other vegetables, no butter better than rancid lard, and no bread fit to be eaten except the ship’s “hard tack,” are left. Dried beans and peas we have, but both filled with weevil, which the cook has devised no means of separating, before being served, from the article itself. The consequence is, that when they come to us in the form of soup, the floating insects drowned and overdone, are the most conspicuous part of the mess, and when baked, give to the dish the appearance of being already well peppered. I can join very cheerfully in a jest over such untempting fare, and think of home; but cannot, like some of my messmates, persuade myself into the illusion that the little black insects speckling our board are only a rich condiment to give zest to the repast, and with them partake of it con gusto.

Yesterday our last turkey, after having given flavor to a tureen of watery soup, was served as a boiled dish. As we were about taking our seats at the table, a suggestion, made either seriously or in mischief, that the poor bird had not waited for the cook to bring its head to the block, but had died unexpectedly of its own accord, put a participation of either soup or meat, on my part, out of the question; and led, by the time the report had made the circuit of the table, to a kind of impromptu Court of Inquiry in the case. The steward was at once summoned by the head of the mess, who, fond of a joke, and knowing that the fat and shining negro, now honored with this office, like many of the more imitative and aspiring of his race, was somewhat grandiloquent in his language, put to him the question—“Steward, are you quite sure that the old fellow under this cover was entirely vigorous when he was taken from the coop?” “No! sir, he wasn’t wigorous at all! he was perfectly good!” “Why, steward, what do you suppose I mean by vigorous?” “I don’t know, sir, but I suppose from the way you ask me, something bad.” “Well, steward, I do not wish to be too particular in this investigation, but just tell me this much, could the old fellow really stand on his legs when he was killed?” “Sartain, sir, he could.” “Then, gentlemen,” says Mr. ——, addressing himself to the mess, “I go for the turkey,” and lifting the cover disclosed to view a mere skeleton in a shrivelled bag of skin, with scarce an ounce of flesh on the whole carcass.

You must not infer, either from the feelings expressed at the beginning of this date, or from the dietetic disclosure into which I have been incidentally betrayed, that I am otherwise than entirely content and happy: as much so as I well can be in this world of imperfection and sin. This is attributable, however, chiefly if not solely to the conviction in mind and heart, that I am at the post of duty—

“The shepherd of a wandering flock

That has the ocean for its wold—

That has the vessel for its fold;”

and am, as I trust, in a spirit cheerfully and faithfully to meet its responsibilities. Whether to any high result or visible effect, it is not in the power of man to say. The sufficiency for this is of God alone. I am thankful that I feel no discouragement in the use of the means for moral reformation and spiritual grace in those around me. Nothing but personal experience could persuade one of the almost insurmountable obstacles that exist, on board a man-of-war, to the conversion of any of the crew, and to a life of godliness in one of their number, or make him credit without close observation, the number and the power of

“The secret currents that here flow

With such resistless under-tow,

And lift and drift with terrible force

The will from its moorings and its course.”

Nothing less than a miracle, humanly speaking, could achieve such a result; but, as the conversion of any soul, and a life of godliness in any heart, anywhere, are miracles of grace, I do not allow myself to despair of such results ultimately through the word and Spirit of God, whether I ever know them or not. So firmly is hand joined in hand among the crew, against every thing savoring of a profession of or pretension to personal religion, that it would require no ordinary degree of moral courage, in any one—whatever might be his secret convictions, feelings or purposes—to disclose or avow it. Many cheerfully give countenance, both by their words and conduct to good morals in others; but all seem tacitly at least to say “thus far only shalt thou go.” Though it is by no means unusual to see one and another in different parts of the ship reading a Bible or a Testament either alone or aloud to others; though tracts, and religious papers, and books, are eagerly accepted and seriously read, still, to get the name of a ‘Bible-man’ by joining a class for reading under the chaplain, or of a psalm-singing and praying man, from being known to practise such devotion, is as much dreaded as would be a scurrilous reproach. From this feeling it is, that I have thus far attempted in vain to establish Bible-classes or secure a meeting for moral and religious instruction, beyond the public worship of the Sabbath and our daily evening prayer: and from the same fear of man it is that one or two spiritually-minded members of a church, whom I have discovered among the ship’s company, are unwilling to have their true character and profession known.

The purpose of those chief in authority, to abandon as far as practicable, in the discipline of the ship, the iron rule, and in place of the “cats” and the “colt,” the kick and the curse, to substitute a treatment less degrading to man and more befitting him as a moral agent and an intelligent being, has been carried out. Thus far the experiment has been successful; and we have a cheerful, obedient, active and efficient crew. We are also demonstrating the fact by experience, that a crew can be content and happy without having served to them the ration of grog furnished by government. Knowing that two thirds of all the evil and misery to which sailors, as a class, are subject both at sea and on shore, arises from the use of strong drink, I, early after the commencement of our cruise, made efforts by private argument as well as by public addresses, to demonstrate the magnitude of the evils arising from intemperance, and to persuade all to follow the example of those who had stopped drawing rum. In securing so desirable an object, I have had the warm support of those in authority, whose opinion and influence would be likely to have most effect. Commodore McKeever and Captain McIntosh have both given me their aid; and the former has twice publicly addressed the ship’s company on the subject. The consequence is, we shall enter port without the name of an individual on the grog list; with the universal admission that the ship’s company, to say the least, are as content and happy without the rum as they were with it, and certainly more quiet and orderly.

In the course of my canvass on the subject, I had, not only, many interesting, but many amusing conversations and arguments with various individuals. Before yielding, there was a great struggle in the minds of some half a dozen old topers—old men-of-wars-men, perfect sea-dogs, who, for half a century have drunk their grog as regularly as the roll of the drum announcing its readiness was heard, and felt that they could not live without it. I really pitied some of these old fellows, in the mental struggle they suffered, between conscience and a desire to follow the advice of those they honor, and the continued craving of an appetite strengthened by the habit of a whole life. I fell in with two of these one day immediately after one of the addresses of the Commodore. They were looking most doleful—as a true sailor seldom does look except in some great moral extremity. Suspecting the cause, I opened a conversation in which one of them met my persuasions by saying, with a most appealing look, “Why, Mr. S——, I haven’t been without my grog every day for fifty years. Why, sir, I should die without it. I was brought up on it; my father kept a public house, and I sucked the tumblers, sir, from the time I was a baby!” But the old man soon joined the rest of his shipmates in the resolution to banish the grog tub. He has now gone a long time without his rum; and, in place of dying from the want of it, as he said he should, came up to me yesterday, looking hale and hearty, and with a bright smile and sparkling eye, said, “Mr. S——, I wouldn’t have believed it—but, it’s true. I don’t miss my grog at all. You told me I would live through it, if I did knock it off. And so I have, and I feel ten times better without it than I ever did with it!”

CHAPTER V.

Rio de Janeiro.

Sept. 4th.—Land was descried at ten o’clock, on the morning of the 1st inst., and before noon we had Cape Frio in full view, twenty miles distant. Isolated from other highlands of the coast, it stands out boldly and loftily in the ocean; and, after being once seen, is not easily to be mistaken in its outline. We were rushing onward, before a fresh trade-wind beneath a brilliant sky, at the rate of eleven miles the hour; and at twelve o’clock, hauling closely round the Cape to the westward, opened a lofty and picturesque mountain coast on our right.

