Anyone who wishes to leave the prosaic present and be transported back to the old times of colonisation should visit Olinda, the ancient seat of government, which lies three miles to the north of Pernambuco. The remains of it to-day are a little group of houses standing picturesquely on a wooded promontory, which rises high above the low-lying coast. The old street, winding up to the top of the semi-deserted city, along which must have passed gay cavalcades, sober monks, and captured Indians, is still the high way, but it is now carpeted with grass, kept short, not by traffic, but by the sheep which browse upon it. From the highest point, the view extends in one direction to the sea and in the other to the forests of the interior. The most arresting feature is the number of churches and religious houses: everywhere the eye turns these great buildings rise among the luxuriant foliage, from one standpoint we counted ten such edifices. Some are deserted; some are still inhabited. The Franciscan establishment, where a fraternity still occupy the conventual buildings, is said to have been the first of its kind in Brazil, but we could arrive at nothing more definite as to date from the brother who acted as guide than that the place was “three hundred years old.” The church contained some particularly good Dutch tiles representing scenes from the life of the Virgin and St. Ann; similar ones are to be seen in the cathedral, which was undergoing repair, and where no means were being taken to preserve them from injury at the hands of the workmen. These edifices were presumably rebuilt after the capture of the place by the Dutch; for Olinda is said to have been so utterly destroyed by the fighting, of which it was the centre, that Prince Maurice of Nassau gave his attention instead to the improvement of Recife. Our regrets at leaving Pernambuco on Saturday, June 21st, after a stay of six days, were mitigated by the heat of the docks and by the fact that for some nights the mosquitoes had been unceasingly active. As soon as we left S. started an exterminating campaign, and killed sixty straight away in his own cabin and the saloon. For weeks afterwards, Mr. Gillam could be seen daily going on his rounds with a bottle of quinine tabloids, the lambs obediently swallowing the same. His medicinal doses were under all circumstances magnificently heroic, some of his remedies being kept in quart bottles, on the principle, as he explained, that it was “no use spoiling the ship for a halfpennyworth of tar.” It was doubtful in this case if the enemy were really of the malaria-carrying type; they did not appear to stand on their heads in the correct manner—anyway, we all escaped contagion with one slight exception, though I myself had had a bad attack shortly before leaving England, brought on by influenza, after six years’ complete immunity.