The officials told the fleet officers that there was no yellow fever in the place. Polite expressions of surprise with surreptitious nudges behind the back! They said that the city had been transformed in the last four years, was well paved and beautified and they expressed the hope that the Americans would like it. More expressions of polite surprise and assurances that the city always was attractive, with more nudges behind the back. And then when the officials went back to shore didn't the officers make a dive for the ships' libraries and read facts, real facts, mind you, about the place? Didn't W. E. Curtis write this about Rio: "Viewed from the deck of a ship in the harbor the city of Rio looks like a fragment of fairyland--a cluster of alabaster castles decorated with vines; but the illusion is instantly dispelled upon landing, for the streets are narrow, damp, dirty, reeking with repulsive odors and filled with vermin covered beggars and wolfish looking dogs. There is now and then a lovely little spot where nature has displayed her beauties unhindered and the environs of the city are filled with the luxury of tropical vegetation; but there are only a few fine residences, a few pleasant promenades, and a few clusters of regal palms which look down upon the filth and squalor of the town with dainty indifference. The palm is the peacock of trees. Nothing can degrade it, and the filth in which it often grows only serves to heighten its beauty. The pavements are of the roughest cobblestone; the streets are so narrow that scarcely a breath of air can enter them, and the sunshine cannot reach the pools of filth that steam and fester in the gutters, breeding plagues." There are half a dozen descriptions such as that, some of them as recent as 1900. Oh, yes, the Americans knew what kind of a city they were going to see. Hadn't some of them been here before? Didn't some of the surgeons on the fleet shake their heads gravely when it was signalled from the flagship that there would be general liberty? What did the Americans find? This is part of what the Americans saw; it would take pages to tell it all: They saw one of the cleanest and best paved cities in the world. New York in the Waring days never had cleaner streets. There was not a foul smell in evidence. There was even no West street or South street odor along the waterfront. Where the streets were not of asphalt they were of wood. There were no beggars on the highways; at any rate the Sun's correspondent did not see one, and he spent hours ashore every day.