The speed at which we were sailing was in itself sufficient to produce great exhilaration. Add to this, the beauty of the sportive sea—leaping, foaming, and sparkling around us; the varied and noble outlines of the shore; the objects of increasing interest coming hourly in view, with the assurance of an early termination of our passage, and you can readily imagine that by nightfall, the continued excitement became almost painful. As darkness began to gather round us, the faint outlines of the famed Sugar Loaf marking the entrance to the harbor of Rio, were discernible; and the first gleamings of the light on Rasa Island, some seven miles seaward from it, came cheerily upon the eye. The wind still continued fresh, and we had the prospect of entering the port at night; but, just as we were attempting to do so by heading into the channel, the breeze died suddenly away, and we dropped anchor on what is called the “rolling ground.” The appropriateness of this name was fully demonstrated to us before morning, by a depth of rolling on the part of our good ship in a dead calm, which we had not before experienced in the heaviest weather at sea.

As for myself, I was more than content to pass a restless night from this cause, rather than lose the opportunity of entering the harbor by daylight. I was anxious to test the fidelity of the impressions received twenty years ago from the same scenery; and to determine how far the magnificent picture, still lingering in my memory, was justified by the reality, or how far it was to be attributed to the enthusiasm of younger years and the freshness of less experienced travel. The early light of the morning quickly determined the point. I was hurried to the deck by a message from Lieut. R—— already there; and do not recollect ever to have been impressed with higher admiration by any picture in still life, than by the group of mountains and the coast scene, meeting my eyes on the left, as I ascended the poop. The wildness and sublimity of outline of the Pao d’Assucar, Duos Hermanos, Gavia and Corcovado, and their fantastic combinations, from the point at which we viewed them, can scarce be rivalled, while the richness and beauty of coloring thrown over and around the whole in purple and gold, rose color and ethereal blue, were all that the varied and glowing tints of the rising day ever impart. No fancy sketch of fairy land could surpass this scene, and we stood gazing upon it as if fascinated by the work of a master hand.

The pyramidal hills on the eastern side of the channel are less lofty and less wild than these, but impressive in their massiveness, and beautiful in the verdure of various growth clinging to their steep sides and mantling their summits. Together they form a portal to Rio worthy, not only the city, but the vast and magnificent empire of which it is the metropolis.

There was full leisure for the enjoyment of the scene, for the sea-breeze did not set in, with sufficient strength to enable us to get under way, till after mid-day. In the mean time I secured a drawing, while a thorough ship-cleaning was going on, both inside and out. This was so satisfactorily accomplished by four hundred busy hands, before the breeze would allow of taking our anchor, that, with the crew freshly dressed in a uniform of white and new summer hats, we looked, on taking our position among the men-of-war at anchor, more like a ship on a gala-day in port, than one just arrived from sea.

The width of the entrance is a mile, though the loftiness of the granite shafts by which it is formed, gives the impression of its being much narrower. The Sugar Loaf on the left—the naked peak of a mountain of rock whose broad base lies far below in the great deep—rises, with a slight leaning westward, to an elevation of twelve hundred and ninety-two feet according to the measurement of Captain Beechy. The corresponding mass on the eastern side, less isolated and more rounded, is six or seven hundred only. At the base of this, upon a tongue of rock projecting into the channel, is the strong and massively built fortress of Santa Cruz, against whose Cyclopean foundations the swell from the open sea beats heavily. Its white walls and embattled parapets, pharos lantern and telegraph fixtures, with the imperial flag of green and gold flaunting in the breeze, are the first features of civilization meeting the eye: all else along the coast looks as primitive and untamed as on the day it was first discovered.

From the point at which we were at anchor, little within the harbor could be seen: a small fortified islet or two, the tall masts of the shipping at the man-of-war anchorage, distant five miles, and the faint outlines of the Organ mountains in the far north. But on passing the Sugar Loaf and fort the bay opens, and the extent and magnificence of its leading features are rapidly disclosed. The mountain group, which so impressed us in the morning and seemed to belong exclusively to the outside, is found to constitute in new aspects and relative positions, the grand outline of the western side within.

To these aspects of nature there was soon added the charm of art. Long lines of imposing edifices edge the shores; white cottages and villas sprinkle the hill-sides and crest the mountain ridges; while church steeples and convent towers and the thickened masses of building in the city gradually rise to view.

As our ship moved gently onward the effect was like the unfolding of a panoramic picture. First came the land-locked bay of Botafogo, backed and overhung by the lofty peaks of the Hermanos and Gavia—its circular shores and sweeping sand-beach being embellished with a palace-like hospital and numerous suburban residences of the aristocratic and wealthy. Then the green and picturesque valley of the Larangeiras, with cottages hanging like birds’ nests on its hill-sides, beneath the wooded cliffs and naked summit of the Corcovado; followed quickly by the bay of Flamengo, the Gloria hill, the hills of Santa Theresa and San Antonio crowned by their convents, Castle hill with its Capuchin monastery and old bastions, the hill of San Bento, and the entire city overtopped by the mountainous range and bell-shaped peak of Tejuca.

While these objects on the left successively absorb the attention, on the right a precipitous range of granite hills, extending two or three miles northward from the fortress of Santa Cruz, falls sheer into the water like the Highlands of the Hudson. It terminates in a bold promontory which divides a deep, circular inlet, called the bay of St. Francis Xavier, from the chief harbor, and which from some points of view is strikingly in the form of a colossal lion couchant, with the head settled backward in stateliness upon the shoulders. At the further distance of a mile a picturesque cliff-bound little islet—evidently once a part of the adjoining mainland—marks the northern entrance to this inner bay. Surmounted by a white chapel facing the sea, dedicated to “our Lady of good voyages,” the special patroness of the sailor, it is a conspicuous and interesting feature in the topography, the first and the last upon which the ignorant and superstitious among voyagers and seafaring men, have long been accustomed to fix their eyes on entering and on leaving port. Beyond this, upon a widely sweeping beach, stretch the populous rural suburbs of Praya Domingo and Praya Grande, immediately facing the city. These terminate in a lofty rounded hill, partly under cultivation and partly in wood, which cuts off all further view northward, except clusters of islands on the distant waters, and the far-off mountains rising six thousand feet against the sky. The whole was seen by us under the strong lights and shades of the afternoon, as with a light sea-breeze we floated gently up and dropped anchor abreast the city, midway from either shore. A cluster of men-of-war were moored inside of us, from whose mast-heads floated the national flags of England, Portugal and Brazil, but none bearing the stripes and stars of the United States.

Towards night the coloring thrown over mountains and valleys, city and bay, was most gorgeous. A light haze, like that of Indian summer at home, characterized the atmosphere; through this, the sun shone in fiery redness, empurpling the mountains, gilding dome and steeple and convent tower, and spreading a crimson glow over the entire bay. I have been thus minute in the description of the panorama surrounding us, because these winding shores and curving beaches, these verdant hills and towering mountains, are for many months in two or three successive years, to be the objects of hourly observation and the haunts of my daily rambles. The Sugar Loaf and the Corcovado, the Gavia and the Peak of Tejuca, Gloria hill, Botafogo, Praya Grande and the Organ mountains, will become in my communications to you, familiar as household words.

