Downs to Rio de Janeiro
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the great Road of Rio de Janeiro. The city, which is large, and makes a handsome appearance, is governed by the Viceroy of Brazil, who is perhaps, in fact, as absolute a sovereign as any upon earth. When I visited him, he received me in great form; above sixty officers were drawn up before the palace, as well as a captain’s guard, who were men of a good appearance, and extremely well clothed: his Excellency, with a number of persons of the first distinction, belonging to the place, met me at the head of the stairs, upon which fifteen guns were fired from the nearest port: we then entered the room of state, and after conversing about a quarter of an hour, in French, I took my leave, and was dismissed with the same form that had been used at my reception. He offered to return my visit at a house which I had hired on shore, but this I declined, and soon after he returned it on board.
The people in my own ship, who had as much fresh meat and greens as they could eat every day, were very healthy, but there being many sick on board the Tamar, I procured a place for them on shore, where they soon recovered. I also engaged a number of Portuguese caulkers, as the seams of both the ships were very open, who, after having worked some time, rendered them perfectly tight.
While we lay here, Lord Clive, in the Kent Indiaman, came to the port. This ship had sailed from England a month before us, and had not touched any where, yet she came in a month after us; so that her passage was just two months longer than ours, notwithstanding the time we lost in waiting for the Tamar, which, though the Dolphin was by no means a good sailer, sailed so much worse, that we seldom spread more than half our canvas. The Kent had many of her people down in the scurvy.
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from Volume I of the London 1773 Edition: National Library of Australia call no. FERG 7243, page 6, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/hv01/044.html