"Evening found us back on the steamer, and at sunset we passed through the southern entrance of the bay and were once more on the ocean. Our prow was turned to Rio, eight hundred miles away, and we steamed gayly along on our course. Sometimes we kept far out to sea, to avoid dangerous reefs, on which many a ship has gone to pieces, and at others we swept close in shore, and had fine views of the land. The hills grow in size as we increase our distance from the equator, and after a time the mountains of the coast range fill the western horizon. With our glasses we can distinguish many houses and villages, and are not surprised to learn that the region is a fertile one.
"The coasting steamers make half a dozen stoppages on the way from Bahia to Rio, but we do not halt. None of the way ports are of great consequence, but if the country behind them could be developed to its proper capacity there would be a heavy business at places now unknown to the commercial world. Some of the mountain slopes may be difficult of cultivation on account of their dryness, but there is a vast area of country that only waits the work of the colonist to enable it to produce abundantly."
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE HARBOR OF RIO.]
Four days from Bahia brought the steamer in sight of "The Sugar-Loaf," the sharply conical peak nearly two thousand feet high which is the landmark of the magnificent bay of Rio Janeiro, pronounced by many visitors the finest in the world. Some there are who claim pre-eminence for the Bay of Naples; others, but they are few in number, who have entered Avatcha Bay, in Kamtchatka, say it surpasses the Bay of Rio; and others again give preference to the Bay of Yokohama, in Japan. Among our three friends there were no less than three opinions: Naples, Avatcha, and Yokohama had each an advocate, but all agreed in giving the second honor to Rio. With this honor it must remain content.
[Illustration: VIEW OF RIO JANEIRO FROM THE SEA.]
Its general shape is that of a triangle, and it is nearly a hundred miles in circumference. There is but a single entrance, and that a narrow one, so that a ship once inside is in water as smooth as that of a lake. It is set in mountains whose sides are thickly covered with foliage, and its surface is studded with islands, nearly a hundred in all. The name of the bay, "Rio de Janeiro," was given under the supposition that it was not a bay, but the mouth of a large river. There is no stream of consequence entering the ocean at this point, and the "River of January" exists only in the imagination.