499 PERNAMBUCO, BRAZIL. [chap, xxi 



met with a want of politeness : I was refused in a sullen manner 

 at two different houses, and obtained with difficulty from a third, 

 permission to pass through their gardens to an uncultivated hill, 

 for the purpose of viewing the country. I feel glad that this 

 happened in the land of the Brazilians, for I bear them no good 

 will a land also of slavery, and therefore of moral debasement. 

 A Spaniard would have felt ashamed at the very thought of re- 

 fusing such a request, or of behaving to a stranger with rudeness. 

 The channel by which we went to and returned from Olinda, was 

 bordered on each side by mangroves, which sprang like a minia- 

 ture forest out of the greasy mud-banks. The bright green 

 colour of these bushes always reminded me of the rank grass in 

 a churchyard : both are nourished by putrid exhalations ; the 

 one speaks of death past, and the other too often of death to 

 come. 



The most curious object which I saw in this neighbourhood, 

 was the reef that forms the harbour. I doubt whether in the 

 whole world any other natural structure has so artificial an ap- 

 pearance.* It runs for a length of several miles in an absolutely 

 straight line, parallel to, and not far distant from, the shore. It 

 varies in width from thirty to sixty yards, and its surface is level 

 and smooth ; it is composed of obscurely-stratified hard sand- 

 stone. At high water the waves break over it ; at low water its 

 summit is left dry, and it might then be mistaken for a break- 

 water erected by Cyclopean workmen. On this coast the cur- 

 rents of the sea tend to throw up in front of the land, long spits 

 and bars of loose sand, and on one of these, part of the town 

 of Pernambuco stands. In former times a long spit of this 

 nature seems to have become consolidated by the percolation of 

 calcareous matter, and afterwards to have been gradually up- 

 heaved ; the outer and loose parts during this process having been 

 worn away by the action of the sea, and the solid nucleus left as 

 we now see it. Although night and day the waves of the open 

 Atlantic, turbid with sediment, are driven against the steep out- 

 side edges of this wall of stone, yet the oldest pilots know of no 

 tradition of any change in its appearance. This durability is 

 much the most curious fact in its history : it is due to a tough 



* I have described this Bar in detail, in the Lond. and Edin. Phil. Mag., 

 vqL xix. (1841), p. 257 



