"You cannot distinguish any other city in the world from such a distance," said the mate. "When you are one hundred miles--yes, and more than that--away, you can tell the position of Rio de Janeiro by the glare that hangs over it at night. The gaslights there are innumerable. I have heard that it is the best lighted city in the world, and I believe it. At midnight the streets are illuminated as if for a fête; and, what is more, all the roads and paths that lead out into the country and up to the tops of the mountains are better lit than any of the streets in your London. Ah, the capital of the Brazils is a wonderful place!" As Carew discovered later on, Baptiste had not exaggerated the facts. At daybreak Carew was still on deck, being anxious to catch a first glimpse of the New World after so many weeks upon the desert seas. When the sun rose the blue sky was cloudless, but the western horizon was obscured by a white fog, which, Baptiste said, nearly always hovered over this coast at early morning. Of a sudden the upper portion of the mist lifted, and high above them there appeared, as if floating in mid-air, the summit of a huge mountain. It was of cubical shape, with perpendicular sides of bare, smooth stone, like the altar of some giant race--a marvellous sight to thus burst suddenly upon men who had for so long seen nothing but sky and water. "That is the Gavia Mountain," cried Baptiste; "it lies to the left of the entrance of the Bay of Rio." Then the morning breeze came down upon the land, and, as by enchantment, the mist vanished, and all the features of that wonderful coast were revealed to them. Lofty mountains of the most fantastic forms rose sheer from the sea. Some were great pyramids or peaks of ruddy granite gleaming like molten gold in the sunshine; others, sloping more gently, were covered with great forests of tropical vegetation. Along the whole shore extended a white line of foam, where the Atlantic swell, piled up by the fresh trade winds, perpetually thundered at the base of the cliffs. In places the ravines terminated in beautiful bays, where on beaches of silver sand the cocoa-nut trees waved their rustling branches. The tropical seas wash no lovelier a land than this; and at that moment, with the sun still low in the east, there were a softness and translucency in the gorgeous colouring that gave an unreal and fairy-like aspect to the scene. Close under the conical mountain known as the Sugar Loaf a gorge opened out, and through this was seen the vast expanse of the Bay of Rio, which the old navigators, in their admiration for its beauty, likened unto the gates of heaven. The yacht crossed the tumbling waters on the bar, sailed through the majestic gates, and floated on the still, pale green water of the inland sea.