A NATURALIST IN BRAZIL 



THE BEAUTY OF BRAZIL 



HE sea that laves the palm-fringed shores of Pernambuco 

 gleams like an emerald. Never before had I seen a sea of such a 

 vivid green; and when, on entering the harbour of Recife, the 

 capital of the State of Pernambuco, and looking out over the far- 

 flung stone breakwater, where from time to time the foam of the 

 breakers spouted up in snowy clouds, I beheld this green radiance, 

 I could hardly at first beheve that this was the ocean over which I 

 had been voyaging. 



To the north of Recife, greeting the approaching traveller from 

 afar, rises the hill of Olinda, green with gardens, rustling with palm- 

 trees, traversed by winding streets of white or brightly-coloured 

 houses, adorned with many churches, and crowned by a twin- 

 towered cathedral. Here, on a smaller hill, is the venerable square 

 white building of the Benedictine monastery of Olinda, surmounted 

 by the two towers of its chapel. For many months I was the guest of 

 the kindly fathers and their abbot, and so my sojourn in Olinda, 

 which brought me every day a fresh wealth of impressions and 

 experiences, showered upon me as from a tropical horn of plenty, 

 was further enriched by the peace of the quiet conventual life. 



I fell asleep with the surging of the sea in my ears, and my first 

 impression, on waking, was of the green light thrown upon my bed 

 by a mirror which hung beside the window, wide open day and 

 night. And even when the year of my sojourn in Brazil was nearly 

 ended, the sight of the ocean at Pernambuco impressed me, day by 

 day, as something new and wonderful. For as the light that falls 

 upon it changes, so the sea at Pernambuco changes colour like a 

 diamond. Slowly a band of violet extends along the horizon, and 

 streaks of the same violet traverse the green surface, fading even as 

 they float across it, and suddenly there is here a flash of red, and 

 yonder a blaze of blue, and now all the colours of the rainbow are 

 spilt upon the sea, until it seems to be not water, but a vaporous 

 fabric of radiant ether. 



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