But to return from this digression to the road of the Union and Industry Company. It is now completed as far as Juiz de Fora, affording every convenience for the transport of the rich harvest of coffee constantly travelling over it from all the fazendas in the region. As the whole district is very rich in coffee-plantations, the improvement in the means of transportation is of course very important to the commercial interests of the country, and Senhor Lage is making practicable roads to the smallest settlements in his neighborhood. He has not, however, been free from the difficulties which men encounter whose schemes are in advance of their surroundings. No doubt a great part of the dissatisfaction is owing to the fact that the road is not so remunerative as was anticipated, the advance of the Dom Pedro Railroad having impaired its success. Still it must be considered as a monument to the public spirit and energy of the men who undertook it. Not wishing to interrupt the course of the narrative, I have thought it best to preface the story of our journey by some account of this road, the building of which is a significant fact in the present history of Brazil. I will now take up again the thread of our personal adventures. Leaving the city at two o’clock in the ferry-boat, we kept up the harbor some fifteen miles. There was a cool breeze, and the day, though warm, was not oppressive. Passing the large Ilha do Governador, the smaller but exceedingly pretty island of Paqueta, and many others, with their palms, banana and acacia trees, dotting the harbor of Rio and adding another grace to its beauty, we landed in about an hour and a quarter at the little town of Mauá.[24] Here we took the cars, and an hour’s ride through low and marshy grounds brought us to the foot of the Serra (_Raiz da Serra_), where we left the railroad for the post-coach, which runs regularly from this station. The drive was delightful, in an open diligence drawn by four mules on the full gallop over a road as smooth as a floor. It wound zigzag up the mountains, through the wildest scenery, while below us lay the valley broken into a billowy sea of green hills, and the harbor with the coast range beyond, growing soft and mellow in the afternoon sunshine. To complete the picture, one must clothe it in palms and acacias and tree-ferns, and drape it in a tangle of parasitic growth, with abundant bloom of the purple Quaresma (Flower of Lent),[25] the Thunbergia vine, with its little straw-colored blossoms creeping over every wall and shrub, and the blue and yellow Bignonias. We are constantly astonished at the variety of palms. A palm is such a rarity in our hot-houses, that we easily forget how numerous and varied they are in their native forests. We have the scarlet-oak, the white-oak, the scrub-oak, the chestnut-oak, the swamp-oak, and many others. And so in the tropical forest there is the cocoanut-palm, with