Admiration of the natural scenery was not the only feeling of which I was conscious, in advancing up the harbor. Remembrances of the past came unbidden to my mind and heart. With the first opening view of the Praya Flamengo, I was quick in my search with a glass among its mansions, for the dwelling which during my former visit had been to me a happy home. It was easily distinguished in its unchanged exterior. But where was the brilliant and accomplished diplomatist, whose genial spirit and polished mind gave such charm to its hospitalities? Long a tenant of the tomb! and I could not but recall the fact, that, with him, every one whose acquaintance I had here made—an acquaintanceship which, in some instances, from after intercourse, ripened into mature friendship—was also in the world of spirits: Tudor, Otway, Inglefield and Walsh, all gone. A generation had well-nigh passed away; and all was changed. A new Emperor was on the throne—a new Bishop over the see: there was no one to meet, and no one to look upon, whom I had ever seen before.

It was the predominance of feelings such as these that led, in my first visit on shore, to a solitary pilgrimage to the former Embassy, to look once more upon its familiar portal—now in possession of strangers,—and on my return at eventide through the embowered pathways of the Gloria hill, to think what a dream is life, and how vain as an abiding good, the highest attainments and most honored positions gained by man on earth.

September 6th.—Rio de Janeiro, if not built like Rome on seven hills, can boast an equal number around the bases of which her streets and dwellings closely cluster. The bright verdure of these—in tufted groves and shrubbery and in gleaming turf—as they rise abruptly here and there, from one to two hundred feet above the red-tiled penthouse roofs of the dwellings and the sombre turret and towers of church and convent, adds greatly to the beauty of the city, whether seen from shipboard, or in vistas at the end of the streets, on shore. One of the most conspicuous and lofty is Castle hill, so called from being surmounted at one of its angles, by the ramparts and dismantled batteries of a small fort, erected by the first colonists. It is also called by foreigners, Signal hill—from being the telegraphic station to which the movements of all shipping in the offing is made known, by signals from other stations at the entrance of the harbor and along the coast. Besides the ruin of the ancient fortress and the fixtures of the telegraph, it is conspicuously marked by the double-pinnacled church of a former Capuchin monastery, and by the old college of the Jesuits, both now converted to the use of the public—the one as a military hospital, and the other a medical school. The hill juts so closely on the bay as to interrupt, for a half a mile, the line of the city along the water, and to leave room only for a single street. This is not built upon, but being open to the sea-breeze and commanding a fine water view, is much frequented as a drive and promenade in the afternoon and evening. Inland from Castle hill, and separated from it by what was once a deep glen, but now a densely inhabited part of the city, rises the hill of San Antonio, so called from being the possession of a brotherhood of that name, whose convent stands in massive dimensions on its brow. These hills occupy the centre of the city, while that of San Bento, also crowned by a stately convent; that known as the Bishop’s hill, from being surmounted by the Episcopal palace; and the hill of Lavradio, are on its northern side. The hills of Santa Theresa and Gloria, thus named—the one from a nunnery, and the other from a church dedicated to our Lady of Glory, are on the south. All originally rose from and encircled a marsh, the site of the present metropolis. Till within the last half century, the whole city then containing only some thirty thousand inhabitants, lay between Castle hill and the hill of San Bento, a distance of less than a half mile as a water front, in a parallelogram of rectangular streets extending about as far inland. This section is still regular; but in most others since built, the streets follow the curvature of the hills at their bases, and straggle from these, in every direction, up the ravines intervening between the spurs running from the mountains to the plain. The streets in general are narrow, and roughly paved with cobble-stones: the sidewalks being comfortable for two persons only abreast. The population is now about 200,000—including the suburbs which are very extensive, and reach south some five miles and nearly the same distance west; while Praya Domingo and Praya Grande, on the opposite side of the bay, form quite a town in themselves.

The general climate of Brazil from its great equality has been regarded as one of the most salubrious and healthful of the tropical regions of the world. Before the Congress left the United States, however, it was known that within the last year the yellow fever had made its appearance along the seaboard, and had raged with great mortality in the principal cities; especially in Pernambuco, Bahia, and Rio de Janeiro. We were uncertain what the state of health might be on our arrival; and were thankful to learn, by the first boat boarding us, that the epidemic had ceased, after frightful ravages among natives and foreigners, both afloat and on shore. The business of the port was almost suspended by its virulence for six or eight months; the citizens in great numbers having fled to the country, while the shipping put to sea. The general health is now good, public confidence is restored, and the inhabitants have returned to their shops and dwellings.

The origin of the pestilence is a mooted point here, among medical men of the most distinguished talent and experience. Some contend that it was imported from Africa by slave ships; others that it was introduced at Pernambuco in a ship from New Orleans; and others again believe it to be of domestic generation, connected with atmospherical phenomena, thus far inscrutable to the observations of man. This last opinion is supported by changes of a meteorological character universally acknowledged: one the interruption, amounting almost to an entire cessation, of thunder-storms in the afternoons, formerly of such regular daily occurrence, that appointments for business or pleasure were made in reference to them, as to taking place “before” or “after the shower.” It is a fact also attested by medical men, that of late years, marked modifications for the worse have been observed in the types of fever prevalent, till their malignancy reached the climax just experienced. There was, too, at the commencement and during the continuation of the pestilence, a stagnation and want of elasticity in the atmosphere, from the cessation to a great degree of the fresh and regular winds from the sea, very perceptible and very oppressive: all confirmatory of the belief that the sickness was atmospheric and indigenous. History and tradition are also brought to support this supposition; nearly a century ago, a similar pestilence is said to have prevailed in Rio, with the same devastating effect; and records of the years 1666, 1686, and 1694, bear testimony to visitations of a like kind. There is reason therefore to hope that the scourge will disappear as it has done before, and not become annual and endemic as in the West Indies.

The weather now is as delightful as can be imagined, with a clearness and brilliancy of atmosphere like that on the Hudson in the month of June, throwing an enchantment around the scenery of the bay perfectly irresistible.

September 10th.—The first two or three days after our arrival were marked chiefly by an interchange of visits of ceremony, between the officers chief in command of the foreign squadrons near us and our ship; accompanied by a succession of salutes deafening to the ears, filling the pure atmosphere of the heavens with smoke and sulphur, and awakening in tones of thunder the ten thousand echoes of the adjoining mountains. In no harbor in the world, perhaps, is more powder wasted in the course of a year than in this. There seems ever to be among the Brazilians some new occasion for a salute. On the day of our arrival, in the course of a half hour the Congress alone fired eighty heavily charged thirty-four pounders: all of which were answered in the same space of time, gun for gun. Two of the intervening days since have been fête days on shore, calling for three separate salutes—morning, noon, and night—of twenty-one guns from all the forts and Brazilian men-of-war in the harbor, and at mid-day a general one of the same number, from all the flag-ships of the foreign squadrons. A commutation for the powder thus annually wasted, would be a princely income for any one securing it.

