"Rio is a small Mediterranean, and what was fabled of the entrance to that sea, in Rio is partly made true, for here at the mouth stands one of Hercules's Pillars, the Sugar Loaf Mountain, 1,000 feet high, inclining over a little like the leaning tower of Pisa. At its base crouch like mastiffs the batteries of José and Theodosia, while opposite you are menaced by a rock bounded fort. The channel between--the sole inlet to the bay--seems but a biscuit's toss over, you see naught of the landlocked sea within until fairly in the strait. But then what a sight is beheld! Diversified as the harbor of Constantinople, but a thousandfold grander. When the Neversink (the frigate United States) swept in word was passed, 'Aloft, topmen! and furl t'-gallant sails and royals!' At the sound I sprang into the rigging and was soon at my perch. How I hung over that main royal yard in a rapture! High in air, poised over that magnificent bay, a new world to my ravished eyes. I felt like the foremost of a flight of angels new lighted upon earth from some star in the Milky Way." Few men on this fleet felt the rapture that Melville described so poetically, but every one felt a thrill. Had Melville lived to more recent times he might have included the fleet of Farragut and Porter, of the Austrians and Italians, of the Russians and Japanese, of the Spanish, in that mighty roll call of the ressurrection of fleets of the world, for surely there is room for all. For twenty miles up there is deep water in the bay, and hiding places too among the 365 islands, one for every day in the year, that stud the waters. Santa Cruz and all the other forts Melville mentions are still there and a dozen more besides, most of them inside the harbor, built, as one grim fighter on the American fleet said, more for use against domestic than foreign foes. The very situation of those forts spells out fear of revolution, but that's another matter. The next morning after arrival came the unfolding of Rio to the visitors. Even those who had visited the place before had shaken their heads solemnly about it. The scenery all about is grand, they said, wonderful, but the city itself--well, hands were raised in deprecation, nostrils dilated, followed by a sad shake of heads. Didn't the guide books tell you it was a foul, ill smelling place? Wasn't it a matter of course that the city would be reeking with yellow fever in this its midsummer time?