Our first visit, with Lady Brassey as our guide, shall be to the market at Rio de Janeiro.[28] The greatest bustle and animation prevailed, and there were people and things to see and observe in endless variety. The fish market was full of finny monsters of the deep, all new and strange to us, whose odd Brazilian names would convey to a stranger but little idea of the fish themselves. There was an enormous rock fish, weighing about three hundred pounds, with hideous face and shiny back, and fins; large ray, and skate, and cuttle fish--the octopus, or pieuvre, described with so much exaggeration in Victor Hugo's "Travailleurs de la Mer," to say nothing of the large prawns for which the coast is famous--prawns eight or ten inches long, with antennae of twelve or fourteen inches in length. Such prawns suit those only who care for quantity rather than for quality; they are of indifferent flavour; whereas the oysters, which are particularly small, are remarkable for their delicious taste. Mackerel are here in abundance, also a good many turtle and porpoises, and a few hammer-headed sharks. In the fruit market were many familiar bright-coloured fruits. Fat, jet-black negresses, wearing turbans on their heads, strings of coloured beads on their necks and arms, and single long white garments, which appeared to be continually slipping off their shoulders, presided over glittering piles of oranges, bananas, pine-apples, passion-fruit, tomatoes, apples, pears, capsicum and peppers, sugar-canes, cabbage-palms, cherimoyas, and bread-fruit. In another part of the market all sorts of live birds were for sale, with a few live beasts, such as deer, monkeys, pigs, guinea-pigs in profusion, rats, cats, dogs, marmosets, and a dear little lion-monkey, very small and rather red, with a beautiful head and mane, who roared exactly like a real lion in miniature. There were cages full of small flamingoes, snipe of various kinds, and a great many birds of smaller size, with feathers of all shades of blue, red, and green, and metallic hues of brilliant lustre, besides parrots, macaws, cockatoos innumerable, and torchas on stands. The torcha is a bright-coloured black and yellow bird, about as big as a starling, which puts its little head on one side and takes flies from one's fingers in the prettiest and most enticing manner. While the _Sunbeam_ was lying in the River Plate, Lady Brassey and her party made an excursion to the Pampas, those broad, league-long undulating plains of verdure, on which civilization as yet has made but a limited advance. "Miles and miles of gold and green Where the sunflowers blow In a solid glow, And to break now and then the screen-- Black neck and eyeballs keen, Up a wild horse leaps between."--(_R. Browning._)