CULTIVATION OF COFFEE IX VARIOUS COUNTRIES. 61 



under the sanction of the government ; and there are others 

 projected. But we have not spoken of the remarkable beauty 

 of the city, and especially of the Bay of Rio de Janeiro, which 

 for picturesque scenery has been thought by some to rival 

 even the peerless Bay of Naples. The former, which is en 

 tered by a narrow rocky portal, spreads out into an immense 

 harbor, or inland lake, extending a distance of some score 

 of miles, from north to south. Passing the Sugar-loaf at 

 the entrance of the bay, you catch a view of the vast expanse 

 of water and the distant succession of mountain-peaks which 

 enclose it, and which form a magnificent amphitheatre. 

 They are called the Organ Mountains, from their seeming 

 resemblance to the pipes of an organ. Their height 

 averages from six to seven thousand feet. The name Rio 

 de Janeiro, literally, river of January, which is really a 

 misnomer, it being a bay, not a river, took its rise from 

 the tradition that it w r as discovered in that month, which 

 is to the dwellers in that clime the hottest of their year. 

 In close proximity with the city is the celebrated Botanical 

 Garden, called Bota Foga, which is rich in all kinds of 

 rare exotics, including the banyan-tree, and has a splendid 

 avenue of palms. 



Brazil, indeed, has been called the land of the Cocoa 

 and the Palm ; but it may with equal propriety be also 

 designated the land of the coffee-tree; since, as we have 

 already intimated, it is the great producing country whence 

 we derive our principal supply of that essential to our 

 domestic economy. 



Coffee, although a native of the Old World, has long been 

 one of the most important staples of the New. Meyen states 

 that he even found some coffee-trees growing wild in Brazil, 

 not far from Rio Janeiro, in the woods of Corcovado. It is the 

 great commercial staple of the empire of Brazil, which, 



