50. CHAPTER L.
I HAVE said that I must pass over Rio without a description;
but just now such a flood of scented reminiscences steals
over me, that I must needs yield and recant, as I inhale that
musky air.
More than one hundred and fifty miles' circuit of living
green hills imbosoms a translucent expanse, so gemmed in by
sierras of grass, that among the Indian tribes the place was
known as “The Hidden Water.” On all sides, in the distance,
rise high conical peaks, which at sunrise and sunset
burn like vast tapers; and down from the interior, through
vineyards and forests, flow radiating streams, all emptying
into the harbor.
Talk not of Bahia de Todos os Santos—the Bay of All
Saints; for though that be a glorious haven, yet Rio is the
Bay of all Rivers—the Bay of all Delights—the Bay of all
Beauties. From circumjacent hill-sides, untiring summer
hangs perpetually in terraces of vivid verdure; and, embossed
with old mosses, convent and castle nestle in valley and glen.
All round, deep inlets run into the green mountain land,
and, overhung with wild Highlands, more resemble Loch Katrines
than Lake Lemans. And though Loch Katrine has
been sung by the bonneted Scott, and Lake Leman by the
coroneted Byron; yet here, in Rio, both the loch and the lake
are but two wild flowers in a prospect that is almost unlimited.
For, behold! far away and away, stretches the broad
blue of the water, to yonder soft-swelling hills of light green,
backed by the purple pinnacles and pipes of the grand Organ
Mountains; fitly so called, for in thunder-time they roll cannonades
down the bay, drowning the blended bass of all the
cathedrals in Rio. Shout amain, exalt your voices, stamp
your feet, jubilate, Organ Mountains! and roll your Te Deums
round the world!
What though, for more than five thousand five hundred
years, this grand harbor of Rio lay hid in the hills, unknown
by the Catholic Portuguese? Centuries ere Haydn performed
before emperors and kings, these Organ Mountains played
his Oratorio of the Creation, before the Creator himself. But
nervous Haydn could not have endured that cannonading
choir, since this composer of thunder-bolts himself died at last
through the crashing commotion of Napoleon's bombardment
of Vienna.
But all mountains are Organ Mountains: the Alps and the
Himmelahs; the Appalachian Chain, the Ural, the Andes,
the Green Hills and the White. All of them play anthems
forever: The Messiah, and Samson, and Israel in Egypt, and
Saul, and Judas Maccabeus, and Solomon.
Archipelago Rio! ere Noah on old Ararat anchored his
ark, there lay anchored in you all these green, rocky isles I
now see. But God did not build on you, isles! those long lines
of batteries; nor did our blessed Savior stand godfather at the
christening of you frowning fortress of Santa Cruz, though
named in honor of himself, the divine Prince of Peace!
Amphitheatrical Rio! in your broad expanse might be
held the Resurrection and Judgment-day of the whole world's
men-of-war, represented by the flag-ships of fleets—the flagships
of the Phœnician armed galleys of Tyre and Sidon;
of King Solomon's annual squadrons that sailed to Ophir;
whence in after times, perhaps, sailed the Acapulco fleets of
the Spaniards, with golden ingots for ballasting; the flagships
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 Pelews, when he
went to vanquish Artingall; 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 led 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 harbor of Constantinople, but a thousand-fold
grander. When the Neversink swept in, word was
passed, “Aloft, top-men! and furl the 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 in the Milky Way.
