It is October. You choose to leave here before it grows too warm. The young spring buds are already adding their delicate green to the darker old foliage.
Rio is reached by rail in fourteen hours. You would like to go home in one of the great New Zealand steamers which makes the round trip from London to London in ninety days, and which always carries charming passengers for the whole voyage by Suez, New Zealand, Straits of Magellan, Rio de Janeiro, Madeira, London. Everybody here knows what variety is provided by this journey, not only of interesting sights in port, but of amusement of every description at sea. They also know when one of these steamers has arrived by the unwonted varieties of game, vegetables, and well-hung beef and mutton in the markets.
No. You decide to go directly to New York, for you have come by way of England, so sail on the "Wordsworth." Even she is English and there is no longer an American Line. You will touch at Bahia, Pernambuco, and St. Lucia, one of the West Indies, and see New York harbor in twenty-four days from Rio.
Bahia you saw hurriedly on the way down, but it looks even more attractive as you approach it the second time. It is invested with some added interest, also, since learning that the court came here from Portugal for shelter in Napoleonic times; and that this city has always been the center of Jesuitical influence.
The Bahian blacks, a finer race of negroes than you have ever seen, and said to have been Mohammedans, make a very strong impression now. They are physically superb. The low-necked, short-sleeved linen garment worn by the women is frequently beautified with "drawn-work." The great strings of gold beads around their necks are their substitute for a bank account, for banks are not a convenience to a people who cannot read.
The Bahian oranges are like the finest Floridas, and far superior to any others you have had. Bananas are everywhere the food of the poor, and not better than are for sale at home, and other tropical fruits have been a disappointment.
At Pernambuco you find you own the wonderful reef, and the pine-apples, and the catamarans; for have you not seen them before, and do they not now prove themselves old friends and permanent possessions!
The next many days are a repetition of your former oceanic, tropical temperatures, with far fewer passengers, and less ceremony, perhaps. The sea, however, seems trying to compensate you for other lacks by furnishing interesting creatures for you to watch. There are numberless flying fish, frightened from the water by your ship, and the delicate, little, pink "Portuguese men-of-war," as the sailors call them, go dancing by on the surface of the water in tantalizing beauty. Do not be sorry that you cannot get one, for, trailing from that shining pink bladder, there are processes which sting like nettles.
For a few days you seem almost to be crossing a wheat-field as you take a long look across the water yellow with gulf-weed which has been thrown off by the gulf stream and floats at rest on this quiet sea. Take a fish line and catch some pretty branches, look at the little fruit which grows upon them and gives the name, grapes, to the sea. It is called by its Spanish form the Sargasso Sea.
St. Lucia pleases you to see for several reasons. You like a day in port. You like to know what this one of the West Indies is like. You enjoy the negroes diving under the ship for coins you throw in the water as you did before at St. Vincent, and, on the whole, though you have had a rarely charming summer, you are glad to cable that you are well and leaving your last port before your arrival home.
The cool October days of the North Atlantic demand again the rugs and warmer wraps which have been needed now and then since the journey was begun. As the fresh air blows in your face you are delighted to find yourself so rested and so easily challenged to an expenditure of energy.
But there are other passengers whose residence in Brazil numbers years of work instead of weeks of pleasure. They have found themselves unable to conquer some attack of disease without the bracing and stimulating aid of a more rigorous climate. They are longing for cold and snow. The Brazilian air which has relaxed and rested you has become enervating to them. Foreign merchants and Bank managers expect six months' furlough once in three years. Missionaries get a year's recruiting once in eight years. Anxious relatives were notified before these workers left Brazil that the wrecks were going home. Who would believe that twenty-four days of sea-voyage could make such different looking beings of these invalids! The prospect of home and old familiar scenes and foods seems happiness enough to put new life into anyone, one thinks, in watching these returning exiles.
Familiar faces are waiting on the dock. Good-by. Ate logo.
This book comes from：m.funovel.com。