discovered a tunnel running into the cliff. At its mouth was a
turnstile.

"Shades of Avernus! What's this?" asked Leighton.

Lewis inquired of the gateman.

"It's an elevator to the upper town," he said.

They paid their fare and walked into the long tunnel. At its end they
found a prehistoric elevator and a terrific stench. Leighton clapped his
handkerchief to his nose and dived into the waiting car. Lewis followed
him. An attendant started the car, and slowly they crept up and up, two
hundred feet, to the crest of the cliff. As they emerged, Leighton let
go a mighty breath.

"Holy mackerel!" he said, "and what was that? Ugh! it's here yet!"

The attendant explained. At the bottom of the shaft was a pit into which
sank the great chains of the car. The pit was full of crude castor-oil,
cheapest and best of lubricants.

"My boy," said Leighton, as he led the way at a rapid stride toward the
hotel, "never confuse the picturesque with the ugly. I can stand a bit
of local color in the way of smells, but there's such a thing as going
too far, and that went it. We'll prepare at once to leave this town.
Would you like to go north or south?"

"I don't know, sir," said Lewis.

"Well, we'll just climb on board that big double-funnel that came in
to-day and leave it to her. What do you say?"

They went south. Four days later, in the early morning, Lewis was
wakened by a bath-robe hurled at his head.

"Put that on and come up on deck quick!" commanded his father.

Lewis gasped when he reached the deck. They were just entering the
harbor. On the left, so close that it seemed to threaten them, loomed
the Sugar-Loaf. On the right, the wash of the steamer creamed on the
rocks of Santa Cruz. Before them opened the mighty bay, dotted with a
hundred islands, some crowned with foliage, others with gleaming, white
walls, and one with an aspiring minaret. Between water and sky stretched
the city. There was no horizon, for the jagged wall of the Organ
Mountains towered in a circle into the misty blue. Heaven and earth were
one.

A white line of surf-foam ran along all the edge of the bay. Languorous
Aphrodite of the cities of the world, Rio de Janeiro lay naked beyond
that line, and gloried. Like a dream of fair woman, her feet plunged in
foam, her body reclining against the heights, her arms outstretched,
green hills for her pillows, her diadem the shining mountain-peaks,
queen of the cities of the earth by the gift of Almi