ed
the Acapulco fleets of the Spaniards, with golden ingots for
ballasting; the flag-ships of all the Greek and Persian craft that
exchanged the war-hug at Salamis; of all the Roman and Egyptian galleys
that, eagle-like, with blood-dripping prows, beaked each other at
Actium; of all the Danish keels of the Vikings; of all the musquito
craft of Abba Thule, king of the Pelaws, when he went to vanquish
Artinsall; of all the Venetian, Genoese, and Papal fleets that came to
the shock at Lepanto; of both horns of the crescent of the Spanish
Armada; of the Portuguese squadron that, under the gallant Gama,
chastised the Moors, and discovered the Moluccas; of all the Dutch
navies red by Van Tromp, and sunk by Admiral Hawke; of the forty-seven
French and Spanish sail-of-the-line that, for three months, essayed to
batter down Gibraltar; of all Nelson's seventy-fours that
thunder-bolted off St. Vincent's, at the Nile, Copenhagen, and
Trafalgar; of all the frigate-merchantmen of the East India Company; of
Perry's war-brigs, sloops, and schooners that scattered the British
armament on Lake Erie; of all the Barbary corsairs captured by
Bainbridge; of the war-canoes of the Polynesian kings, Tammahammaha and
Pomare--ay! one and all, with Commodore Noah for their Lord High
Admiral--in this abounding Bay of Rio these flag-ships might all come
to anchor, and swing round in concert to the first of the flood.

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' Pillars, the Sugar-Loaf Mountain, one thousand feet
high, inclining over a little, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. At its
base crouch, like mastiffs, the batteries of Jose and Theodosia; while
opposite, you are menaced by a rock-founded fort.

The channel between--the sole inlet to the bay--seems but a biscuit's
toss over; you see naught of the land-locked sea within till fairly in
the strait. But, then, what a sight is beheld! Diversified as the
harbour of Constantinople, but a thousand-fold grander. When the
Neversink swept in, word was passed, "Aloft, top-men! 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