NOTES ON BRAZIL. 



33 



anchor there, in seventeen fathoms water, with a sharp, rocky, and 

 irregular bottom. I once passed in that situation sixteen extremely- 

 unpleasant hours, six of them as tedious as most I have ever found at 

 sea. Sir Sydney Smith was then at Rio ; his fostering care of British 

 interests prevented the necessity of foreign vessels to anchor there 

 again. 



Proceeding up the harbour, the waters expand on either side. On 

 the left opens the bay of Bota-Foga, skirted by inaccessible and verdant 

 mountains, guarded by the Sugar Loaf and the fort of St. John on one 

 side, and a smooth mass of granite on the other. On the right is the 

 Sacco, or, as the British call it, Five-Fathom-Bay, surrounded by gentle 

 and fertile Avoody slopes, verdant grass-lands, and a yellow sandy beach ; 

 the whole enclosed by numerous peaks. Its fine expanse, not less than 

 three miles in diameter, is broken and adorned by a singularly irregular 

 mass of rock, the abode of sea-fowl. The gorge of this bay, on the 

 Southern side, is flanked by a lofty cone of smooth granite rock ; on the 

 Northern, by the small island of Boa-Viage, about a hundred feet high, 

 with perpendicular sides, composed in part of grey and brown stone, in 

 part of red clay. The intermixture of these colours, all glowing in the 

 sun, broken into patches by the rich verdure, which descends from the 

 summit, and occupies every spot, where nature can fix a root, together 

 with the small white church, which surmounts the whole like a crest, is 

 one of the finest objects, which the most fertile imagination can conceive. 

 Directly opposite, at two miles distance Westward, is the fort of the 

 celebrated Villegagnon, the theatre of glorious exploits. 



Above this fort, still farther Westward, is beheld the city of St. 

 Sebastian, commonly, though improperly, called Rio de Janeiro, filling 

 the low grounds at the foot of a projecting mountain, and running along 

 the beach to other elevations. Churches and monasteries, forts and 

 country-houses, glittering in whiteness, crown every hillock, and decorate 

 the sides of its fanciful and symmetrical heights, backed by a screen of 

 woods, whicli overshadow the whole. But it is vain attempting to 

 describe; the pen cannot imitate the pencil, nor the pencil nature, in 



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