Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/290

"One day we walked almost six miles out of São Paulo up the mountains to make a pilgrimage to a small wayside chapel; and there we had São Paulo like a map at our feet, and all the glorious mountains round us, and we sat under a banana tree and spread our lunch and ate it, and stayed all day and walked back in the cool of the evening. Some of these South American evening scenes are very lovely and on a magnificent scale. The canoes paddling down the river, the sun setting on the mountains, the large foliage and big insects, the cool, sweet-scented atmosphere, and a sort of evening hum in the air, the angelus in the distance, the thrum of the guitars from the blacks going home from work—all add to the charm. Richard came home on Saturday, the 12th, after a pleasant nineteen days' ride in the interior. He went to pay a visit to some French savants in some village, and they took him for a Brazilian Government spy, and were very rude to him, and finding afterwards who he was wrote him an humble apology. On June 1 I am going up to Rio. Richard is going to read his travels before the Emperor. The Comte and Comtesse d'Eu have asked us to their palace; but I do not think we shall go there, as there will be too much etiquette to permit of our attending to our affairs."

"Petropolis, above Rio, June 22, 1866.

"Petropolis is a bit of table-land about three thousand feet high in the mountains, just big enough to contain a pretty, white, straggling town, with a river running through it—a town composed of villas and gardens, and