Yet
To Every Person In Europe, It May Be Truly Said, That At
The Distance Of Only A Few Degrees From His Native Soil, The
Glories Of Another World Are Opened To Him.
In my last
walk I stopped again and again to gaze on these beauties, and
endeavoured to fix in my mind for ever, an impression which
at the time I knew sooner or later must fail.
The form of the
orange-tree, the cocoa-nut, the palm, the mango, the tree-fern,
the banana, will remain clear and separate; but the
thousand beauties which unite these into one perfect scene
must fade away: yet they will leave, like a tale heard in
childhood, a picture full of indistinct, but most beautiful
figures.
August 6th. - In the afternoon we stood out to sea, with
the intention of making a direct course to the Cape de Verd
Islands. Unfavourable winds, however, delayed us, and on
the 12th we ran into Pernambuco, - a large city on the
coast of Brazil, in latitude 8 degs. south. We anchored outside
the reef; but in a short time a pilot came on board and
took us into the inner harbour, where we lay close to the
town.
Pernambuco is built on some narrow and low sand-banks,
which are separated from each other by shoal channels of
salt water. The three parts of the town are connected together
by two long bridges built on wooden piles. The town is in
all parts disgusting, the streets being narrow, ill-paved,
and filthy; the houses, tall and gloomy. The season
of heavy rains had hardly come to an end, and hence the
surrounding country, which is scarcely raised above the
level of the sea, was flooded with water; and I failed in
all my attempts to take walks.
The flat swampy land on which Pernambuco stands is surrounded,
at the distance of a few miles, by a semicircle of
low hills, or rather by the edge of a country elevated perhaps
two hundred feet above the sea. The old city of
Olinda stands on one extremity of this range. One day I
took a canoe, and proceeded up one of the channels to visit
it; I found the old town from its situation both sweeter and
cleaner than that of Pernambuco. I must here commemorate
what happened for the first time during our nearly five
years' wandering, namely, having met with a want of politeness.
I was refused in a sullen manner at two different
houses, and obtained with difficulty from a third, permission
to pass through their gardens to an uncultivated hill,
for the purpose of viewing the country. I feel glad that
this happened in the land of the Brazilians, for I bear
them no good will - a land also of slavery, and therefore
of moral debasement. A Spaniard would have felt ashamed
at the very thought of refusing such a request, or of
behaving to a stranger with rudeness. The channel by which
we went to and returned from Olinda, was bordered on each
side by mangroves, which sprang like a miniature forest out
of the greasy mud-banks. The bright green colour of these
bushes always reminded me of the rank grass in a church-yard:
both are nourished by putrid exhalations; the one speaks of
death past, and the other too often of death to come.
The most curious object which I saw in this neighbourhood,
was the reef that forms the harbour. I doubt whether
in the whole world any other natural structure has so artificial
an appearance. [6] It runs for a length of several miles in
an absolutely straight line, parallel to, and not far distant
from, the shore. It varies in width from thirty to sixty
yards, and its surface is level and smooth; it is composed of
obscurely stratified hard sandstone. At high water the waves
break over it; at low water its summit is left dry, and it
might then be mistaken for a breakwater erected by Cyclopean
workmen. On this coast the currents of the sea tend
to throw up in front of the land, long spits and bars of
loose sand, and on one of these, part of the town of Pernambuco
stands. In former times a long spit of this nature
seems to have become consolidated by the percolation of
calcareous matter, and afterwards to have been gradually
upheaved; the outer and loose parts during this process having
been worn away by the action of the sea, and the solid
nucleus left as we now see it. Although night and day the
waves of the open Atlantic, turbid with sediment, are
driven against the steep outside edges of this wall of stone,
yet the oldest pilots know of no tradition of any change in its
appearance. This durability is much the most curious fact
in its history: it is due to a tough layer, a few inches thick,
of calcareous matter, wholly formed by the successive
growth and death of the small shells of Serpulae, together
with some few barnacles and nulliporae. These nulliporae,
which are hard, very simply-organized sea-plants, play an
analogous and important part in protecting the upper surfaces
of coral-reefs, behind and within the breakers, where
the true corals, during the outward growth of the mass,
become killed by exposure to the sun and air. These
insignificant organic beings, especially the Serpulae, have done
good service to the people of Pernambuco; for without their
protective aid the bar of sandstone would inevitably have
been long ago worn away and without the bar, there would
have been no harbour.
On the 19th of August we finally left the shores of Brazil.
I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave-country. To
this day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful
vividness my feelings, when passing a house near Pernambuco,
I heard the most pitiable moans, and could not but
suspect that some poor slave was being tortured, yet knew
that I was as powerless as a child even to remonstrate.
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