46 To the River Plate and Back 



alarming after a stay of five days to have a bill presented 

 to you on leaving for ioo$ooo. But it is not so bad as 

 it looks. 



While attending to my small affairs at the bank and 

 in the telegraph office, I became separated from my 

 friends who had come on shore with me. They told 

 me that they were going to the upper city and would 

 proceed slowly, so that I could overtake them. But 

 they had vanished, and I was left alone "a stranger in 

 a strange land. ' Solitude, however, is not necessarily 

 misery. A man who is alone can often learn as much 

 as one who is attended by companions. Making sure 

 that I had lost my comrades, I boarded the street-car 

 going east, and resigned myself to my fate. I did not 

 know the amount of the fare, but selected the smallest 

 piece of coin I had, 400 reis, and gave it to the conductor, 

 and he gave me back 300 reis as change. How far the 

 fare would have carried me I do not know, but we had 

 only gone a short distance when I spied the entrance 

 to a park. I beckoned to the conductor; he rang the 

 bell; the car stopped. As I had been riding along the 

 street my attention was attracted, as it had been before, 

 to the fact that most of the people appeared to be of 

 African descent. Bahia is in fact the capital of the 

 "Black Belt" of Brazil. It is said that in the interior 

 of the state of Bahia there are colonies of blacks who 

 have reverted to the ways of 'darkest Africa.' The 

 streets, filled with gaudily clad negresses carrying 

 their burdens upon their heads, the tropical sunlight 

 glowing upon the walls, the rich, luxuriant vegeta- 

 tion in the gardens, brought back to me memories 

 of northern Africa. Bahia would furnish splendid 

 studies for an artist who revels in color. From this 

 point of view it seemed to me quite as attractive as 



