It was most tantalising to pass all these wonders, but time was precious and my friend was suffering, and our next night behind a curtained alcove in an extremely draughty room after a good day’s soaking did not improve her. The third morning found her voiceless, but she was determined to get home that night, though it was a full forty miles’ ride; so on we came, and she bore it bravely. Suddenly a violent discharge of fireworks in front warned Mr. G. he was coming amongst friends, and we stopped to breakfast at the house of a black man, whose late master had left him his freedom as well as house and property. There were many bits of curious old carved furniture here, as well as fine silverwork in the little chapel, and our host treated us as if he loved us (for a consideration). Over the wall round his house were masses of bright scarlet-flowering euphorbia, from the juice of which the Indians poison their arrows, and of which the Jews say the crown of thorns was made. The journey was a weary one; for we were all anxious about her who was generally the life of our party, and when we reached the bridge over the deep riverbed where we were to change mules, I thought she would have been suffocated. Soon, however, the hill of Morro Velho came in sight, and though still far off, her spirits rose and her troubles grew less in proportion as the distance shortened.
A fearful storm came on, and our waterproofs were of real use and brought us in a comparatively dry state to the house of a very remarkable old lady, Dona Florisabella of Santa Rita, who hugged us all round in the heartiest way, and then led us up by a rough ladder to a set of handsome rooms, which had been frescoed in a most gaudy and reckless manner with every bright tint of the rainbow. The open verandah attracted me at once. From it there was an exquisite view of the Rio das Velhas, winding through its wide green valley, surrounded by hills wooded to two-thirds of their height, and a noble ceiba, or silk cotton tree, standing sentinel by the house, which I afterwards saw covered with the most lovely pink hibiscus-like flowers—a perfect mass of colour, looking in the distance like a large old cabbage rose against the green hills. Across the river I now saw the pretty church and village almost hidden in groves of bananas and palm trees. Above were the peaks of Morro da Gloria, the property of our old leader, and from which we gave him his title.
From this view, politeness required me to turn at last to our hostess and her abundant conversation. She was of good family and had seen better days; her children were dispersed in the world and had left her to make what she could of a small property. She had spirit enough to work that or anything else, and her power of talk and pantomime beat even her rival the Baron’s. She wore a once-handsome silk dress and a gaudy silk handkerchief bound over her head so as to hide every trace of hair; but in spite of the disfiguring costume, showed remains of great beauty. Soon Mary rushed out to meet her brother, the clever young engineer. She found her voice at the same moment; and we all sat down to a grand dinner, excepting our hostess, who stood and helped us all, and woe betide anyone who refused to eat or drink what she offered them. After she had filled all our plates, she seized the drumstick of a chicken in one hand and a bit of bread in the other and took alternate bites at them, after which she washed her hands at a side table, and began carving again, drinking to all our healths separately, and making speeches to each as she did it. One of her dishes had a duck in it sitting upright as if it were swimming, with a lime in its mouth. Her doce were excellent, particularly a kind of sweet pudding made with a great deal of cheese in it.
It was no easy task to get away from this hospitable lady, but at last we started, and about a mile farther crossed the great bridge over the river and were on the company’s property. About twenty of its officers were waiting to receive us, all mounted on mules, and there was a general handshaking, most of the party being English. The Baron was low-spirited, for he was no longer our leader, and his work was over. Mr. G. and I led the way and jogged over the muddy road uphill and down to the village of Congonhas, when the rockets and firing and hand clasping began in good earnest, amid torrents of rain.
The mules became quite unmanageable, either from the noise or from the nearness of their well-loved stables, and we all took to galloping violently up and down the steep paved streets, which were now torrents of liquid mud—such a clattering, splashing, umbrella-grinding procession! Mr. G.’s mule objected to a rocket stick on his nose and kicked his rider’s hat off, after which the Baron galloped on ahead to stop the fireworks if possible; he looked very picturesquely wild, with his red-lined poncho flying out on the wind like the wings of a blue and scarlet macaw.
At last we were stopped by the band awaiting us and had to tramp solemnly behind it into the grounds of the Casa Grande—a mass of close-packed dripping umbrellas and damp bodies; and before I knew where I was, I found myself dismounted and hugged and welcomed by one of the best and kindest women I ever met in all the wide world, and called dearie in a sweet Scotch voice; no wonder Mary longed to be at home! And I felt that I was right and the Rio people wrong about coming to Morro Velho, and the only drawbacks to the journey left were blistered lips and slightly browned hands.
The Casa Grande of Morro Velho was indeed a rare home for an artist to settle in, and I soon fell into a regular and very pleasant routine of life. I had the cheeriest and most airy of little rooms next my friends, with a large window opening on to the light verandah, in which people were continually coming and going and lingering to gossip. Beyond that was the garden, full of sweetest flowers; a large Magnolia grandiflora tree loaded with blossoms within smelling distance; around it masses of roses, carnations, gardenias (never out of flower), bauhinias of every tint (the delight of hummingbirds and butterflies), heliotropes grown into standard trees, and covered with sweet bloom, besides great bushes of poinsettia with scarlet stars a foot across; beyond these were bananas, palms, and other trees, and the wooded hillsides and peeps of the old works and stream in the valley below.
About January the heat became more oppressive—eighty-six degrees was the average, though it was often ninety-one degrees in the shade—but the nights were always cool enough for sleep at Morro Velho, which is about three thousand feet above the sea, and I was never uncomfortably hot. The Gordons, however, who had lived sixteen years in the climate, longed for a change; so they determined to go to pay a long-promised visit to Mr. R. at Cata Branca, taking a young Scotch lady who had been spending Christmas with them, and myself.
It was a beautiful day’s ride of about twenty-six miles, the road winding for the greater part of the way along the high banks overlooking the Rio das Velhas, which eventually runs into the Rio São Francisco and enters the sea above Bahia. The river we followed was about as broad as the Tweed at Dryburgh, running through wooded hollows. A good road was in the course of being made along this valley, on which some hundreds of the company’s blacks were working, who greeted us with hearty cheers. In the fresh clearings I saw many new and gorgeous flowers as well as some old friends, including the graceful amaranth plant of North Italy, with which the wine of Padua and Verona is coloured. How did it get to the two places so far apart? I longed more and more for some intelligent botanical companion to answer my many questions.
We rested awhile at a collection of huts that have been put up for the work-people near some fine falls of the river, and the headman there told us of one curious fish he had caught that seemed to have a sort of inner mouth, which it sent out like a net to catch small fish or flies with. He showed us a rough drawing he had made and was very positive about the story, which is not more difficult to believe than many other well-proved wonders of nature.
After leaving this settlement, we mounted up bare hillsides another thousand feet, and came to the green plateau of Cata Branca, with its groups of iron rocks, piled most fantastically like obelisks or Druid stones standing on end, dry and hard, and so full of metal that the compass does not know where to point. Amidst these rocks grow the rarest plants: orchids, vellozias, gum trees, gesnerias, and many others as yet perhaps unnamed. One of these bore a delicate bloom—Macrosiphonia longiflora (No. 67 in my catalogue at Kew)—like a giant white primrose of rice paper with a throat three inches long; it was mounted on a slender stalk, and had leaves of white plush like our mullein, and a most delicious scent of cloves. Another was a gorgeous orange thistle with velvety purple leaves. I was getting wild with my longing to dismount and examine these when we met