The old part of the city is composed of narrow and noisy lanes, but the new boulevards are fine and broad. We did the usual sightseeing, with the details of which it is not proposed to trouble the reader. We had the pleasure of enjoying the hospitality of our Minister, Sir W. Haggard; but to my disappointment, for I had been looking forward for weeks to some feminine society, Lady Haggard was in England, and everyone else seemed to be a bachelor. By the most kind care of the British Consul, Mr. Hamblock, we had a memorable motor drive of some seventy miles through the mountains to the west of the bay, including the tract of forest reserved for the public by Dom Pedro. It has left us with a bewildered impression of roads winding below great crags, amongst tropical vegetation, and opening at intervals on vistas of rocky coast and deep blue sea. We visited the botanical gardens, admiring their marvellous avenue of palms: similar ones, and but little inferior, may be seen in many directions, rising amongst streets and houses like the pillars of a Greek temple. We ascended the Sugar-loaf by aerial railway, and gained a panoramic view of the harbour. Finally, a day was spent at Petropolis, a small place among the mountains at the head of the bay, which is reached by a railway with cog-wheel gauge and is the special resort of the diplomatic colony. We lunched at an inn of which the walls were adorned impartially with portraits of the Hohenzollerns and French Presidents, the host turned out to be an Alsatian. If at Rio every prospect pleases it is not altogether free from drawbacks: sanitary conditions have improved; but the pride the city takes in its public gardens and boulevards does not extend to the water of the harbour, which is repulsively dirty, and ships are warned in the Sailing Directions against using it even for washing their decks. When the American fleet visited Rio they consumed so much from the shore for that purpose, that there is said to have been almost a fresh-water famine in the city. When we left the bay our bill of health stated that the previous week there had been two cases of yellow fever, both dead, and two of bubonic plague, who were still alive. Even with our experience at Pernambuco the prices charged at Rio left us breathless: engineering work cost from four to five times as much as in England; even a poor man on the docks complained to our Sailing-master that he could not get a meal under 2s. 8d. One Englishman, professionally employed, calculated that the cost of his passage home every three years was met through the saving effected on buying his clothes in England. Finally, the Stewardess of the _Mana_ was of the opinion that the limit was reached, when one shilling was charged for washing a pair of stockings.