Brazil, the Amazons and the coast . Brazilians, but with a vast deal of plaiio-strumming vul-garity. There are some admirable public institutions at Rio;hospitals, asylums, a polytechnic college, academies, and soon. Some of the city parks are very pretty, and away be-yond Botafogo there is the Botanic Garden, with its splendid avenue of royalpalms, a hundredfeet high ; you willremember the fineengraving of thisavenue, in book. Be-sides the palm-avenue, there areshady walks, andgroves of tropicaltrees, and greenlawns, such as yourarely find at a fine afternoon,the garden i
Brazil, the Amazons and the coast . Brazilians, but with a vast deal of plaiio-strumming vul-garity. There are some admirable public institutions at Rio;hospitals, asylums, a polytechnic college, academies, and soon. Some of the city parks are very pretty, and away be-yond Botafogo there is the Botanic Garden, with its splendid avenue of royalpalms, a hundredfeet high ; you willremember the fineengraving of thisavenue, in book. Be-sides the palm-avenue, there areshady walks, andgroves of tropicaltrees, and greenlawns, such as yourarely find at a fine afternoon,the garden is full ofpleasure-seekers ; itis easy of access,since the Botafogorailroad companyextended its line to this place, seven miles from the come out to enjoy the ride in the open cars, as wellas to visit the garden ; I doubt if any other street-railroadin the world passes by such a succession of lovely scenes. In the city there is a museum of natural history, rathershowy than good; the collections are badly labelled, and. Beer-Garden, SOCIAL LIFE AT RIO. 479 badly arranged. But for another institution I have onlypraise : the National Library, with one hundred and twentythousand printed volumes, and a vast store of valuable manu-scripts ; such a library as any city in the United States wouldbe proud of. It is open to the public, day and evening, andthe reading-room is almost always occupied by students orgeneral knowledge-seekers. The Director—a kindly, scholarly gentleman, you may besure—takes pains to show us many of the old Jesuit manu-scripts ; the library has numbers of these, relics of the ex-tinct monasteries and mission-houses. So we bury ourselvesin them, and get to dreaming of those strange, hard-working,self-sacrificing fanatics—the most wonderful human machines,probably, that the world ever saw, and the most unselfishChristian heroes. What a deal of romance there is in earlyBrazilian history ! But away from the dusty, yellow manuscripts, away fromlea
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