Chapter XI.
“With glossy skin, and dripping
mane,
And reeling limbs, and reeking
flank,
The wild steed’s sinewy nerves still
strain
Up the repelling bank.”
Mazeppa.
Roswell Gardiner felt as if he could breathe more freely when they had run the Summers Group fairly out of sight, and the last hummock had sunk into the waves of the west. He was now fairly quit of America, and hoped to see no more of it, until he made the well-known rock that points the way into that most magnificent of all the havens of the earth, the bay of Rio de Janeiro. Travellers dispute whether the palm ought to be given to this port, or to those of Naples and Constantinople. Each, certainly, has its particular claims to surpassing beauty, which ought to be kept in view in coming to a decision. Seen from its outside, with its minarets, and Golden Horn, and Bosphorus, Constantinople is, probably, the most glorious spot on earth. Ascend its mountains, and overlook the gulfs of Salerno and Gaeta, as well as its own waters, the Campugna Felici and the memorials of the past, all seen in the witchery of an Italian atmosphere, and the mind becomes perfectly satisfied that nothing equal is to be found elsewhere; but enter the bay of Rio, and take the whole of the noble panorama in at a glance, and even the experienced traveller is staggered with the stupendous as well as bewitching character of the loveliness that meets his eye. Witchery is a charm that peculiarly belongs to Italy, as all must feel who have ever been brought within its influence; but it is a witchery that is more or less shared by all regions of low latitudes.