The Organ Mountains lie to the north, the peaks of Corcovado and Tijuca to the west, and Sugar Loaf to the south. The mountains are lofty, while their sides are very abrupt and steep. Their sharp lines and frowning heights form a strong contrast to the narrow green plain lying between them and the bay.

The view of the bay and the city, from a vessel anchored in the harbor, is delightful. Many green islands dot the clear water. Some of them are large, and contain villages and farms; others are tiny, and have only the gray roof of a chapel rising from the midst of a small grove of trees.

The city of Rio Janeiro, like a long and narrow crescent, lies along the western shore. It is but half a mile wide, and is prevented by the mountains from growing any more in a westerly direction. It is nine or ten miles from north to south, and can still grow in those directions.

From the harbor, Rio Janeiro appears, in the morning sunshine, like a city of alabaster. With its brilliant white walls, and its dreamily nodding palms mirrored in the level waters of the bay, it is like a city in the Arabian Nights. But all admiration vanishes on entering the city itself. Rio Janeiro is terribly dirty.

A few of the streets are so narrow that no ray of sunlight enters them. They are hot and stifling. Foul odors and sickening gases arise from the open gutters which run through the middle of the streets. The slender trunk of a beautiful palm often stretches upward from a heap of decaying vegetables, seeming to bear its great green tuft of leaves up into a purer region than the filthy streets below. Squalid beggars, and gaunt, wolflike dogs, are seen at the street corners.

Rio Janeiro is a series of disappointments. Its surroundings are perfect; but the city itself is unhealthy, situated as it is in the tropics, with but little attention paid to the most ordinary rules for city cleanliness.

Yellow fever and smallpox hold possession for one half of the year, and all the rich people have their summer homes among the mountains. Their houses which, if erected in the city, would form fine streets, are all in Petropolis or other mountain resorts.

The public buildings are of an inferior architecture, and are certainly in -need of repair. But there is one place which never disappoints the traveler. Return to it as often as he may, it seems always as grand and marvelous as at first. This is the Botanical Gardens of Rio Janeiro.

They are some little distance from the city, at the foot of the peak of Corcovado, and are reached by the horse cars.