all nations, in greeting their brethren. Of all men,
your accomplished duellist is generally the most polite.

We lay in Rio some weeks, lazily taking in stores and otherwise
preparing for the passage home. But though Rio is one of the most
magnificent bays in the world; though the city itself contains many
striking objects; and though much might be said of the Sugar Loaf and
Signal Hill heights; and the little islet of Lucia; and the fortified
Ihla Dos Cobras, or Isle of the Snakes (though the only anacondas and
adders now found in the arsenals there are great guns and pistols); and
Lord Wood's Nose--a lofty eminence said by seamen to resemble his
lordship's conch-shell; and the Prays do Flamingo--a noble tract of
beach, so called from its having been the resort, in olden times, of
those gorgeous birds; and the charming Bay of Botofogo, which, spite of
its name, is fragrant as the neighbouring Larangieros, or Valley of the
Oranges; and the green Gloria Hill, surmounted by the belfries of the
queenly Church of Nossa Senora de Gloria; and the iron-gray Benedictine
convent near by; and the fine drive and promenade, Passeo Publico; and
the massive arch-over-arch aqueduct, Arcos de Carico; and the Emperor's
Palace; and the Empress's Gardens; and the fine Church de Candelaria;
and the gilded throne on wheels, drawn by eight silken, silver-belled
mules, in which, of pleasant evenings, his Imperial Majesty is driven
out of town to his Moorish villa of St. Christova--ay, though much
might be said of all this, yet must I forbear, if I may, and adhere to
my one proper object, _the world in a man-of-war_.

Behold, now, the Neversink under a new aspect. With all her batteries,
she is tranquilly lying in harbour, surrounded by English, French,
Dutch, Portuguese, and Brazilian seventy-fours, moored in the
deep-green water, close under the lee of that oblong, castellated mass
of rock, Ilha Dos Cobras, which, with its port-holes and lofty
flag-staffs, looks like another man-of-war, fast anchored in the way.
But what is an insular fortress, indeed, but an embattled land-slide
into the sea from the world Gibraltars and Quebecs? And what a
main-land fortress but a few decks of a line-of-battle ship
transplanted ashore? They are all one--all, as King David, men-of-war
from their youth.

Ay, behold now the Neversink at her anchors, in many respects
presenting a different appearance from what she presented at sea. Nor
is the routine of li