These observances of etiquette afloat well through with, Commodore McKeever invited me yesterday morning to join him, Captain McIntosh and Lieut. T——, in visits on shore to the American Ambassador, and others of our countrymen in official positions, and to Mr. H——, a leading English merchant, who had called on board the Congress early after our arrival. In 1829, and till within a year or two past, the principal landing was in the centre of the city upon an inclined plane of solid masonry, descending into the water so as to be accessible by boats at any state of the tide; this conducted to a fine mole of granite, parapetted with stone, and forming one side of the palace square. Against the flush wall of this mole the water rose high, carrying off into the current, in its reflow, the offensive matter, which in want of sewers is cast along the shores of the city at night. An extension of the square on the bay is now in progress, however, by the driving of piles and filling in with earth and rubbish; and the landing is at a temporary stairs and platform of wood, at an adjoining point, in the midst of outpourings of filth disgusting to the senses, and making impressions on the stranger most unfavorable as to the purity and civilization of the imperial city. A carriage had been ordered for us here, and in its style and appointments we had evidence, at once, of the improvement in equipages which has been made since my last visit. Then, the old-fashioned Portuguese Calesa, or chaise, and a clumsy close-carriage on leathern braces, of a similar style and date, were universally in use. I do not recollect to have seen vehicles of any other kind, except the imperial carriages and those of the British Ambassador. Now, although the Calesa is still frequently met, and occasionally its con-frere in antiquity, the low open four-wheeled carriage of the fashion and finish of those most modern in New York, London and Paris, and equal to them in all their appointments, is in general use. Besides many livery stables at which these may be found, stands of them occupy the Palace Square and other public points at all hours of the day. Twenty years ago, mules only were driven, except in the instances above mentioned; but, now, fine showy horses are as often seen in the turn-out. The carriage we entered was drawn by a pair of spirited, sleek, long-tailed blacks. The coachman in a livery of sky-blue and silver, made aware, by the broad pennant of the many-oared barge in which we came on shore, and by the lace and epaulettes of my companions, of the rank of some of the party, dashed off with a flourish of whip and a prancing of his beasts that won the admiration of the bystanders. He kept for the whole morning a Jehu speed characteristic of the manner of driving here; and significant, it would seem, by its accelerated rapidity, of the degree of rank of those it hurries along, from the Emperor down.

The route we took, is one of the finest the city and its environs afford, leading three or four miles southward, immediately along the bay, by a continuous street bearing different names in different sections, to Botafogo, the most beautiful of the suburbs. The green and palm-tufted hills overhanging the way inland; the luxuriant little valleys receding, here and there, from it, and terminating in wild and inaccessible ravines; the flower gardens and shrubberies, encircling the better residences, with beauty in endless forms, and the perfume of everlasting spring; the gay coloring, novel, and in some instances fantastic architecture of the houses; the vases and statuary and statuettes around and surmounting them; and the stately and ornamental gateways, opening into fine avenues of old trees terminating in embowered perspective at inviting residences remote from the road, with magnificent views at one point and another of the mountains on the one side and of the bay on the other, made the drive both in going and returning inspiriting and delightful.

Botafogo itself is a gem of beauty: a seeming lake, three or four miles in circumference. The one half is as untamed and wild as granite-bound shores bristling into mountains can make it; the other, a semicircular beach of white sand overhung with trees, and lined by a succession of fine residences. From the curving street on which these stand others run westward, forming a village-like settlement. On one of them we found the mansion of Mr. H——, a spacious establishment with an air of aristocratic elegance approaching magnificence. Besides the lofty entrance hall and stately drawing-room into which we were ushered, there were glimpses through different vistas of a fine library, a music room, dining hall and billiard room of proportionate dimensions and appropriate appointments. Situated immediately beneath the pyramidal shaft of the Corcovado, with a view of other mountain peaks, the waters of Botafogo at near access on one side, and those of the ocean not far distant on the other, and bloom and blossom on every hand—the rustling banana around and the plumed palm above—the whole presented a tempting picture of a home in the tropics.

It was late in the afternoon before we again reached the city. On inquiring the charge for the carriage for the four hours we had it in use, I was rather surprised, notwithstanding the large number “eight thousand,” that met the ear in answer, that the whole was only four Spanish dollars, the thousand being reis, a nominal term in the currency of the country, one thousand of which constitute a mille-reis, a silver coin of the size and about the value of an American half dollar.

CHAPTER VI.

Rio de Janeiro.

September 12th.—On returning from the drive of Monday, I did not accompany the party to the ship, but gave the remainder of the afternoon to a stroll in the city. Its two principal and most attractive streets are the Rua Direita and Rua Ouvidor. The first runs north and south, parallel with the water, forming in its course the western side of the Palace Square; the other is at right angles with this, running east and west from a point near the square. A central section of the Direita is quite wide, and beside the palace contains the imperial chapel adjoining it, the Church of the Carmelites, used as a Cathedral, and that of the Holy Cross: in it also are the Custom House and Exchange, the Post Office and Commercial Reading-rooms, and the offices of the principal brokers and money-changers. It is in fact the Lombard-street and the Wall-street of Rio; while the Ouvidor, a mile in length, filled from end to end with shops of all kinds—fancy goods and millinery, prints and pictures, jewelry, articles of vertu and bijouterie—is its Bond-street and its Broadway.

The Rua Ouvidor terminates in a small open square, having on one side the fine façade of the church of St. Francisco de Paulo, and on another a more modern and well built structure, in Grecian architecture, used as a military school. A short street leads from this into a larger square diagonal to it, called the Roscio, in which is the Opera House; and a quarter of a mile further west lies the grand square of the Campo D’Acclamacao, so named from the proclamation in it of the independence of Brazil in 1822. My walk extended to this. It is a rectangular common of large extent, but partially built upon, and is distinguished by some fine public edifices. On the side next the city are the Treasury, the Museum and the Courts of Justice; on that opposite, the Senate Chamber of the Imperial Legislature; and on a third, a long line of Barracks. Roads and foot-paths cross it irregularly in various directions; but, ungraded and unplanted, it offers little attraction to the eye, being covered with coarse grass and weeds, mud-puddles and rubbish. Though thus neglected and shabby in itself, the views from it of the encircling hills and more distant mountains are full of freshness and beauty.

The Senate Chamber, a large square building of stone, is without architectural beauty or ornament. Originally the private residence of a governor of Bahia, when in the metropolis, it was sold by him to the government for its present uses. In it, in 1829, I witnessed the opening of the Imperial Legislature by Don Pedro I; and learning incidentally this morning when on shore, that the same body was to be prorogued to-day by the present Emperor, I turned my steps again in that direction: partly for the accomplishment of my purpose of a walk, and partly for such observation as I might secure as an outside spectator. It was too late to seek a ticket of admission to the house, at the Embassy or elsewhere, and the Brazilian who gave me information of the ceremony, thought I could not without one gain admittance to the interior, in the ordinary morning dress I wore. There would, however, it was probable, be a gathering of the populace to the scene; and with an opportunity of the study this might afford, I was content. It is the remark of a biographer of the brothers Humboldt, I think, that, “however fertile nature may be, man is always its most interesting and its most important feature;” and, after the almost exclusive observation of inanimate objects, from their surpassing magnificence for a week and more, I felt doubly inclined to avail myself of the chance of scrutinizing my fellows in new aspects of life.

