of illegitimate births, notwithstanding the growth of the city. Many of the foundlings are mulattoes; and those which I saw, in a dormitory of thirty-two beds, were quite diminutive. There seemed scarcely to be a healthy-looking child among them. The room they were in had a quiet situation, with two windows, and, though large, the atmosphere was close. The beds were in neat iron cribs, with a muslin mosquito-bar for each. Slave-women are invariably employed as wet-nurses, it being the policy of the asylum not to employ in that capacity any of the mothers of the foundlings. A physician visits the asylum daily. It sometimes happens that parents wish to get their children back, and, under proper circumstances and by furnishing requisite proof of identity, they can do so. I was informed by the Lady Superior, who politely accompanied us through the building, that there are now sixteen Sisters of Charity of the Order of São Vincent de Paulo living there and giving their services. It is a home for them during life, they being well cared for when no longer able for active duty. The institution was founded in 1738 by Romão de Mattos Duarte, and is so amply endowed that its own income is abundantly sufficient to meet all its expenses. Though plain outwardly, the building is very commodious and well finished; all its floors are of polished hard wood of dark color, waxed. The room for the meetings of the board of administration is quite large. On one of its walls are full-length portraits in oil of the founder, above mentioned, and of D. Luiza Roza Avondano Pereira, an important benefactress of the institution. On another side are fulllength portraits of the present Emperor and Empress of Brazil, and on the wall opposite them similar-sized portraits of the Emperor's father and mother. The edifice

has a court in the center, with a flower-garden and fountain, and there is quite a piece of ground, belonging to the premises, extending up on the São Antonio Hill, for the recreation of the children. Indeed, the establishment has in its size, finish, and equipment most of the substantial qualities which affluence can provide; and it can almost be said that the foundling deposited in the "wheel" enters a palace. The president of the board of directors is the present prime minister, being the same individual who is at the head of the administration of the great Santa Casa Hospital. There are foundling asylums also in the cities of Bahia and Pernambuco.

About ten years ago, I visited a prison, in one of the smaller Protestant countries of Europe, where were fifty female convicts undergoing a life-sentence for the murder of their offspring. They were quietly and orderly working at spinning and weaving, but I remember distinctly what a fixed expression of melancholy there was on their faces. When I got home and was thinking the matter over, I thought I could not have rightly understood the director of the prison, that so many as fifty women were under sentence for child-murder, and wrote him to inquire if I was right. He replied that I had not misunderstood him. I can not but believe that institutions like this foundling hospital tend greatly to prevent crime. They certainly prevent the practice of leaving infants on door-steps.

In several of the provincial capitals there are asylums for girls, under charge of Sisters of Charity, and which appear to have been founded by private beneficence. The Asylum of Purity, established in 1874, in the province of Sergipe, for the support, protection, and education of neglected orphan girls, has a fund of five thousand dollars,

and receives annually, by vote of the provincial legislature, about two thousand dollars. The inmates, of whom there are now twenty-seven, receive instruction in the common branches, as well as sewing and house-work, and remain till they are eighteen years of age, when in case of marriage each one receives a dower of one hundred and twenty dollars in money, and an outfit of the value of eighty dollars.

Epiphany is one of the days of the Catholic Church kept with as much strictness as a New England Sunday, though it come on a week-day. I took that day to visit, with my family, the immense hospital called Sancta Casa de Misericordia, or Holy House of Mercy. It is the hospital into which all sick seamen (if the disease be not contagious), of whatever nationality, are received, and treated gratuitously (the port charges, which foreign vessels pay, are ample to cover such expenses), as well as the poor of the city. It is richly endowed, and generally well administered. The nurses, who likewise mix the medicines, are Sisters of Charity, of different nationalities. As I had visited the hospital several times previously, I did not on this occasion enter the sick-wards, though in passing the doors could look in. We were taken into the kitchen and prescription-room, both spacious and neat; also up-stairs into a chapel, for which large space in every such institution is devoted; also into a council-chamber or hall, on whose walls were many poorly painted portraits. There was also a full-sized plaster statue of the Emperor, though it struck me a statue of the benevolent founder of the institution, and not in plaster either, would have been more appropriate. However, there is in the reception-room a marble bust of the founder. This hospital furnishes quarters in a neighboring building for one or two hundred orphan children. It is a splendid establishment, but too

large to suit modern sanitary ideas, and its beds and pillows are very hard.

Among other institutions which we visited during our residence at Rio was the Blind Asylum, situated in Campa S. Anna. It is a Government institution, the only one in Brazil, with fifty pupils; occupies rented premises, and receives an appropriation of twenty-five thousand dollars a year. A few of the pupils speak, read, and write both Portuguese and French, also play on the piano, and sing. There is a brass band composed of pupils. Some of the needlework of the women is ingenious.

There is a fairly respectable art-gallery at Rio, which is visited on some holidays by a few hundred people; but the collection is inferior to what a foreigner would expect in a city so large, and which for a century has been the seat of a royal or imperial dynasty. There is some pretension of imparting free instruction in painting; but I got the impression that the privileges of instruction there, and at the Conservatory of Music, are not much sought after.

The principal and most modern supply of water comes a distance of thirty miles from the mountain rivers São Antonio and d'Ouro. It was estimated that the minimum supply of the aqueduct from these streams would be thirty million litres in twenty-four hours, but the Minister of Agriculture and Public Works, when he visited the reservoir Pedregulho on the 21st of August, 1884, found the supply to be only sixteen million litres in twenty-four hours. The oldest aqueduct is the Carioca, which brings water from heights between the Corcovado and Tijuca Mountains, a distance of eight miles. About ten million dollars in all have been expended for Rio's supply of water, which is a small sum to extend over two centuries, and

for so large and so rich a city, and one which has been so liable to dangerous epidemics. The water comes from clear mountain-streams, and is good, but is not as abundant as it ought to be. Several fountains have recently been built in some of the squares of the city, but they are dry nearly the year round. Rio ought to be as well supplied with water as Rome, where in scores of fountains one sees water enough to carry a mill, a part of which is brought in aqueducts built in the time of the old republic. Some of the water for Paris is now brought a hundred miles.

The scheme of building a bridge across the Bay of Rio de Janeiro to connect the city with Nictheroy has been advocated by capable engineers for several years, and by the president of the province in his annual report, including the latest. The shortest distance across is from the Benedictine Hill in Rio to the hill of Armacão in Nictheroy-two miles and three quarters; and the president states that a bridge suitable for tramways, vehicles, and foot-passsengers, and having a draw for big vessels, could be built for six million dollars.

To see Rio in the glory of its tropical summer, one should go there in our winter months, though perhaps the safest time for Americans to be there would be from May to September. That would be the winter season at Rio, the most of which is like our pleasant summer weather. There are then many nights when three blankets are not too much cover.

With regard to the yellow fever, I would state that with my family I have passed three continuous hot seasons in the city without any of us incurring it. During the first few months of its prevalence I felt a little nervous about it. The consular office was in the level business center, and was sometimes visited by seamen in the incipi