Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/304

272 province really was like. We wanted to visit the gold-mines, and to report concerning the new railway—about the proper line of which two parties were contending—a question of private or public benefit. We also intended to go down the São Francisco River, the Brazilian Mississippi, from Sabará to the sea, and to visit the Paulo Affonso Rapids, the Niagara of Brazil.

We left Rio on June 12, 1867, and sailed from the Prainha in a little steamer, which paddled across the Bay of Rio in fine style, and deposited us in about two hours on a rickety little wharf at the northern end called the Maná landing-place, whence the well-known financial firm of that name.

Whoever has not seen the Bay of Rio would do well to see it before he dies; it would repay him. All great travellers say that it competes with the Golden Horn. It is like a broad and long lake surrounded by mountains and studded with islands and boulders. But it is absurd to try and describe the bay with the pen; one might paint it; for much of its beauty (like a golden-haired, blue-eyed English girl of the barley-sugar description) lies in the colouring.

At the rickety landing-place begins a little railroad, which runs for eleven miles through a mangrove and papyrus flat to the foot of the Estrella range of mountains. Here we changed the train for a carriage drawn by four mules, and commenced a zigzag ascent up the mountains, which are grand. We wound round and round a colossal amphitheatre, the shaggy walls of which were clothed with a tropical forest, rich with bamboos and ferns, each zigzag showing exquisite