HE sea that laves the palm-fringed shores of Pernambuco gleams like an emerald. Never before had I seen a sea of such a vivid green; and when, on entering the harbour of Recife, the capital of the State of Pernambuco, and looking out over the farflung stone breakwater, where from time to time the foam of the breakers spouted up in snowy clouds, I beheld this green radiance, I could hardly at first beheve that this was the ocean over which I had been voyaging.