IsrOTES ON BRAZIL. 



363 



the East, is secure ; the other, opening broadly towards the West, very- 

 unsafe in bad weather. The island, though excessively hot, is fertile, 

 and produces excellent grapes and other fruit. It is visited with what 

 seems to me an unnecessary caution, because, in 1810, a foreigner was 

 wantonly murdered there, and the assassin has never fallen into the 

 hands of justice ; escaping to the main land, he left a stain upon the 

 character of the police and the people. We experienced nothing but 

 civiUty, though our Camera Obscura excited great surprise, mixed, as 

 in other places, with suspicion. At the beginning of my residence in 

 Rio I was often cautioned against taking sketches of the country ; but 

 the practice is since become very common, and those who amuse them- 

 selves in this way, do so with little apprehension. A person, however, 

 who was employed by myself and some friends to make drawings of the 

 interior of the city, was compelled, by the police, to desist. 



Coasting round the Northern end of the island, a surprising scene 

 bursts at once upon the stranger. For the space of several square miles 

 immense masses of naked rock, chiefly if not wholly of gneiss, break 

 abruptly through the water, irregular in their shape and position, and 

 rising to a great height. Many of them are perforated horizontally ; 

 the largest of these singular holes being about three feet in diameter, 

 while others are much smaller, and some incomplete. They are occa- 

 sioned by the action of the wind and rain upon the softer parts of the 

 stone, where a decomposition, once begun, proceeds gradually and 

 surely. Probably, by attentive observation, some knowledge might be 

 obtained, of the time required for the process. The channels between 

 these rocks are deep, and the current ran so rapidly as to induce us to 

 drop anchor at the island of Bocejo, and to wait until the force of the 

 wind and tide had abated. It was our intention to reach the islands of 

 Jurubaba, and to pass the night in a small harbour not unknown to us ; 

 but we were obliged to yield to circumstances, and to put in at the 

 South-west side of Paqueta, under a high bluff point of soft sand-stone, 



where we were much exposed to a thunder-storm, which long appeared 



z z 2 



