A SHORE EMPEROR ON BOARD A MAN-OF-WAR.
While we lay in Rio, we sometimes had company from shore; but an
unforeseen honour awaited us. One day, the young Emperor, Don
Pedro II., and suite--making a circuit of the harbour, and
visiting all the men-of-war in rotation--at last condescendingly
visited the Neversink.
He came in a splendid barge, rowed by thirty African slaves, who,
after the Brazilian manner, in concert rose upright to their oars
at every stroke; then sank backward again to their seats with a
simultaneous groan.
He reclined under a canopy of yellow silk, looped with tassels of
green, the national colours. At the stern waved the Brazilian
flag, bearing a large diamond figure in the centre, emblematical,
perhaps, of the mines of precious stones in the interior; or, it
