418 A JOURNEY IN BRAZIL. 
wider prospect than is to be had from many a more im- 
posing mountain ; for the surrounding plain, covered with 
forests and ploughed by countless rivers, stretches away 
for hundreds of leagues in every direction, without any 
object to obstruct the view. Standing on the brow of the 
Serra, with the numerous lakes intersecting the lowlands 
at its base, you look across the valley of the Amazons, 
ao far as the eye can reach, and through its centre you 
follow for miles on either side the broad flood of the great 
river, carrying its yellow waters to the sea. As I stood 
there, panoramas from the Swiss mountains came up to 
my memory, and I fancied myself on the Alps, looking 
across the plain of Switzerland instead of the bed of the 
Amazons ; the distant line of the Santarem hills on the 
southern bank of the river, and lower than the northern 
chain, representing the Jura range. As if to complete 
the comparison, Alpine lichens were growing among the 
cacti and palms, and a crust of Arctic cryptogamous 
growth covered rocks, between which sprang tropical flow- 
ers. On the northern flank of this Serra I found the 
only genuine erratic boulders I have seen in the whole 
length of the Amazonian Valley from Para to the frontier 
of Peru, though there are many detached masses of rock, 
as, for instance, at Pedreira, near the junction of the Rio 
Negro and Rio Branco, which might be mistaken for 
them, but are due to the decomposition of the rocks in 
place. The boulders of Erere are entirely distinct from the 
rock of the Serra, and consist of masses of compact horn- 
blende. 
It would seem that these two ranges skirting a part of 
the northern and southern banks of the Lower Amazons are 
not the only remnants of this arenaceous formation in its 
