_December 20th._--Spent in paying and receiving visits in the neighbourhood. The houses are built a good deal like those of the south of Europe: there is generally a court, on one side of which is the dwelling-house, and the others are formed by the offices and garden. Sometimes the garden is immediately close to the house, and in the suburbs this is generally the case. In town, very few houses have the luxury of a garden at all. These gardens are rather like oriental flower-plots, but they assimilate well with the climate. The flowers of the parterres of Europe grow by the side of the gayer plants and shrubs of the country, shaded by the orange, banana, bread-fruit (now nearly naturalised here,) and the palms, between straight alleys of limes, over whose heads the African melia waves its lilac blossoms; and on the raised water channels, china vases are placed, filled with aloes and tuberoses, and here and there a statue intermixed. In these gardens there are occasionally fountains and seats under the trees, forming places of no undelightful rest in this hot climate. _Friday, December 21st._--Mr. Hayne, one of the commissioners of the slave trade commission, and his sister, having proposed a party to see the botanic gardens, we set off soon after daylight; and drove to their house on the bay of Boto Fogo, perhaps the most beautiful spot in the neighbourhood of Rio, rich as it is in natural beauty; and its beauty is increased by the numerous and pretty country-houses which now surround it. These have all grown up since the arrival of the court from Lisbon; before that time, this lovely spot was only inhabited by a few fishermen and gipsies, with, it might be, a villa or two on the sloping banks by the fruit gardens. Beyond the bay, we drove through a beautiful lane to the Lake of Rodrigo de Freitas: it is nearly circular, and about five miles in circumference; it is surrounded by mountains and forests, except where a short sandy bar affords an occasional outlet to the sea, when the lake rises so high as to threaten inconvenience to the surrounding plantations. It is impossible to conceive any thing richer than the vegetation down to the very water's edge around the lake. [Illustration]