The first impression made on an intelligent stranger on landing at Rio would, probably, arise from the numbers, evident difference in condition, the variety of employments, dress and undress, almost to nakedness, of the negro and slave population. Such figures, such groupings, such costumes, as are exhibited by these on every side, it would be difficult to picture or describe: the rapid lope and monotonous grunt of the coffee-bag carriers, their naked bodies reeking with oily sweat; the jingling and drumming of the tin rattles or gourds borne by the leaders of gangs, transporting on their heads all manner of articles—chairs, tables, sofas and bedsteads, the entire furniture of a household; the dull recitative, followed by the loud chorus, with which they move along; the laborious cry of others, tugging and hauling and pushing over the rough pavements heavily laden trucks and carts, an overload for an equal number of mules or horses, all crowd on the observation. Others, both male and female, more favored in their occupation, are seen as pedlers, carrying in the same manner, trunks and boxes of tin, containing various merchandise; glass cases filled with fancy articles and jewelry; trays with cakes and confectionery; and baskets with fruit, flowers and birds. And yet again others of the same color and race, more fortunate still, in being free—the street-vender, the mechanic, the tradesman, the soldier; the merchant with the dress and manner of a gentleman; the officer in uniform and the priest in his frock; all by their contrasts filling the mind with speculation and opening channels for thought.

An impression which would follow this first one, in quick succession, would be derived from the fearfully mongrel aspect of much of the population, claiming to be white. Mulattoes, quadroons, and demi-quadroons, and every other degree of tinted complexion and crisped hair, met, at every turn, indicate an almost unlimited extent of mixed blood. This cannot fail to be revolting, at least to a visitor from the Northern States of our country; especially as exhibited in the female portion of the lower orders of the community, as they hang over the under half of the doors of their houses, gazing up and down the street, or lean—black, white, and gray, three and four together, in the closest juxtaposition from their latticed windows.

A striking exhibition of this incongruous mingling of races and mixture of blood, was presented in the first object upon which my eye fell, on entering the Campo D’Acclamacao on my way to the Senate Chamber. A squadron of dragoons in a scarlet uniform, had just been placed in line on one side of the square. A mounted band in Hussar dress of the same color was in attendance. I took a station for a moment near this. It was composed of sixteen performers; and in the number included every shade of complexion, from the blackest ebony of Africa, through demi, quarter, and demi-quarter blood to the purely swarthy Portuguese and Brazilian, and the clear red and white of the Saxon, with blue eyes and flaxen hair. Such, in a greater or less degree, is the mixture seen in every sphere of common life—domestic, social, civil and military; and scarce less frequently than elsewhere, in the vestibule of the palace and at the altars of the church.

With the exception of this body of horse-guards and its band, there was but little indication in the square of the approaching spectacle. Two or three hundred idlers only, in addition to the ordinary movements on the common, were seen loitering about. Those who had begun to assemble, however, were in clean and holiday garb. The Senate Hall, which last evening looked deserted and shabby enough in its exterior, appeared now in gala dress. All the lofty windows above and below, were decorated on the outside with hangings of crimson silk; and the doors, thrown wide open, were screened by draperies of green cloth, embroidered in the centre with the imperial arms in colors. A body-guard of Halberdiers, in liveries of green and gold, stood in groups about the entrance—their lofty spears, surmounted with glittering battle-axes, being at rest near at hand.

Numbers of well-dressed citizens began to arrive and enter the building by a side door. Perceiving among them one and another in costumes not differing much from my own, I made bold to follow, leaving it for the door-keepers to question my right of admission. I knew not where I might be led, and after a long ascent by a dark, circular staircase, very unexpectedly found myself in an open gallery in the middle front of the hall, in a line with the diplomatic tribune on one side, and that appropriated to the Empress and her ladies on such occasions, on the other. All the best places in this gallery were already filled. As I was looking about for a choice in such as remained unoccupied, a Brazilian gentleman, recognizing me as a stranger, though there was nothing in my dress to indicate either my nation or profession, immediately approached and insisted on relinquishing to me his seat. It was in vain that I objected to dispossessing him, till, overcome by his courteous manners and unyielding purpose of civility, I bowed my way into it. The point of view was one of the best in the house, being immediately in front of the throne and the chairs at its foot, for the ministers and chief officers of the household. Besides the whole interior, it commanded also, through a large open window, the avenue, by which the imperial cortège would make its approach in state from San Christovao, the country palace, three or four miles west of the city.

The Chamber has been remodelled since 1829. Instead of being oblong as then, it is now semicircular, like the Senate Chamber at Washington. The canopy and hangings of the throne and the draperies of the windows, are of velvet and silk in green and gold, the national colors.

The members of both Houses began soon to enter; many in magnificent attire—naval and military uniforms stiff with embroideries of gold, various court-dresses and priestly robes—and many in a full dress of black alone, with an abundance of glittering stars and crosses, and the broad ribbons of different orders. In the number were many men of mark, not only in name and title, but in talent and popular influence. There was no friend near me, however, as on the former occasion, to point them out individually; and I had only the unsatisfactory assurance, from the circumstances of the case, of seeing before me not only the ministers of state and other officers of the government, but the leading politicians and ecclesiastics of the empire. Among them were many heads and countenances indicative of talent and unmistakable intellect, with a refinement and dignity of bearing that gave a most favorable impression of the whole as a legislative body.

You are aware that the government of Brazil is a constitutional monarchy, similar in its limitations and general organization to that of Great Britain. A Council of State consisting of three members holding office for life, corresponds to the Privy Council of Her Majesty. The ministry, composed of the heads of six departments—those of the Empire, Justice, Foreign Affairs, Marine, War, and Finance—is appointed by the Emperor. The Legislature consists of two chambers, the Senate and the House of Deputies, and is elected by the different cities and provinces. The Senators, titled and untitled, the proportion of each being limited by law, are fifty-four in number, and like the Counsellors of State hold office for life. The deputies amount to more than one hundred and serve for a limited time. Titles, of which there are a considerable number, of the various grades of Marquis, Count, Viscount and Baron, besides those of different orders of knighthood, are not hereditary, and there is no right of primogeniture in the descent of property.

The Legislature in its two branches, like the Parliament of England and the Congress of the United States, has cognizance of the entire business of the empire. Its discussions and debates on every subject, are as free as those of the two bodies named, and, I am told, are often marked with distinguished ability, varied learning and accomplishment, and true parliamentary eloquence. The temperament of the Brazilians is impulsive, and often leads to displays of impassioned oratory, on points eliciting the sectional jealousies of the Senators and Deputies. With an empire as widely spread as our own, and the centralization of the entire revenue at Rio, occasions often occur in which this feeling in regard to appropriations and other legislative measures is manifested. In times past, the ground of the strongest and warmest partisanship, was found in the early rivalry between the old Portuguese population and the native Brazilians, from the absorption by the former of the chief offices and emoluments of the country when a colony, and the patronage and favoritism extended by the crown to those who accompanied and followed John VI., in the transfer of the court from Lisbon in 1808. This cause of party irritation is now, however, rapidly disappearing. The native party with its purely native policy and views is entirely predominant, and can never again lose its power and influence.

