ful, clear, dark ultramarine to a
muddy green; innumerable small birds, moths, locusts, and grasshoppers
came on board; and, having given special orders that we were to be
called early the next morning, we went to bed in the fond hope that we
should be able to enter Rio harbour at daybreak.

_Thursday, August 17th_.--'L'homme propose; Dieu dispose.' Steam was
up at midnight, but by that time it was blowing half a gale of wind
from the south-west, with such a steep short sea that the screw was
scarcely ever properly immersed, but went racing round and round in
the air with tremendous velocity, as we pitched and rolled about. Our
progress was therefore at the rate of something rather under a mile
an hour, and at daybreak, instead of entering the harbour of Rio, as
we had hoped to do, we found ourselves close to Cape Frio.

About 8 a.m. matters mended, the wind moderating and changing its
direction slightly; so that, under steam and sail, we were soon going
along the coast at the rate of four or five miles an hour. The surf
was breaking with a loud roar upon the white sandy beach, while the
spray was carried by the force of the wind far inland, over the strip
of flat fertile-looking country, lying between the sea and a chain of
low sugarloaf-shaped mountains, parallel with the shore, and only a
short distance off.

Our course lay between the mainland and the islands of Maya and Payo,
where the groves of bananas and other trees looked very miserable in
the wind. The tall isolated palm-trees, whose elastic stems bowed
readily before the fury of the blast, looked, as they were twisted and
whirled hither and thither, like umbrellas turned inside out. Passing
the false Sugarloaf mountain, as it is called, we next opened out the
true one, the Gavia, and the chain of mountains beyond, the outlines
of which bear an extraordinary resemblance to the figure of a man
lying on his back, the profile of the face being very like that of the
late Duke of Wellington. As the sun sank in gorgeous splendour behind
these hills, I think I never saw a grander or more beautiful sight;
though the sky was so red and stormy-looking that our hopes of a fine
day to-morrow were but faint.

Before entering the harbour, a bar had to be crossed, which is a
dangerous operation all the world over. The skylights and hatches were
fastened down, and those of our party who did not like being shut up
below took their places on the bridge, where, for the first