Wednesday, August 16th.—­We had a fine fair breeze all day, and at 5 p.m. there was a cry from the mast-head of ‘Land ahead!’ Great excitement immediately prevailed on board, and Tom and Captain Brown rushed, for about the twelfth time, to the foretop to see if the report was true.  They were soon able to announce that Cape Frio was visible on the port bow, about thirty-five miles distant.  After even a fortnight at sea, an indescribable sensation is produced by this cry, and by the subsequent sight of the land itself.  When we came up on deck this evening, after dinner, we all gazed on the lighthouse on the still distant shore as if we had never beheld such a thing in our lives before.  The colour and temperature of the water had perceptibly changed, the former from a beautiful, clear, dark ultramarine to a muddy green; innumerable small birds, moths, locusts, and grasshoppers came on board; and, having given special orders that we were to be called early the next morning, we went to bed in the fond hope that we should be able to enter Rio harbour at daybreak.

Thursday, August 17th.—­’L’homme propose; Dieu dispose.’  Steam was up at midnight, but by that time it was blowing half a gale of wind from the south-west, with such a steep short sea that the screw was scarcely ever properly immersed, but went racing round and round in the air with tremendous velocity, as we pitched and rolled about.  Our progress was therefore at the rate of something rather under a mile an hour, and at daybreak, instead of entering the harbour of Rio, as we had hoped to do, we found ourselves close to Cape Frio.

About 8 a.m. matters mended, the wind moderating and changing its direction slightly; so that, under steam and sail, we were soon going along the coast at the rate of four or five miles an hour.  The surf was breaking with a loud roar upon the white sandy beach, while the spray was carried by the force of the wind far inland, over the strip of flat fertile-looking country, lying between the sea and a chain of low sugarloaf-shaped mountains, parallel with the shore, and only a short distance off.

Our course lay between the mainland and the islands of Maya and Payo, where the groves of bananas and other trees looked very miserable in the wind.  The tall isolated palm-trees, whose elastic stems bowed readily before the fury of the blast, looked, as they were twisted and whirled hither and thither, like umbrellas turned inside out.  Passing the false Sugarloaf mountain, as it is called, we next opened out the true one, the Gavia, and the chain of mountains beyond, the outlines of which bear an extraordinary resemblance to the figure of a man lying on his back, the profile of the face being very like that of the late Duke of Wellington.  As the sun sank in gorgeous splendour behind these hills, I think I never saw a grander or more beautiful sight; though the sky was so red and stormy-looking that our hopes of a fine day to-morrow were but faint.