The evening was charming, and we sailed past many a smiling island and gay wooded promontory, where gardens and country-houses are thickly scattered, and whence provisions in innumerable boats and canoes cross the bay every morning for the city. Our first view of N.S. da Luz presented such a high red bank, half covered with grass and trees, overhanging the water in the evening sun, as Cuyp would have chosen for a landscape; and just as I was wishing for something to animate it, the oxen belonging to the factory came down to drink and cool themselves in the bay, and completed the scene. The cattle here are large and well-shaped, something like our own Lancashire breed, and mottled in colour, though mostly red. On doubling the point of the bank, we came upon a small white church, with some venerable trees near it; beyond that was the house, with a long veranda, supported by white columns; and still farther on, the sugar-house, and the pottery and brick-work. We landed close to the house; but as the beach is shallow and muddy, we were carried ashore by negroes. Nothing can be finer than the scenery here. From the veranda, besides the picturesque and domestic fore-ground, we see the bay, dotted with rocky islands; one of these, called Itaoca, is remarkable as having, in the opinion of the Indians, been the residence of some divine person: it is connected with the traditions concerning their benefactor, Zome, who taught them the use of the mandioc, and whom the first missionaries here contrived to convert into St. Thomas the apostle. It consists of one immense stone cleft throughout, and a little earth and sand gathered round it, on which are trees and shrubs of the freshest verdure; some of the other islets are bare, and some again have houses and villages on them: the whole scene is terminated by the Organ Mountains, whose spiry and fantastic summits attracting the passing clouds, secure an everlasting variety to the eye.