164 Voyaye of the Novara. 



is slowly undermined by a treacherous Cipo matador of flesh 

 and blood, till too surely he falls prone on the ground! 



Petropolis is, on account of its more temperate and healthy 

 climate, a favourite residence of the wealthy Rio de Janei- 

 rians, and during the hot season, when the sultriness of the air, 

 if not something worse, renders life almost unendurable, Petro- 

 polis is said to have the appearance of a European spa. It 

 is at the same time the summer residence of the Emperor, and 

 the only place in Brazil where an electric telegraph — uniting it 

 with Rio de Janeiro — has been established. The town contains 

 about 7000 inhabitants ; the streets, when completed, will be 

 broad and handsome, — but only one has as yet been finished, 

 the others being merely marked out, while even among the 

 clean and neat houses already erected, there are frequent and 

 wide gaps. 



The German colony, planned by a German engineer, Julius 

 Friedr. Kohler, is at a little distance from Petropolis. The first 

 colonists who arrived on the 30th of July, 1845, came mostly 

 from Baden and the Rhenish provinces. The Government 

 granted to each family a cottage, with a slice of forest near it, 

 a cow, a dozen of chickens, and about £5 in money. Such at 

 least was the information given us at Petropolis. Kohler 

 soon afterwards met with a sad end at a newly-formed shooting 

 ground. Many an emigrant family perished in misery; others, 

 however, overcame the difficulties that beset them at the com- 

 mencement ; more emigrants arrived, and now one may walk, 

 within a few hours, through the Rhine and Mosel vallevs. 



