In another part of the market all sorts of live birds were for sale, with a few live beasts, such as deer, monkeys, pigs, guinea-pigs in profusion, rats, cats, dogs, marmosets, and a dear little lion-monkey, very small and rather red, with a beautiful head and mane, who roared exactly like a real lion in miniature.  We saw also cages full of small flamingoes, snipe of various kinds, and a great many birds of smaller size, with feathers of all shades of blue, red, and green, and metallic hues of brilliant lustre, besides parrots, macaws, cockatoos innumerable, and torchas, on stands.  The torcha is a bright-coloured black and yellow bird, about as big as a starling, which puts its little head on one side and takes flies from one’s fingers in the prettiest and most enticing manner.  Unfortunately, it is impossible to introduce it into England, as it cannot stand the change of climate.  The other birds included guinea-fowls, ducks, cocks and hens, pigeons, doves, quails, &c., and many other varieties less familiar or quite unknown to us.  Altogether the visit was an extremely interesting one, and well repaid us for our early rising.

At eleven o’clock we started for the Petropolis steamer, which took us alongside a wooden pier, from the end of which the train started, and we were soon wending our way through sugar and coffee plantations, formed in the midst of the forest of palms and other tropical trees.  An Englishman has made a large clearing here, and has established a fine farm, which he hopes to work successfully by means of immigrant labour.

After a journey of twenty minutes in the train, we reached the station, at the foot of a hill, where we found several four-mule carriages awaiting our arrival.  The drive up from the station to the town, over a pass in the Organ mountains, was superb.  At each turn of the road we had an ever-varying view of the city of Rio and its magnificent bay.  And then the banks of this tropical high-road!  From out a mass of rich verdure grew lovely scarlet begonias, and spotted caladiums, shaded by graceful tree-ferns and overhung by trees full of exquisite parasites and orchids.  Among these, the most conspicuous, after the palms, are the tall thin-stemmed sloth-trees, so called from their being a favourite resort of the sloth, who with great difficulty crawls up into one of them, remains there until he has demolished every leaf, and then passes on to the next tree.

The pace of the mules, up the steep incline, under a broiling sun, was really wonderful.  Half-way up we stopped to change, at a buvette, where we procured some excellent Brazilia coffee, of fine but exceedingly bitter flavour.  Our next halt, midway between the buvette and the top of the hill, was at a spring of clear sparkling water, where we had an opportunity of collecting some ferns and flowers; and on reaching the summit we stopped once more, to enjoy the fine view over the Pass and the bay of Nictheroy.  The descent towards Petropolis then commenced; it lies in the hollow of the hills, with a river flowing through the centre of its broad streets, on either side of which are villas and avenues of noble trees.  Altogether it reminded me of Bagneres-de-Luchon, in the Pyrenees, though the general effect is unfortunately marred by the gay and rather too fantastic painting of some of the houses.