ORGAN MOUNTAINS. 485 
the heat. The road winds gently up the serra, turning 
sometimes with so sharp an angle that helow we could 
see all the ground we had travelled over. On one hand is 
the mountain-side, clothed with a vegetation of surpassing 
beauty, bright with crimson parasites, with the rich pur- 
ple flowers of the Quaresma and the delicate blue blossoms 
of the Utricularia, as fragile and as graceful as the harebell. 
On the other hand, we looked down sometimes into narrow 
gorges, clothed with magnificent forest, from which huge 
masses of rock projected here and there ; sometimes into 
wider valleys opening out ir^o the plain below, and giving 
a distant view of the harbor and its archipelago of islands 
surrounded by mountains, the whole scene glittering in the 
sunshine, or veiled by shadows, as the fitful day showed it 
to us. 
The ascent may be easily accomplished on foot in three or 
four hours. We had nothing to urge us forward, however, 
except a growing desire for breakfast, appeased every now 
and then by an orange, of which we bad a good supply in 
the tin case for plants, and many a slow train of laden mules 
passed us in their upward march, and left us far behind as we 
Ibitered along, though not lazily. On the contrary, Mr. Agas- 
siz and his friends found plenty of occupation in botanizing 
and geologizing. They stopped constantly to gather para- 
sites, to study ferns and mosses, to break boulders, to collect 
insects and the little land-shells found here and there along 
the road. We saw one most beautiful insect, hardly larger 
than a lady-bug, but of the most exquisite colors and gleam- 
ing like a jewel on the leaf where it had alighted. In 
breaking the stones along the roadside Mr. Agassiz found 
many evidences of erratics, several of them being Diorite, 
entirely distinct from the rock in place. The surfaces of 
