NOTES ON BRAZIL. 



but it never fell to my lot to observe them on so large a scale as upon the 

 mountains which separate the plains of Jacar^pua and Engenha Nova. 



A pleasing excursion may be made from the city Westward, by 

 passing over the Beira da Lapa, a sort of terrace raised about sixty years 

 ago in front of a rock, which, when it jutted farther into the water, 

 constituted one of the chief defences of the native Indians against their 

 invaders. At present this terrace joins the city to the Gloria, and is 

 skirted by a row of small uniform houses, delightfully situated in point 

 of prospect, but abandoned to the poorer order, on account of the incon- 

 venience of the road passing close in front of them. In the middle of 

 the row is a small fountain, which has ceased to receive and communicate 

 the supply once drawn from it. At the end of the terrace is the Church 

 of the Gloria, charmingly placed on a lofty verdant hill, at the foot of 

 which was a mule-track only when we first arrived, swampy, unhealthful, 

 and encumbered with overhanging wood, with two or three houses ; 

 now there are as many hundreds, and some of them the abodes of the 

 chief nobility. Passing the bridge at Cathete, the road reaches the 

 beach which forms the Northern side of the Bay of Bota Foga. It is 

 the resort of sea-bathers, and was selected for the horse-races, instituted 

 in imitation of the English ones. The bay is a circular basin, about a 

 mile and a half in diameter, with one opening only, and that towards 

 the East, between high Granitic rocks. 



In this bay I have frequently observed a phenomenon which is, I 

 believe, a miniature example of what occasionally occurs at sea. When 

 the tide sets in from the Eastward, and there is a breeze from the South. 

 West, each produces its distinct little wave or ripple. If one be 

 heavier than the other it prevails over the smaller, and produces a 

 bubble, or such a state of the water as the sailors coarsely call Moll 

 Dab's pond. If the two waves be of nearly equal size and weight, the 

 Northern end of one meeting the Western end of the other, neither 

 of them is destroyed; both move on, crossing each other, and at the 

 point of intersection there rises a sort of cone of double the height of 



