The First Baptist Church commissioned Deacon Theodore Teixeira and Dr. Shepard to pilot us over the city. The church provided us with an automobile and our splendid guides magnified their office. It is a MAGNIFICENT city, indeed. The strip of land between the mountains and the seashore is not wide. In some places, in fact, the mountains come quite down to the water. The city, in the most beautiful and picturesque way, avails itself of all possible space, even in many places climbing high on the mountain sides and pressing itself deep into the coves. Perhaps no city in the world has a more picturesque combination of mountain and water with which to make a beautiful location. It has about a million inhabitants, and being the federal capital, is the greatest and most influential city in Brazil. Most of its streets are narrow and tortuous and until recently were considered unhealthy. A few years ago the magnificent Avenida Central was cut through the heart of the city and one of the most beautiful avenues in the world was built. Twelve million dollars' worth of property was condemned to make way for this splendid street. It cuts across a peninsula through the heart of the city from shore to shore, and is magnificent, indeed, with its sidewalks wrought in beautiful geometrical designs, with its ornate street lamps, with its generous width appearing broader by contrast with other narrow streets, with its modern buildings. There is another street, however, which is dearer to the Brazilian than the Avenida. He takes great pride in the Avenida, but he has peculiar affection for the Rua d'Ouvidor. Down the Ouvidor flows a human tide such as is found nowhere else in Brazil. No one attempts to keep on the pavement. The street is given over entirely to pedestrians. No vehicle ever passes down it until after midnight. In this narrow street, with its attractive shops filled with the highest-priced goods in the world, you can soon find anyone you wish to meet, because before long everyone who can reach it will pass through. In this street the happy, jesting, jostling crowd is in one continuous "festa". In passing through the city one is greatly impressed by the number of parks and beautiful public squares, and in particular with the wonderful Beiramar, which is a combination of promenades, driveways and park effects that stretches for miles along the shore of the bay. What a thing of beauty this last-named park is! There is nothing comparable to it anywhere. When Rio wishes to go on a grand "passeio" (promenade) nothing but the grand Beiramar will suffice.