SCENERY OF THE BAY. 33 
nations, and set foot once more on terra-firma, 
after being fifty-two days at sea since leaving 
England. 
Beautiful as this country always appears to 
an Kuropean eye, it has perhaps no scene so 
strikingly splendid and picturesque as_ that 
which presents itself within this Bay. The 
rich and novel peculiarity of the landscape is 
contrasted with the handsome buildings of the 
town, rising amphitheatrically round the har- 
bour; and these again derive a curious effect 
from the tall and slender palm-trees, which, 
thickly interspersed among them, throw their 
strongly defined and waving shadows upon the 
white surface of the contiguous houses; and 
the whole is crowned by the numerous convents 
which are seen above the town, in the distance, 
clinging like swallows’-nests, to the precipitous 
sides of the mountains. 
We had hardly reefed our sails, when the 
Russian Vice-Consul, Von Kielchen, and an 
officer of the Brazilian government, came on 
board to congratulate us on our arrival. ‘The 
latter acquainted me with the order of his Go- 
vernment, that every ship of war coming in 
cs 
