een north hung obstinately at south.
Whether for natural productions, or weather, or society, we were
commonly three months too late or two months too soon; or, as one of
"ours" put it, we should have come in the other monsoon. Nevertheless,
it was impossible for youth and high spirits to follow our schedule
and not find it spiced to the full with the enjoyment of novelty; if
not in season, at least well seasoned.

However, every one travels nowadays, and it is time worse than wasted
to retell what many have seen. But do many of our people yet visit our
intended second port, that most beautiful bay of Rio de Janeiro? I
fancy not. It is far out of the ordinary line, and the business
immigration to South America is much more from Europe than from our
own continent; but, having since visited many harbors, in many lands,
I incline to agree with my old captain of the _Congress_, there is
none that equals Rio, viewed from the anchorage. Like Japan, I was
happy enough to see Rio before it had been much improved, while the
sequestered, primitive, tropical aspect still clung to it. I suppose
the red-tiled roofs still rise as before from among the abundant
foliage and the orange-trees, in the suburb of Bota Fogo; that the
same deliciously suggestive smell of the sugar and rum hogsheads hangs
about the streets; that the long, narrow Rua do Ouvidor is still
brilliant with its multicolored feather flowers; and that at night the
innumerable lights dazzle irregularly upward, like the fireflies which
also there abound, over the hill-sides and promontories that so
charmingly break the shore line. But already in 1867 the strides since
1860 were strikingly visible. In the earlier year I used frequently to
visit a friend living at Nichtherohy, on the opposite shore of the
bay. The ferriage then was by trig, long, sharp-bowed, black paddle
steamers, with raking funnels. They were tremendously fussy,
important, puffing little chaps, with that consequential air which so
frequently accompanies moderate performance. The making a landing was
a complicated and tedious job, characterized by the same amount of
needless action and of shortcoming in accomplishment. We would back
and stop about twenty feet away from the end of a long, projecting
pier. Then ropes would be got ashore from each extremity of the
vessel; which done, she would back again, and the bow line would be
shortened in. Then she would go ahead, and the like would be done by
the ste