IX.

EXCURSION TO SAN LEOPOLDO.

On Friday morning we left Port Alegre in the steamer Balastraca,' the oldest on the line. Ascending the Rio dos Sinos we soon began to feel the sun very hot, the thick woods on either side excluding the breeze, which moreover was from the north and came on us at intervals like a puff of the Sirocco. The captain of the steamer was a German, and treated us to a breakfast of trout and roast-beef, the former quite as good as what Gil Blas speaks of in his travels.

About twenty miles from Port Alegre, we passed the charming fazenda of Bento Cyrio, and higher up came to a place where they were making bricks. The river has innumerable bends, the scenery being a continued luxuriance of vegetation which at last almost wearies you. Foliage of every shade, beautifully blended, forest

openings here and there, umbrageous trees like sycamores, wild cane-brakes that suggest tigerjungles, tapering palms, and the lofty timba-uva’ with orchids and other parasites in its highest branches; all these, interspersed with woodcutters' huts, hedges of rhododendron, canoes with children fishing, and various kinds of waterfowl, make up the picture of all or any of these rivers. Sometimes you come on a clump of burned trees where the negroes have begun clearing a ́patch of ground. In many places the banks of the river have given way and large forest trees fallen into the stream, their trunks or branches often sticking out in the middle of the current, which must make night travelling very dangerous. It would be easy for the Government to employ a small steamer to drag away these snags and clear the rivers.

The high-water mark of the flood-tides is observable on the cottages that we pass, some 8 feet over the present level. The current is about 2 to 3 miles an hour. Most of the wood that lines the river-side is said to be comparatively valueless, but the Province of Rio Grande can boast at least ten good qualities of timber, chiefly hard wood, viz. ipé, black canella, cangerana, cocao, lauro, ta

rama, cabri-uva, tajuba, angico and grapiapuño, of which the railway sleepers are made.

The sportsman would find abundance of game in all variety, from tigers to water-hens, and the follower of Isaac Walton might open up new kingdoms in the piscatorial world, for the rivers teem with the finny tribe, and Professor Agassiz reports two thousand new kinds of fish as proper to Brazilian waters. Of amphibious animals the yacaré has a coat said to be impervious to rifle-ball, and the best chance of shooting him is when he opens his ponderous red jaws to yawn, as he basks in the sun; there is also a kind of river-hog called capibari, not different from the carpincho of Argentine waters; lizards of great size are also seen; these animals seem to prefer the swamps, where there is no noise of steamboat to disturb them. All, even the tigers, will flee at the approach of man, but the sportsman who goes tigershooting should have complete confidence in his rifle and the steadiness of his nerves, or it may fare ill with him. A large tiger-skin is worth even here 31. or 46. sterling. The water-fowl comprise divers, boobies, cranes, gulls and vultures; I saw some of the last-named feeding on the carcase of a lamb that was floating down stream.

Sometimes through wood-openings, we get a glimpse of Mount Sapocai, the river making so many bends that the peak is one time before us, another right astern, and the sun shifts in like manner till you fancy the mariner's compass has gone quite out of order. At one place, where a saw-mill is working hard by, the turn is so sharp that the steamer has to force its way through the branches of the trees and hug the shore. At last we come upon scattered cottages of neat exterior, and flaxen-haired children run out to look at us, just as the Gothic spire of San Leopoldo comes in view, with an opening vista of the town.

San Leopoldo, founded in 1837, is famous for children and potatoes, in the same way as Kidderminster for carpets, Naples for macaroni, or Sèvres for porcelain. I had heard this ever since my arrival in Rio Grande, and was not surprised, when our vessel got abreast of 'John Muller's tannery,' to see a troop of chubby-faced little boys marching past under the direction of a priest. The moment you land you are struck with the neat German cottages on all sides, and the incredible number of children. But for the tropical luxuriance of the gardens you would fancy yourself in some pleasant country-village of Northern Europe:

the windows have white curtains, between which you see some fair-haired girls or house-wives peep out at the strangers. We proceed to Ernest Koch's hotel in the main-street, which recalls a thousand associations of Fatherland. In front is Her Meitzell's bierbrauerei,' next door Julius Fillman's bakery, further on Mr. Huhnfleisch the hat-maker, another shop belonging to a 'buchbinder,' and the large two-story house is the office of the New Hamburg and Port Alegre Railway Works.' You hear nothing but German spoken around you. The atmosphere is German, nor can you realise that you are hundreds of miles in the heart of Brazilian forests. Saw-mills wherever you turn, and the hum of industry, giving assurance of peace, progress, and civilisation.

The Germans are a wonderful people: you may call them phlegmatic or what you will, but Nature evidently intended them for colonists par excellence. In the United States there are 5,000,000 German settlers (including their children), all thriving farmers, as Mr. Maguire testifies in his work on the Irish in America.' They are steady, peaceable, and industrious, and it is not a small merit in a new country that they are eminently domestic and rear up large families in the manner to form

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