A flourish of trumpets and a general bustle outside soon intimated the approach of the Emperor; and, through the open window before mentioned, I had a view of the procession of state. A company of lancers in rapid movement cleared the way. These were followed by a detachment of horse guards, in a uniform of white and gold with scarlet plumes, accompanied by a mounted band playing the national air; then came six coaches-and-six—each flanked and followed by its guard of honor—containing the great officers of the household. The state carriage of the Empress and her ladies, drawn by eight iron grays, next made its appearance; after which came the imperial state coach with a like number of horses; a long cavalcade of troops completing the cortège. Each pair of horses had its postillion, and each carriage its coachman and three footmen. All were in state liveries of green, stiff with lace and embroideries in silver. The postillions wore jockey caps fitting closely to the head, with lace and embroideries to correspond with the livery, and the coachmen and footmen, old-fashioned cocked hats broadly laced and fringed with white ostrich feathers. The postillions, mostly handsome young lads, and the coachmen and footmen wore powder, and the head of each carriage-horse was surmounted by three ostrich feathers arranged like the Prince of Wales’ plume. The panels and top of the Emperor’s carriage were of crimson velvet; but all other parts, the wheels included, of the heaviest carving, richly gilt;—the pattern and style of the whole reminding me of the state coaches of his great ancestor, Emanuel of Portugal, in the palmiest days of his reign, which I recollect to have had pointed out to me, as matters of antiquity, in the Royal Mews at Lisbon.

A procession of courtiers now appeared, in an upper corridor, open to view from the gallery, and, by a double line, formed a passage way for the Empress and ladies in waiting, to the tribune appropriated to her. This was screened in front by curtains. As Her Majesty entered these were drawn, and all in the gallery rising and bowing, remained standing. In the mean time the hall below became deserted, the senators and deputies having left it to escort the Emperor from the robing room. They returned in procession in a few moments, with His Majesty at the head in full coronation attire, wearing the crown and bearing the sceptre or gilded staff of state. While he mounted the steps of the throne the members filed off on either side to their respective places. Bowing to them, as he turned to face the assembly, the Emperor bade them be seated, and rested himself on his chair of state. A secretary then presented him with a sheet of letter paper in a portfolio, from which he read an address some five minutes in length. At its close, rising and again bowing, he descended and passed through the centre of the hall as he had entered, followed in procession by the entire body.

Don Pedro II., whom I saw as a child of three years, beside his father at a presentation on my former visit in Rio, is now a tall and stalwart young man of twenty-five, standing among those around him, like Saul in Israel, “higher than any of the people from his shoulders and upward.” He is finely and massively built, with great breadth of shoulders and fulness of chest. His German descent, through his mother, the Archduchess Leopoldina of Austria, is strikingly manifest in his light hair, blue eyes and fair complexion. There is nothing either in the features or expression of his face to remind one that, on his father’s side, he is a direct representative of the united blood of Braganza and Castile. His countenance, in repose, is heavy and inexpressive, and in the reading of his speech exhibited little flexibility. A fixed and, seemingly, determined indifference was all that could be inferred from his enunciations and intonations. I could not detect the slightest emotion of any kind or perceive a ray of feeling in his eye, as he went mechanically through it. How far this might be attributed to the subject matter, I am unable to say; it was in Portuguese, which I do not understand, and I have not yet seen a report of it in French in the daily journals. Still he is known to be a man of mind and character; has been most carefully and thoroughly educated; is extensively read; scientific in his studies and pursuits; and of exemplary correctness in his moral principles and character.

The Empress Doña Theresa is a Bourbon of Naples, a younger sister of the present King of the two Sicilies, and, of course, of Christina, Queen Dowager of Spain. She is apparently some four or five years the senior of her lord. In person she is short and stout, full in face, with well-defined features, and great amiability and benevolence of expression. Her walk and general mien, however, are not particularly marked with the high bearing and finished air, which give such grace and such prestige of regal birth and training to some of her compeers in rank, whom I have seen in Europe. She was in court costume—an under dress of white satin heavily embroidered with gold, with a profusion of rich lace falling deeply over the corsage and forming its sleeves. These were looped with bands of diamonds magnificent in size and lustre. The train was of green velvet with embroideries in gold, corresponding with those of the skirt. Her head-dress, with the hair worn in long ringlets in front, was a wreath of diamonds and emeralds, in the shape of flowers, rising into the form of a coronet over the forehead, and from which a white ostrich feather fell on one side gracefully to the shoulder. A broad sash, the combined ribbons of different orders—scarlet, purple, and green—crossed the bust from the right shoulder to the waist, above which a mass of emeralds and diamonds of the first water sparkled on her bosom. The ladies in waiting were also in dresses of green and gold of corresponding character.

By the time the gallery was sufficiently cleared to allow of a comfortable descent, the procession was formed for a return, in the same order in which it had arrived. The Empress was entering her carriage at a canopied doorway, as I gained the open air. Some amusing incident had just occurred, and in taking her seat she indulged in quite a laugh with her companions. This entirely confirmed the impression of her good looks and amiability. Ten years of apparent age were at once thrown off, and both vivacity of mind and sweetness of manner indicated by it. A pleasant break upon the frigidity of imperial etiquette, having the effect of a burst of sunshine on a cloudy day, over a landscape whose chief beauty till then had been in shade.

A lowering morning by this time began to settle into a heavy rain; and a heavy rain here is a rain indeed. It soon poured in torrents; and it seemed a pity, in an economical point of view, at least, as the long display moved off for a ride of three miles to San Christovao, that so much gilding and embroidery, so much lace and velvet, and so many fine feathers should be exposed to the peltings of the storm.

CHAPTER VII.

Rio de Janeiro.

September 16th.—There is no seaman’s chaplain or other American clergyman, at present at Rio; and the religious services of the Sabbath on board the Congress, since our arrival, have been attended by many of our compatriots, both ladies and gentlemen, residents here, including the Ambassador and Consul and their families. Occasions occur not unfrequently both in the shipping and on shore, calling for the special services of a Protestant minister of the Gospel. This has been the case within the passing week. The commander of an American schooner spoken by us the day we crossed the line, but which did not arrive till ten days after the Congress, died suddenly of apoplexy the morning he entered port. The schooner was put in quarantine, immediately, by the health officer; and it was with great difficulty permission was obtained from the authorities for the burial of the body on shore. Mr. Kent, the consul, formerly Governor of the State of Maine, solicited my attendance officially at the interment. This took place at the Protestant cemetery at Gamboa, a northern suburb of the city, situated on a broad indenture on the western side of the bay. Here the body had been carried by water. Gov. Kent took me in a calesa by land. The drive is through a mean and unattractive part of the city, by a winding course from street to street, between the hill of San Bento and that surmounted by the Bishop’s Palace.

