The _Iroquois_ did not succeed in making Rio without a stop. The northeast trades hung well to the eastward after we left Guadeloupe, and blew hard with a big sea; for it was the northern winter. Running across them, as we were, the ship was held close to the wind under fore and aft canvas. For a small vessel nothing is more uncomfortable. Rolling and butting at waves which struck the bow at an angle of forty-five degrees made walking, not impossible, indeed, to practised sea legs, but still a constant succession of gymnastic balancings that took from it all pleasure. For exercise it was not needed. You had but to sit at your desk and write, with one leg stretched out to keep your position. The varied movements of the muscles of that leg, together with those of the rest of the body, in the continued effort "to correct the horizontal deviation," as Boatswain Chucks phrased it, sent you to bed wearily conscious that you had had constitutional enough. The large consumption of coal in proportion to the ground covered made a renewal necessary, and we went into Ciara, an open roadstead sheltered only by submerged coral reefs, on the northeast coast of Brazil. Here the incessant long trade swell sets in upon a beach only partly protected; and boating is chiefly by catamarans, or _jangadas_, as the Portuguese word is,--three or four long trunks of trees, joined together side by side, without keel, but with mast. These are often to be seen far outside, and ride safely over the heavy breakers.