rn line. This would fetch her, say, ten feet away, when the
same processes must be repeated. I never timed, for why should one be
in a hurry in the tropics, where no one else is? but it seemed to me
that sometimes ten minutes were thus consumed. In 1867 these had
disappeared, and had been replaced by Yankee double-ended boats, which
ran into slips such as we have. Much more expeditious and sensible,
but familiar and ugly to a degree, and not in the least entertaining;
nor, I may add, congruous. They put you at once on the same absurd
"jump" that we North Americans practise; whereas in the others we
placidly puffed our cigars in an atmosphere of serenity. Time and tide
may be so ridiculous as not to wait; we knew that waiting was
enjoyment. The boat had time to burn, and so had we. At the later
date, street-cars also had been introduced, and we were told were
doing much to democratize the people. The man whose ability to pay for
a cab had once severed him from the herd now went along with it, and
saved his coppers. The black coats and tall black silk hats, with
white trousers and waistcoats, which always struck me as such an odd
blend, were still in evidence.

The _Iroquois_ did not succeed in making Rio without a stop. The
northeast trades hung well to the eastward after we left Guadeloupe,
and blew hard with a big sea; for it was the northern winter. Running
across them, as we were, the ship was held close to the wind under
fore and aft canvas. For a small vessel nothing is more uncomfortable.
Rolling and butting at waves which struck the bow at an angle of
forty-five degrees made walking, not impossible, indeed, to practised
sea legs, but still a constant succession of gymnastic balancings that
took from it all pleasure. For exercise it was not needed. You had but
to sit at your desk and write, with one leg stretched out to keep your
position. The varied movements of the muscles of that leg, together
with those of the rest of the body, in the continued effort "to
correct the horizontal deviation," as Boatswain Chucks phrased it,
sent you to bed wearily conscious that you had had constitutional
enough. The large consumption of coal in proportion to the ground
covered made a renewal necessary, and we went into Ciara, an open
roadstead sheltered only by submerged coral reefs, on the northeast
coast of Brazil. Here the incessant long trade swell sets in upon a
beach only partly protected; and boating is chiefly by catamar