RIO DE JANEIRO, IN THE LAND OF LURE 



195 



ashore in the royal barge, still preserved 

 at one of the island naval bases. This 

 same barge, used on two other occasions 

 only, was sent out to meet Elihu Root on 

 his famous South American tour. 



I have a map of Rio, printed in 1808, 

 showing the city that Dom Joao found. 

 It was a maze of narrow, uneven streets 

 and narrower alleys, lighted at night by 

 tallow lanterns hung out by public- 

 spirited citizens. It was rich, however, 

 in churches and convents, hospitals, bar- 

 racks, a theater, and nineteen public 

 squares. The king made a royal palace 

 of the handsome building, now the Na- 

 tional Telegraph Office, which had been 

 occupied by the colonial governors, and 

 from here his successors, the Pedros, 

 ruled after him. 



Dom Joao's portrait shows a portly 

 gentleman with pompadour and "side 

 burns." He was a patron of arts and 

 letters and brought with him from Portu- 

 gal the royal library of 60,000 volumes 

 and the "old masters" which now grace 

 the Academy of Bellas Artes. The na- 

 tional library is one of his lasting me- 

 morials, alone worth a visit to Brazil. 



MANY TREASURES IN BRAZIL'S NATIONAL 

 LIBRARY 



I wish I had space to outline all the 

 treasures I found here. There are 5,000 

 maps, 400,000 catalogued volumes, and 

 500,000 manuscripts. I saw a Latin 

 manuscript, in microscopic writing, of the 

 year 1300; the Mazarin Bible of 1462, the 

 first Bible printed from movable type ; a 

 first (1572) edition of Camoes' "Lusia- 

 das," that epic of Portuguese navigation ; 

 a first edition of Hakluyt's Voyages, 

 1625, and countless other interesting 

 books. 



The library has a modern book-carrier, 

 with which few institutions of the kind 

 are equipped, and fumigates all its 

 books — a practice which could well be 

 followed the world over. Here it serves 

 the double purpose of sanitation and the 

 destruction of boring insects. 



Dom Joao's botanical garden is today 

 the finest in the New World and equaled 

 only by that of Buitenzorg, Java. Its 

 century-old imported bamboos are as tall 

 as forest trees ; its native Victoria Regia 

 lilies most queenly of their kind. Its 



Royal Palm Avenue, almost eighteen 

 hundred feet long, is second only to Rio's 

 Quadruple Palm Avenue bordering the 

 Mangue Canal. 



THE STORY OF THE PALMS AS TOLD IN RIO 



In the early days these palms were a 

 mark of royal distinction and were 

 planted only in parks and avenues near 

 city and country palaces. The story goes 

 that a slave stole some of the seeds and 

 sold them. Today these "feather-dusters 

 of the gods" wave in every part of the 

 city. At present there is a free distribu- 

 tion of seeds and plants from the botan- 

 ical garden. 



I like best the great trees from the 

 Brazilian wilderness — the jacaranda, 

 sapucaia, ceiba, and their like. Here, 

 away from the jungle battle of the sur- 

 vival of the fittest, one can better appre- 

 ciate these pillars of God. 



"Did the trees speak to you?" an old 

 woodsman once asked me, as I rode in 

 from the forest. I nodded in the affirm- 

 ative, for they always do. 



Old carved furniture made from the 

 jacaranda brings a high price at the curio 

 dealers in Rio. It is black and as hard 

 and heavy as ebony. The sapucaia is the 

 most beautiful of trees, with leaves that 

 turn from pink to green in the spring, 

 violet blossoms, and great seed-cups like 

 those of the nut-bearing castanha, which 

 we call the "Brazil nut." The ceiba, with 

 its formidable buttresses, is so sure of its 

 foundation that it towers above all other 

 trees. 



The Ouinta da Boa Vista, some dis- 

 tance from the heart of the city, was one 

 of the country homes of royalty. This 

 splendid estate, now Rio's finest park, 

 was presented to Dom Joao by a Portu- 

 guese citizen. On the king's return to 

 Europe it was claimed by English bank- 

 ers for crown debts and purchased from 

 them by the Brazilian Government. The 

 palace is now the home of the National 

 Museum. 



National Geographic Society members 

 would enjoy a visit to this museum, with 

 its remarkable Indian collections from 

 the upper Amazon ; its Brazilian birds, 

 butterflies, woods, and minerals ; and its 

 gallery devoted to "Rondonia," the newly 



