The glory of the Botanical Gardens is the avenue of palms. This extends for half a mile in a straight line from the entrance gate. Halfway down, the main avenue is crossed by another at right angles to it. Where the two avenues intersect, stands a fountain.

The trees are eighty feet high and three feet in diameter. There are about one hundred and fifty of them in the main avenue, and they stand thirty feet apart. As you walk down the gravel path, the trees before you seem to blend with one another, so that you appear to be enclosed in a gray-walled corridor, roofed with green.

There are other avenues shaded by trees in the gardens. In one place the paths are bordered for some distance by the same kind of trees; in another by different kinds; and still in another, by different varieties of the same species. The arrangement is varied in a thousand interesting and instructive ways.

Here is a large thicket representing a bit of tropical forest. It contains lofty trees, strangled in the wild growth of smaller trees, shrubs, and parasitic climbers and creepers. Humming birds poise their dainty little bodies above gay flowers; and bugs, bright as gems, are seen upon the glossy leaves. Everything is an exact copy of the primeval forests of this region.

Besides the plants of South America, tropical plants from all over the world are growing here. Only the Botanical Garden in Java has a collection larger than this of Rio Janeiro.

No one who visits the capital of Brazil must fail to ascend Corcovado. This mountain peak lies to the southwest of Rio Janeiro, and is over two thousand feet high. It is cone-shaped, and its walls are very steep, except on the side where the railway has been built.

The railroad is constructed like those upon Mount Washington and the Swiss mountains. The single car, which the engine pushes before it, is open, so that an ever-widening view is obtained during the hour’s ride.

The track passes directly through a forest; and when the traveler’s eyes are weary with studying the ocean and the plain below, he can feast them upon the graceful ferns and bright flowers which almost brush the track. Half way up there is a fine hotel, where many merchants, flying from the pestilent city, spend their nights.

Beyond the hotel the ride becomes more dangerous, and, in places, it is worse than any part of the ascent of Mount Washington. If a rail should yield, a nail give way, or a stone be upon the track, car and people would be dashed to atoms at the foot of the terrible cliffs.

At length the engine pauses. The passenger himself must climb the remaining few hundred feet. Hastening up the rocky steps, he finds himself on a walled platform, covered with an iron roof as a protection against wind or rain.