For seventeen days you have heard of Rio, and Rio, and Rio, on deck and at table; for many of your companions live there or are eager to see it for the first time. You are up by six o’clock to lose none of the early morning view. The ship is nervous among the shore currents outside the harbor, then makes one great plunge over the bar, whereat all the old residents laugh familiarly, and glides in stately quiet within the smooth harbor. [Illustration: DOCKS AND ARSENAL, RIO DE JANEIRO.] You have had your early black coffee, so stay with all the rest to take in the exquisite beauty. Seeing is better than being told. Your lungs drink in the soft air. Your eyes drink in the forms and colors. Here is the old Sugar Loaf, sheer rock a thousand feet up out of the water, a sharp cone, gray, softened by green mosses, the sentinel of the city. There is the city built to the water’s edge, with sharp hills in the midst, crowned each with a church, “built in Jesuit style.” The groups and alleys of the royal palms are tall and straight, some of them a hundred feet in height, your neighbor says. The ship anchors not unduly near another ship. There are many others, warships and sailing vessels and steamers, “tramps” and “regular liners.” In an incredibly short time a fleet of launches and row-boats surround you, and happy are you if you, too, find some one there to meet you. Here is an Englishman to meet the gentle wife and troop of little children he sent “home” a year ago to build up in cold weather. You look the other way at the bank clerk sent to meet two new recruits, and at the manager of an American coffee firm who comes to meet the man who is to be his substitute while he goes “home” for six months’ change. But perhaps you are most interested to see the Scotchman who has come for his bride, for she has been such a cosy, little body all the way down. She sailed “in care of the captain,” brought her wedding dress, her wedding cake and requisite legal papers along, has been everybody’s helper and nobody’s trouble, and finally has the nickname of Sammy, which is short for good Samaritan. She will have a Brazilian civil marriage service first, then the chaplain of the Church of England will perform a religious one, and three weeks after she lands the British consul will marry the couple a third time and the notice can be recorded “at home.” England does not intend to countenance runaway marriages. At the end of the third service you may telegraph your good wishes to “the Bride of the Nile.”