On Sunday afternoon we dropped anchor safely in a sheltered part of Porto Bello Bay known as Aco Cove. Our previous halts, the town of Pernambuco, the coral bay at Santa Cruz, the rocky basin of Cape Frio, and the world-famed harbour of Rio de Janeiro, bore little resemblance to each other, but they had one point in common, that they were all obviously South American. Porto Bello had nothing South American about it save its very unoriginal Spanish name; it might, as far as general appearance went, have been a loch imported straight from the west coast of Scotland: the accent of our Glasgow engineer became unconsciously more homelike, as he remarked that it was “just like the scenery near Oban,” and to add to the illusion the weather, though warm, was a “wee bit saft,” with the nip in the air associated with Scotland in August. The town of Porto Bello itself lies at the foot of the bay. It will be found marked in the atlas of the infallible Stieler, but it is nothing more than a hamlet, consisting of a few small houses, with a church and one little store; there was no inn visible, but it is apparently connected with the outside world by telegraph or telephone. Shanties, surrounded with banana groves, wandered up the hillsides or clustered round such sandy coves as Aco; some were made of wattle and daub, others of wooden planks roofed with banana leaves or rough red tiles. We made friends with a family who occupied a cottage near the stream which supplied our water, and some of the party, a grandfather, father, and small daughter, came off on their own initiative to pay us a visit on board. They brought presents of eggs and molasses, and three special shells as an offering for me. The gifts which we on our side found were most appreciated, both here and elsewhere, were tobacco, sweets, and ships’ biscuits; the last were specially prized, being often preferred to money. We showed our visitors over the vessel, and expected that such fittings as electric light would produce a mild sensation, but it was proved as usual that the eye can only take in what it has sufficient knowledge to appreciate. The greatest success was achieved by the supply of carpenters’ tools, which excited much admiration, while the pier-glass in my cabin came in a poor second. A rather embarrassing situation arose when the old man, who was getting a little imbecile, found the yacht so attractive that he sat down in the deck-house and declined to depart.