We sailed the next morning at daybreak and our navigator, instead of taking the eastern road, by which we had come in, and going round the island, decided to attempt as a short cut the much narrower exit on the west, which lay between the precipitous cliffs that separated the cape proper from the mainland. By the soundings recorded on the chart there was everywhere sufficiency of water for our draught, but, while approaching the coast to take a direct course through the gorge, we were suddenly aware that the stern of the vessel had taken the ground. There was a moment of anxiety as to whether she had hit on an outlying rock, but happily she had only come in contact with a bank of drifted sand. We were, however, very near a rocky coast, and it was not far from high water. As much weight as possible was taken into the bows, a kedge was carried out astern, and she was hove off the way she came on. The next morning we were at the entrance to Rio de Janeiro. There was, however, not a breath of wind, and the engine was giving trouble; it refused to run more than a very short distance without becoming dangerously heated—a state of things subsequently found to be due entirely to improper installation. We sat, therefore, for twelve hours gazing at the tumbled mass of blue mountain-barrier, through the narrow opening in which the sea has found its way and formed the great sheet of water within. In front of us was the well-known conical form of the Sugar-loaf, to the west Corcovado, the Hunchback, with its strange effect of a peak which is bending forward, and beyond it Gavea with its table-top. The night fell, lights came out within, we still waited like a Peri at the gate of Paradise. The evening breeze, however, wafted us nearer, and at midnight we passed silently between the dark heights which guarded the entrance and dropped anchor in Botafogo Bay under the shelter of the Sugar-loaf, there to await the dawn. It is an entrancing experience to wake on a sunny morning and find oneself for the first time among the soft and glowing beauty of Rio Harbour. We went up the bay in the early light, with a man posted at the flagstaff to exchange greetings with the Brazilian men-of-war which lay at anchor; it was always our duty to dip first to warships, as it was the place of merchantmen to take the initiative with us. We finally took up our position some three miles higher up opposite to the old city.