THE SYMPHONY OF VOICES 



mood of the landscape. This harmony impresses itself on the mind, 

 so that I often seem to hear again the tones once heard, and there- 

 upon I see the image of the land in which I heard them. The glittering 

 tropical landscape calls for another sort of concert than ours, just 

 as the minuet belongs to the rococo period, the waltz to the Victorian 

 era, and the fox- trot to our own days. 



Even the ocean sings a different song, on the sunny coast of north- 

 eastern Brazil, from the song of the Baltic amidst the Frisian Islands. 

 Since in Brazil there is not a day without sunshine, and the landscape 

 smiles through the hours, there are no storms on the coast of 

 Pernambuco; with an eternal, gentle murmur the trade-wind rolls 

 the billows shoreward, to break, loudly thundering, against the 

 rocks and headlands of the coast, flinging their spray high into the 

 air. Even more violently the ocean casts itself upon the rocky coast- 

 line of Rio ; indeed, at certain times the tide flows so strongly into 

 the bay that the rollers breaking on the stone breastwork of the 

 splendid promenade fling themselves up to the height, not of the 

 houses merely, but of the very steeples: a spectacle of startling 

 grandeur, a further wonder of this incomparable capital. 



In the mountains of Rio terrific thunderstorms develop, and the 

 rain often falls in such masses that the water is knee-deep in the 

 streets and the passengers in the electric trams cannot alight, but 

 have to travel round for hours. In Pernambuco, on the other hand, 

 while there are sometimes inundations, thunderstorms are very rare 

 indeed, and once, during a storm which occurred when I was in 

 Olinda, a tremendous clap of thunder was followed, as though by 

 an echo, by the shrill shrieks of terrified women from all the houses 

 of the town. 



A tropical rainstorm is more like a waterfall than the showers 

 we know in Europe, and a characteristic sound of the tropics is the 

 shrill, hard patter of the rain on the tough foliage of the trees. This 

 metallic tone, however, is as perfectly attuned to the glittering 

 landscape as the gentle rustle of our Northern rain to the tender, 

 transparent green of the leafage of our trees. 



The leaves and flowers of many tropical trees look as though stamped 

 out of sheet metal and painted with glossy lacquers ; the plumage 

 of many birds glitters like bronze ; and many insects have gold and 

 silver blended with the colours of their bodies. To this external 

 aspect of the tropical country the metallic voices of its singers are 



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