This burial-ground was purchased by the foreign residents of Rio twenty-five or thirty years ago. It was then, and still is, comparatively, a secluded and rural spot, upon a hill-side overhung and crowned with trees, and commanding a beautiful view northward of the upper bay and its many islands; of the rich valleys to the west; and of the Organ Mountains sweeping majestically round in the distance. It is enclosed with high and substantial walls of stone, and is entered by an ornamental gateway of iron. From this a winding avenue of trees marks the ascent to a neat little chapel on a terrace near the centre of the ground. Here such religious services as may be desired, or can be secured, before committing the dead to the grave, are usually observed.

The morning was wet and gloomy, according well with the object of our visit, and the peculiar circumstances in which the burial was to take place. A funeral more sad in its desolateness could scarcely be: that of a stranger, in a strange land, unwept and unattended by any one who had ever seen, or ever heard of him when living. The consul, the undertaker, the grave-digger and I, as chaplain, being the only persons brought to the spot either by duty or humanity. The officers and crew of the schooner were in quarantine, and, from some omission or mistake in the arrangements, no representative from other American vessels in port was present.

The kindness of Gov. Kent, in giving his personal attendance, was at a sacrifice of feeling which could not fail to elicit my sympathy, though a stranger to him till within a few days past. It is but a very brief period, scarcely a month, since he committed to the newly-made grave near which we were standing, an only son of great promise just verging into manhood: one of the last of the victims of the late epidemic. The associations of the passing scene could not but revive in painful freshness a sorrow that has not yet lost its keenness.

The rain, and the wetness in every pathway, prevented all observation, except a general glance around, or any lingering among the memorials of those who rest here, far from the sepulchres of their fathers. It had been my purpose, before being called thus by duty to the spot, early to visit in it the tomb of my friend Tudor. This was the only one I now sought, to stand a moment beside it in remembrance of the dead, and, in thoughts of the living, who most loved him, but who may never be permitted to look upon his grave. It is marked by a plain white obelisk of Italian marble, bearing the following simple inscription:

Ossa

Gulielmi Tudor

Rerump: Fœd: Americæ Sept:

Legati.

Natus Bostoniæ A. D. MDCCLXXIX.

Mortuus est

Rio Janiero A. D. MDCCCXXX.

Multis ille bonis

flebilis Occidit.

September 18th.—The objects, at Rio, of historic interest to the stranger, or suggestive to him of thoughts of the past, are few. There is, however, at least one entitled in these respects to a passing notice from a Protestant. It is a small island, situated a short distance seaward from our anchorage, beneath the green heights of Castle Hill, a half mile from the shore. Its entire area is occupied by a fortress, whose white ramparts, demi-turreted angles, and floating banner, form conspicuous objects in coming up the harbor. My eye never consciously rests upon it without recurrence to a fact in the early history of Rio, inseparably associated with the name which both island and fortress now bear—that of Villegagnon. However imposing and aristocratic in sound, it is synonymous in its application here, with treachery, and not less surreptitious—to compare small things with great—as regards the name of the noble old Huguenot Coligny, first given to them, than that of Americus, borne by half the globe, instead of one in honor of the true finder of the western world.

Brazil was first discovered by Vincente Pinzon, one of the companions of Columbus in his first voyage, on the 26th of January, 1499. The land descried by him was Cape St. Augustine in the vicinity of the present city of Pernambuco. He took possession of the country in the name of the crown of Castile, whose flag he bore, and, coasting northward to the mouth of the Amazon, returned to Spain without forming a settlement. About the same period Pedro Cabral was fitting out a large fleet in the Tagus, to be conducted to India by the newly known route of the Cape of Good Hope. Fearful of the calms in the Atlantic off the coast of Africa, in pursuing the voyage, he ran so far to the west as to make, on the 25th of April, 1506, the same shores Pinzon had, some degrees further to the south. Entering a fine bay, in imitation of Columbus, he erected a wooden cross on the shore, before which he and his followers prostrated themselves, and high mass being performed, possession of the country was taken in the name of his sovereign Emanuel of Portugal. He gave to the bay the name of Porto Seguro, since changed in honor of him to Cabralia, and to the country that of the Terra de Vera Cruz—the Land of the Holy Cross. This appellation, however, was soon lost in that of Brazil, from the abundance of the wood of that name found in it and the high value placed upon the article in Europe: a result pathetically deplored by a pious Jesuit, in the lamentation that “the cupidity of man by unworthy traffic, should change the wood of the cross, red with the real blood of Christ, for that of another wood which resembled it only in color.”

The harbor of Rio de Janeiro was not discovered till 1516. De Solis, in search of a western passage to the Pacific, looked into it, in that year, as he coasted his way to the Rio de la Plata where he lost his life. He gave to it no name, however, and it remained unvisited again till De Sousa entered it in 1531. Under the impression that it was the outlet of a great river, this navigator called it Rio de Janeiro, the day on which he made the supposed discovery being the first of the new year. It did not, however, particularly attract the notice of the Portuguese, and still remained unoccupied by them.

In the mean time adventurers and traders from France made their way to this part of the New World, and secured the good will and friendship of the natives. Among them was Villegagnon, a knight of Malta, who had seen service in the east, was an officer of distinction in the French navy, and had commanded the vessel which carried Mary Queen of Scots and her retinue from France on her return to her kingdom. His visit to Brazil inspired him with the ambition of establishing a colony at Rio. Desirous of the favor and aid of the crown in this project, and believing the influence of Coligny with the king the surest means of accomplishing this end, to win his confidence and co-operation he professed a deep interest in the condition of the Protestants of France, and avowed the purpose of making the proposed colony a refuge to them, from the persecutions to which they were subject at home. The king was led by his friendship for Coligny, to regard the proposition with such favor as to grant to Villegagnon two vessels for the expedition, while the admiral interested himself in securing a number of respectable Protestants to accompany it as colonists.

On arriving at Rio in 1555, Villegagnon first took possession of the small island Lage near the mouth of the harbor; but soon finding this too much exposed to the sea, removed to one larger near the site of the present city, to which, with the fort erected upon it, he gave the name of Coligny. The vessels were sent back to France for reinforcements. Great interest in the enterprise had in the mean time been excited among the Protestants there. Two clergymen and fourteen students of theology had been selected in Geneva to secure the spiritual good of the colony, and were received, preparatory to their embarkation, at the chateau of Coligny near Chatillon, with great attention. Large numbers of respectable emigrants joined them, and sanguine hopes were entertained that the principles of the reformation would be surely implanted in the New World.

