My destination on this voyage was not, as thirteen years previously, the steaming Equatorial State of Pernambuco, and the venerable half-derelict city of Olinda, whither our Benedictine pioneers had come out from Europe soon after the fall of the Brazilian Empire, just in time, as it seemed, to save the Benedictine Order in that vast country from collapse and utter extinction. From Olinda the arduous work of revival and restoration had gone quietly and steadily on, including one by one the ancient and almost abandoned abbeys of the old Brazilian Congregation; and it was to one of these, the monastery of our Order in the great and growing city of S. Paulo, that my steps were now turned. Bahia, two days voyage from Pernambuco, is a city to which (like Constantinople) distance very decidedly lends enchantment, and I did not land {157} there. It was raining fast, and the fantastic hilltops were wrapped in clouds, as we entered Rio Bay. I was welcomed by a kind Belgian monk whom I had known at Olinda in 1896, and who drove me up to our fine old Portuguese abbey, standing on its own mount or _morro_ close to the sea, where I had paid my respects to the last of the old Brazilian abbots a dozen years before. A vigorous young community now occupied the long-empty cells; and the conduct of a flourishing college, as well as pastoral work of various kinds outside, gave scope to their energy and zeal. The weather next day was perfect, and my friend Dom Amaro devoted two or three hours to driving me round the City Beautiful. Beautiful, of course, it had always been; but I was astounded at the transformation which had taken place in four short years. From "the cemetery of the foreigner," as Rio had been called when its name, like those of Santos, Havana and Panama, had been almost synonymous with pestilence and death, it had become one of the healthiest, as it had always been one of the loveliest, capitals in the world. Four men--Brazilians all--minister of works, engineer, doctor, and prefect of the city,[3] had undertaken in 1905 the gigantic task of the city's sanitation. The extermination of the mosquitoes which caused yellow fever and malaria, the destruction of their breeding-places, the widening of malodorous streets, the demolition of thousands of buildings, the disinfection {158} and removal of tens of thousands of tons of garbage, the filling-up of swamps and marshes, were only preliminary to the colossal work of reconstruction of which I saw some of the results. Right through the central city was pierced the new Avenida, a broad thoroughfare lined with noble buildings, of which the theatre, built at enormous cost, and rivalling the Paris Opéra, struck me most. More striking still was the new Beira Mar, the unique sea-drive skirting the bay for four miles, and leading to the equally beautiful circular esplanade round the Bay of Botafogo. Here I left cards and letters of