It is doubtful whether anywhere else could be found such a mingling of the classic, medieval, and modern in architecture, such quaint old institutions and customs of living in an atmosphere permeated with up-to-date business methods, such strangely attractive displays of primitive ornaments and curios as may be seen in their shops side by side with importations from Paris. In few other places could such results be studied as have come from the process of racial assimilation that has been going on for centuries in the mestizo classes—the Indian by the Caucasian, the African by both; for in Brazil, as in the islands of the Caribbean, immense numbers of blacks were brought over in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries after the enslavement of the Indians had been forbidden. Nor could more cordial courtesy be met with anywhere than that with which one is here treated by all, as a rule, from the highly cultured, thoroughbred Portuguese to the poorest and most illiterate mixed-breed or negro laborer—though this is true of nearly every place in South America. [Illustration: THE CITY OF BAHIA.] Of all these cities, though, Pernambuco is perhaps the most interesting. After Rio, São Paulo, and Bahia, it is the largest and most important in the country. Its canals and lagoons and handsome bridges, which give it an attractiveness distinct from the others, are accounted for by the fact that the city is divided into sections by the channels of the river at the mouth of which it lies, and a few hundred yards out from the shore is a long reef, running parallel with it, that forms a natural breakwater, which encloses the harbor and protects it from the heavy rollers in time of storm. It is from this reef that the section known as Recife, the old city proper, derives its name. Recife is the commercial and shipping section now. There is not much to commend it to the sightseer except a few fine old churches and the Praca do Commercio, a place of general resort facing the local Wall Street, where almost every one who is engaged in business down town is to be seen taking a breathing spell at some hour or other during the day. Near by is a large hucksters’ market, which, it must be confessed, serves better than the hotel _menu_ to disclose the peculiarities of the fare with which the denizens of the neighborhood regale themselves. And good fare it is, too, and wonderful to behold—to a northerner unaccustomed to such luxuriance.