Early after the arrival of this reinforcement, Villegagnon, believing himself sure of the support of the crown in the further prosecution of his object, under the pretence of having returned to his old faith, commenced so bitter a persecution of the Protestants, that, in place of the peaceful enjoyment of freedom of conscience for which they had been led so far from their native land, they found themselves in a worse condition in this respect than they were at home. They were driven, at length, to the determination of returning to France. The only vessel, however, granted to them for the purpose was so old and so ill found for the voyage, that five of the number, after going on board, refused to venture their lives in her. Of these, three were afterwards put to death by Villegagnon, and the others, flying for refuge to the Portuguese settlements, were constrained to apostatize to save their lives. The company who embarked reached France only after having suffered all but death from starvation. At the time of their return, ten thousand of their brethren were in readiness, under the auspices of Coligny, to embark for the new colony. The report brought by them of the treachery of him who was to have been their leader at once changed their purpose; and the project of a Protestant colony in ‘France Antarctique,’ as the region had already been styled, was abandoned. Thus it was that the religious and civil destiny of one of the richest sections of the New World was changed for centuries now past, and, it may be, for centuries yet to come.

With the remembrance of this failure in establishing the Reformed religion here, and of the direct cause which led to it, I often find myself speculating, as to the possible and probable results which would have followed the successful establishment of Protestantism during the three hundred years which have intervened. With the wealth and power and increasing prosperity of the United States before us as the fruits, at the end of two hundred years, of the colonization of a few feeble bands of Protestants on the comparatively bleak and barren shore of the Northern Continent, there is no presumption in the belief that, had a people of similar faith, similar morals, similar habits of industry and enterprise, gained an abiding footing in so genial a climate and on so exuberant a soil, long ago, the still unexplored and impenetrable wildernesses of the interior would have bloomed and blossomed in civilization as the rose, and Brazil from the sea-coast to the Andes become one of the gardens of the world. But the germ which might have led to this was crushed by the bad faith and malice of Villegagnon; and, as I look on the spot which, by bearing his name, in the eyes of a Protestant at least perpetuates his reproach, the two or three solitary palms which lift their tufted heads above the embattled walls, and furnish the only evidence of vegetation on the island, seem, instead of plumed warriors in the midst of their defences, like sentinels of grief mourning the blighted hopes of the long past.

The conduct of Villegagnon soon met its just recompense. The course he pursued towards the Huguenots led to the early and utter failure of his enterprise. Had he been true to his followers of the Reformed faith, the colony, in place of being weakened by the return of any to France, would have been so strengthened and established by the ten thousand prepared to join them, that the Portuguese would never have been able to dislodge and supplant them. Needing reinforcements, Villegagnon proceeded himself to France to secure more settlers and the further aid of the government. Every thing there was adverse to his object. He had forfeited the favor of Coligny, and put an effectual end to the emigration of Protestants to Brazil. The king was too much occupied with the civil war existing to give heed to him. While thus delayed the Portuguese fitted out a strong expedition under Mem de Sa from Bahia. This was successful. The French were driven to their ships, and the Portuguese, possessing themselves of the island on which they had been established, gained such foothold as never afterwards to be displaced. This occurred on the 20th of Jan. 1560, St. Sebastian’s day, under the patronage of which saint the expedition had been placed: and in whose honor the city afterwards built on the mainland, received the name of St. Sebastian. This is now, however, entirely supplanted by that of Rio de Janeiro.

In 1676 the city had become so populous as to be made the see of a Bishop, and the palace now crowning the brow of the Bishop’s Hill was built. At that time, and for more than a hundred years afterwards, Bahia was the seat of chief authority in the captaincies of Brazil; but in 1763, so greatly had the wealth and influence of Rio increased, from the discovery of the gold and diamond mines, whose products were poured into her bosom as a market, that the residence of the Viceroy was transferred from Bahia and became permanently fixed here.

It was not, however, till the arrival of the royal family of Portugal, in their flight from Lisbon before the French army in 1808, that the prosperity and true progress of Rio, and Brazil in general, may be said to have commenced. Till then, the whole country had been subject to the restrictive and depressing influences of the policy adopted by the mother country, in the government of her colonies: all foreign trade interdicted, heavy import and export duties imposed on the commerce with Portugal herself, grasping monopolies claimed by the crown at home, and extortionate perquisites exacted by its representatives on the ground. There were no press, no newspapers, no books, no schools. The whole country was in a state of darkness and ignorance beyond that of the Middle Ages; and Rio an unenlightened, unrefined, and demoralized provincial town. But with the Prince Regent of Portugal, the Queen mother, the court, and more than twenty thousand followers, European manners and customs, and the habits and usages of modern civilized life were introduced. Commerce was opened to all nations; and the press, literature and the arts established. The changes effected in Rio were almost miraculous; and so constant and so rapid have been the improvements to the present time, that she now presents to the visitor, in many of her leading features, an aspect becoming the metropolis of a great Empire.

The progress of enlightened government, enlarged liberty and extended commerce, has been commensurate with the advances in civilization, intellectual culture and the refinements of life. The measure of throwing the ports open to all nations, so wise and so essential, at once adopted and proclaimed by the Prince Regent—afterwards John VI.—in 1808, was followed by him in 1815 by the no less important step of elevating the colony in its united provinces to a distinct kingdom, on an equality in its rights and privileges with those of Portugal and Algarves, under the one crown.

In 1822, Brazil became an independent empire under Don Pedro I. with a constitution which guaranteed to her a representative legislature, and the largest liberty compatible with the immunities of the limited monarchy by which she is still governed.

This political progress was not made without obstacles and threatened anarchy and disaster. The return to Portugal of John VI. in 1821, was followed in 1831, by the abdication of Don Pedro I. in favor of his son, a child four years of age; and partisan conflicts, during the regency which followed, made necessary the sudden termination, in 1840, of the minority of Don Pedro II., at the age of 14, in violation of an article of the constitution fixing the majority of an heir to the throne at eighteen. Since then, however, general tranquillity and progressive prosperity have prevailed. After years of deficiency in the revenue there is now a surplus; the receipts of the imperial treasury for the last year being seventeen millions and a half of dollars, and the expenditures little more than fifteen millions. The national debt is sixty millions, but with increasing exports and an enlarging commerce this may soon be liquidated; and the finances of the country be placed in unfettered condition. The revenue is derived from duties on exports as well as imports; those on exports being applicable alike to the internal commerce of the empire between province and province, and to that with foreign countries. The export duty on coffee, transferred from one province to another, is ten per cent. On shipments of the same article for foreign ports, there is an additional duty of two per cent. Every product—rice, sugar, cotton, farina—is thus taxed. The export duty on mandioca, the staff of life of the country, is regulated by the market value of the article, and not by fixed per centage.

There is no direct tax on landed property, but, in lieu of it, a levy of ten per cent. on every transfer of real estate. There is also an annual tax on slaves throughout the empire at the rate of two milreis a head.

The greatest danger to which the empire seems exposed, arises from the vastness of its extent, and the obstacles which have hitherto existed to a ready intercourse, between its different sections and the central power at Rio de Janeiro. But steam navigation already established along its coast, and soon to be introduced on its northern rivers, with projected railroads and telegraphic routes, promises to overcome this difficulty; and, as in the United States, so to facilitate communication, and so closely and firmly to bind the different provinces in a whole, as to secure the perpetuity and integrity of the empire.

CHAPTER VIII.

At Sea.

September 23d.—

“The sea again! the swift, bright sea!”—

and, at the rate of twelve miles the hour,

“Away, away upon the rushing tide

We hurry faster than the foam we ride,