THE BEAUTY OF BRAZIL 



towards the left, the Gorcovado boldly uplifts its beak, while on the 

 right the loftier peak of Tijuca rises into the heavens. As yet no 

 details are visible, but the blank surface, with its vigorous outline, 

 is all the more impressive. 



The situation of Rio de Janeiro has earned for it the reputation 

 of the most beautiful city in the world ; and the Guanabara Bay 

 is indeed incomparable. But this — which in itself would be enough 

 to make a city famous — is combined with other charms. In Rio we 

 have the Gulf of Naples, the coast of Amalfi, the Lake of Lucerne, 

 the pinnacles of the Dolomites, a bit of Hamburg harbour, and the 

 boulevards of Paris ; and above all these are the hills overrun with 

 the glittering tropical forest; while in the gardens below the vege- 

 tation of the tropics, resplendent with glowing colour, reaches its 

 full perfection. 



It is owing to this multiplicity, this truly amazing wealth and 

 variety of form and colour, that the view of Rio is incomparably 

 finer than that of all other cities. In the bay itself, and lying before 

 the entrance, no less than ninety-eight islands add to the variety 

 of the scene, and the surrounding hills sound every note of the gamut 

 from the suavest to the wildest and most grotesque formations. And 

 yet this riven chain of mountains is the result not of volcanic forces, 

 but, as we shall read in the tenth chapter, of alluvial deposits, and 

 subsidences, and erosion. 



If the philosopher Hegel had stood before the mountains of Rio 

 he could not have turned away from them with the words : "They 

 have nothing to say to me except that they exist," as he is said to 

 have turned away from the Swiss Alps. I have seen few landscapes 

 which so insistently preach the gospel of becoming as the mountains 

 of Guanabara Bay. Just as some pictures are so vividly painted 

 as to give the spectator the illusion of motion, so the mountains 

 that girdle Rio seem drawn with such an impetuous rhythm that the 

 eye finds movement everywhere. It is as though some cataclysmal 

 cyclone had raged over the country. Viewed from the land, indeed, 

 or from outside the bay, the Sugarloaf towers into the sky as a cone 

 of symmetrical proportions, but seen from Nictheroy it leans over 

 landwards, and the neighbouring hills as well seem to cower like 

 trees before a gale. 



I often ascended the Sugarloaf by way of the cable railway. A 

 small car, like a lift, sways upwards over the intervening chasm 

 (Plates 5 and 6). On each occasion I spent five hours on the summit, 

 for I was so fascinated by the view that I could not tear myself 



35 



