RIO DE JANEIRO AND ITS ENVIRONS. 61 
that calls itself a garden can hardly fail to be beautiful 
in a climate where growth is so luxuriant. But it is 
not kept with great care. Indeed, the very readiness with 
which plants respond to the least culture bestowed upon 
them here makes it very difficult to keep grounds in that 
trim order which we think so essential. This garden boasts, 
however, one feature as unique as it is beautiful, in its long 
avenue of palms, some eighty feet in height. I wish it were 
possible to give in words the faintest idea of the archi- 
tectural beauty of this colonnade of palms, with their 
green crowns meeting to form the roof. Straight, firm, 
and smooth as stone columns, a dim vision of colonnades 
in some ancient Egyptian temple rises to the imagination 
as one looks down the long vista.* 
May 6th. Yesterday, at the invitation of our friend 
Mr. B , we ascended the famous Corcovado peak. Leav- 
ing the carriages at the terminus of the Larangeiras road, 
we made the farther ascent on horseback by a winding 
narrow path, which, though a very fair road for mountain 
travelling in ordinary weather, had been made exceedingly 
slippery by the late rains. The ride was lovely through 
the fragrant forest, with enchanting glimpses of view here 

and there, giving promise of what was before us. Occa- 
sionally a brook or a little cascade made pleasant music by 
the roadside, and when we stopped to rest our horses we 
heard the wind rustle softly in the stiff palms overhead. 
The beauty of vegetation is enhanced here by the singular 
character of the eoil. The color of the earth is peculiar 
all about Rio ; of a rich warm red, it seems to glow 
beneath the mass of vines and large-leaved plants above 
it, and every now and then crops out in vivid, striking 
* The palm is the beautiful Oreodoxa oleracea. 
