BRAZILIAN DIAMONDS AND THEIR ORIGIN. 611 



nearly alike that the study of one of them is enough to give an exact 

 idea of the others. The country here is not one that we have to dis- 

 cover, but to make known, and it well repays a better acquaintance. 

 If we go to it we shall run no dangers, we need fear or seek no thrill- 

 ino- adventures ; but we may feel as much ease in traveling as we en- 

 joyed a few years ago in going from Florence to Bologna, or on the 

 road to the Apennines. The security is even greater. It is said that 

 in Mexico military convoys have been necessary to guard the trains 

 eno-ao-ed in the transportation of silver from the interior to the coast, 

 and that even these guards did not protect them. Never has a single 

 soldier or a single agent of the police been employed in such service in 

 Brazil. For nearly two centuries successive caravans and numerous 

 travelers have transported to Rio Janeiro from the most remote points 

 of the interior fortunes in diamonds or in gold, simply packed in wood- 

 en boxes ; yet we can not cite a theft that has been committed on the 

 roads, now great highways, which were still, hardly fifty years ago, 

 simple bridle-paths traced through virgin forests. 



The rocks are at first schistose ; then, in the environs of Ouro 

 Preto, the capital of the province, appear quartzose formations, sand- 

 stones, and quartzites. These rocks constitute the peak of Itacolumi 

 and the enormous mass of Caraca, the landmarks that guide us. After 

 a while the white or green mica of the quartzites is replaced by span- 

 gles of oligist iron, and for several leagues the dust of the road and 

 the pavements of the streets of the towns through which we pass are 

 formed of the most beautiful iron minerals in the world. Quartz, 

 mica, and oligist iron are not generally elements of a very fertile soil, 

 but, under the action of a considerable humidity, these rocks are dis- 

 integrated and decomposed. Wherever the hand of man has not car- 

 ried destruction, there is developed, under the influence of a favorable 

 climate, one of the finest vegetations in the world. 



"We are now in the land of g^old. The road is evervwhere marked 

 with the ancient diggings ; enormous heaps of gravel on the banks of 

 the streams indicate how considerable have been the excavations of 

 which we see only the persisting mark-. 



The rocks are always the same : mica-schists, quartzite containing 

 mica or oligist iron, or itabaryte. The aspect of the country does not 

 chano-e : mountains succeed mountains, all of them rounded, srraduallv 

 sloping on one side, carved into peaks on the other ; and, since we 

 follow generally the water-sheds, we have only brooks to cross, the 

 sources of all the rivers that finally form the Rio Doce. But. after 

 having passed the town of Serro and crossed, a few miles north of this, 

 a chain of mountains perpendicular to the grand crest we have been 

 following, the aspect wholly changes. Before us extends a vast plain, 

 on which the eye hardly distinguishes a few undulations rising around 

 the city of Diamantina. the red roofs of which are visible through a 

 bouquet of verdure that forms a green oasis in the midst of the sur- 



