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.
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