Musical the rippling Of the tardy current, Musical the murmur Of the wind-swept trees, Musical the cadence Of the friendly voices, Laden with the sweetness Of the songs of old.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO PERNAMBUCO HARBOUR.]
[Illustration: PART OF THE EMPIRE OF BRAZIL, _Shewing the Line of the_ Projected Railway & Navigable _Upper Level of the_ RIVER SAN FRANCISCO.
_S Straker lith. 80 Bishopsgate St. London._]
‘That Strain Again!’—‘It hath a dying fall.’—‘Auld Lang Syne, or ’tis thirty years ago.’—Aspect of Pernambuco from the Sea.—Tripartite division of the City, Recife, St. Antonio, and Boa Vista.—Note on the old town of Olinda and its new namesake, the late steamer No. 2 of this A 1 line.—March of improvement by land and sea, in respect to ships and city.—Such Brazilian progress a lesson for West Indians.—Frugality and personal activity on the one hand, prodigality and vicarial mismanagement on the other, being the real difference between the position of the planters in either place.—Sugar Manufacturing improvements.—De Mornay’s Patent Cane Crushing Mill, and its Merits.—Appreciation of the invention in the West Indies as well as Brazil.—Exports of Pernambuco to United States.—Political and Martial feeling of the Pernambucanos.—Peculiarities of the Population, soil, and produce.—Unique effects of rain and drought in the Matta.—Hygienic hints to the consumptive and the yellow feverish.—Initiation of the Railway Era, by the De Mornays, in Pernambuco.—Immense importance of the proposed line, and certainty of its success, sustained by British Capital, and specially supported by the Emperor personally, and the Brazilian executive.—Mr. Borthwick’s report on the project.—The writer’s anticipation that it will be successful, and expectation that the reader will approve of his suggestion for making it so.—Note on Planters’ life in America.
It is a trite remark, that there is probably no more permanent or abiding impression on the mind than that created by first visiting a country, whose climate, people, habits, and ideas, differ essentially from those we have been brought up with and are accustomed to regard as a part of our nature. After a lapse of more than thirty years, the sensations I experienced on my first arrival here are as fresh in my memory as if occurring only yesterday. The voyage, which occupied no less than fifty-six days; the eager anxiety for a sight of land; the first view of the foreign port and outlandish looking craft; and then the pilot coming on board with a crew of blacks, seen for the first time; the debarkation amongst strange faces of every possible shade of colour; with the curiously formed streets and singular houses, filled with a population of hues so different from that left behind—every one apparently shouting at the top of their voices; whilst hundreds of rainbow-tinted parrots, and harlequin-skinned animals, more numerous than the managerial knowledge of a boy of fifteen believed had ever appeared out of the Ark, all helped to aggravate the preternatural a perpetual din—the whole scene, as may be imagined, being such as to become indelibly engraven on such a spectator for the remainder of his life. It was a season of eager curiosity and enjoyment. ‘Youth at the prow and Pleasure at the helm’ look only to the bright side of life’s river; but neither time nor distance has since dimmed the halo that seemed then to environ the portals of this first launch into active being. _Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis_; still the characteristic peculiarities of a new country and new scenes remain fixed in our minds, as if no change had ever come over the spirit of our dream; and such is Pernambuco still to me, though in many respects greatly improved, altered, and enlarged, as I shall proceed to show forthwith.