among races of Portuguese descent. In these days of
competition it is difficult to accomplish anything great without labour
and trouble.

I left London on December 23rd, 1910, by the Royal Mail steamship
_Amazon_, one of the most comfortable steamers I have ever been on.

We touched at Madeira, Pernambuco, and then at Bahia. Bahia seen from the
sea was quite picturesque, with its two horizontal lines of buildings,
one on the summit of a low hill-range, the other along the water line. A
border of deep green vegetation separated the lower from the upper town.
A massive red building stood prominent almost in the centre of the upper
town, and also a number of church towers, the high dome of a church
crowning the highest point.

I arrived in Rio de Janeiro on January 9th, 1911.

It is no use my giving a description of the city of Rio de Janeiro.
Everybody knows that it is--from a pictorial point of view--quite a
heavenly spot. Few seaside cities on earth can expect to have such a
glorious background of fantastic mountains, and at the same time be
situated on one of the most wonderful harbours known. I have personally
seen a harbour which was quite as strangely interesting as the Rio
harbour--but there was no city on it. It was the Malampaya Sound, on the
Island of Palawan (Philippine Archipelago). But such an _ensemble_ of
Nature's wonderful work combined with man's cannot, to the best of my
knowledge, be found anywhere else than in Rio.

It does not do to examine everything too closely in detail when you
land--for while there are buildings of beautiful architectural lines,
there are others which suggest the work of a pastrycook. To any one
coming direct from Europe some of the statuary by local talent which
adorns the principal squares gives a severe shock. Ladies in evening
dress and naked cupids in bronze flying through national flags flapping
in the wind, half of their bodies on one side, the other half on the
other side of the flags, look somewhat grotesque as you approach the
statues from behind. But Rio is not the only place where you see
grotesque statuary--you have not to go far from or even out of London to
receive similar and worse shocks. If Rio has some bad statues it also
possesses some remarkably beautiful ones by the sculptor Bernardelli--a
wonderful genius who is now at the head of the Academy of Fine Arts in
Rio. This man has had a marvellous influence in the beautifying of the
city, and to him are du