"The Lady of the Lusitania," as she was called, because there was no other lady among the saloon passengers, was the wife of a captain in the British army, who was going out for a few months' hunting on the pampas of Buenos Ayres, and, of course, accompanied by many dogs, with an assortment of guns. There was also a chaplain in the British navy who was going out to join his ship at Valparaiso. A strange character was he; a big, burly man, about 28 years of age, the most inveterate champagne drinker on board, and that is saying a good deal. Whenever he met any of the "jolly" ones of the saloon passengers it was "Come, old fellow, will you toss me for a bottle of fizz?" as he called his favorite wine, and he had no lack of accepters. The majority in the saloon consisted of a party of fifteen young Englishmen, civil engineers, who were going under the leadership of a Swedish colonel to survey, for the Brazilian Government, a railway line across the southern part of Brazil, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In all there were twenty-five young men, full of frolic and fun, who made things rather lively about the ship. They went in for everything from which any fun could be extracted. At the equinoctial line they roped in the "greenhorns" to look through the field glasses at the line, and having fastened a hair across the field of view, of course, we could all see it plainly. Father Neptune came on board and those of the crew who had never crossed the Equator were hunted out of their hiding places, dragged on deck, lathered with a whitewash brush dipped in old grease, shaved with a lath-razor, and then tumbled unceremoniously backward into a cask of water. After a prosperous voyage of three weeks we arrived within sight of the famous "Sugar Loaf," and were duly disembarked at the Custom House, our baggage passed, and were off to our hotels, each going to a different one, and each registering the name our letters of credit and introduction bore. While in Rio we went by day in the parks or cafes, and spent our evenings together, having a most enjoyable time. This was our first experience of the tropics, and life under the Equator proved as novel and as fascinating as it ever does to the inhabitant of a cold climate. The show of tropical fruits in the markets was magnificent, and, although strangers are warned not to partake of it, yet our health was so good and our digestion so perfect that we disregarded all warnings and gratified our palates without stint, with no bad results following. However, we felt after all that we were there on business; we wanted plunder, in fact, and not pleasure, in Rio. Our pleasure lay in Europe or America, there in the good time just ahead, when, as moneyed men, we returned, and, surrounded by those nearest and dearest, we would enjoy life to the full.