We mounted and started for le Petite Coral, by the way of the church _Nossa Senhora do Monte_. The angle of ascent of the road is over twenty degrees, but the style of going up is usually to give your horse his head and his rider’s heel, and if like Putnam’s he dashes up, racketing it over the stones, and sending back fire from his heels, why it’s the way. Being bantered for a dash up by one of my messmates, and my friend the Borro Querro in the rear not being a party thereto, I regret to remark, that the last I saw of that respected individual after the start, he was engaged in performing some very sudden gyrations proximate to the roadside hedge. However, a glass of the country wine, on his joining me at the blowing place, about half-way up, enabled me to make my entire peace with him for the suddenness of my leaving. The way up was lined with vines and dogs, peasant girls and chapels, mendicants and donkeys, which would knock Mr. Laurence Sterne’s sentimental blubber all in the head. The clatter of the approaching hoofs caused the dark browed senoritas to “come unto the window,” but the horses appeared to hurry on the faster for their presence. The descent of this mountain is generally made at a rapid pace, on a rude sled, two boys riding behind and giving it proper direction. The mode of movement about the streets, is, if a foreigner and invalid, in a hammock suspended from a pole, and borne on the shoulders of two men, steadying themselves as they walk with quarter-staffs; if a native gentleman in a canopied sled drawn by unsightly oxen, which _quick_ mode of movement will convey a very good idea of the enterprise of the people who employ it. But we were on the way to the Church of the Lady of the Mount. It was not very long before we dismounted at the foot of the long flight of discolored stone steps that led to its front. On reaching the terrace we looked down on the view below us. The town had dwindled into a white-washed amphitheatre; the ships were not quite as much changed as the objects to the sight of Edgar from the cliffs of Dover, but appeared greatly reduced in proportion. I could scarcely believe that the Mississippi, riding at her anchors in the bay, was the floating home of over three hundred human beings!