488 A JOURNEY IN BRAZIL. 
summit, on the extreme point of winch a large boulder is 
placed. It looks as if a touch would dislodge it ; and yet 
for how many a long year has it held its place there through 
storm and sunshine ! We looked up at this huge fragment 
of rock on its dizzy height, and wondered whether it was 
erratic, or simply an effect of decomposition on the spot, 
a point impossible of decision at that distance. If the lat- 
ter, it seems strange that the weather should have worn 
and excavated such a mass underneath, without destroying 
its upper surface, thus detaching it from the mountain, till 
it stands, as now, in bold relief, only supported by a single 
point of attachment on the extreme summit. We spent the 
rest of the day in a walk to a very pretty cascade which 
comes rushing down through the wood a mile or two from 
the village. 
June ~L~Lth. We left the inn at half past seven this morn- 
ing, to pass the day again in rambling. Following the main 
road for a quarter of a mile or so beyond the village, we 
presently turned to the left into a narrow, shady pathway. 
It led us through the woods to the edge of a deep basin 
sunk between the mountains, on the slopes of which were 
strewn many immense boulders. A curious feature of the 
Organ Mountains which we have observed repeatedly even 
in this short excursion is, that between their strangely 
fantastic forms the country sinks down into well-defined 
basins, which usually have no outlet. Following the brink 
of such a basin for a couple of miles, and crossing an in- 
tervening ridge, we came out upon a kind of plateau over- 
hanging another depression of the same character, and com- 
manding a magnificent view of the chain, in the very centre 
of which it seems to be, for the mountains rise tier upon 
tier around it on every side. On this plateau stands the 
