Sao Paulo 303 



By the advice of friends we took our seats on the 

 left-hand side of the railway carriage. We were told 

 that this would enable us to get the best views as we 

 climbed the mountains. The railway for the first few 

 minutes after leaving Sao Paulo traverses a low swampy 

 plain overgrown with mangroves, and intersected with 

 tidal creeks. Here and there were clumps of various 

 larger tropical trees, some of them in bloom. One 

 species greatly awakened my admiration, but I am not 

 able to identify it. It was a tree from fifteen to twenty- 

 five feet in height, having a pyramidal growth. All of 

 these trees were a glorious mass of large pale lilac 

 blossoms, with darker purple throats. Each blossom 

 appeared to be from three to four inches in diameter 

 across the corolla. The train was moving too rapidly 

 to allow me more than to grasp the singular beauty of 

 these great pyramids of bloom, which here and there 

 rose up out of the surrounding swamps. Some of my 

 botanical friends may perhaps smile at my failure 

 to recognize the genus, but botanizing on a railway 

 train going thirty-five miles an hour is not easy. Ahead 

 of us were the dark verdurous flanks of the mountains, 

 which rise all along the seacoast a few miles from the 

 beach, and reach an elevation of from twenty-five 

 hundred to three thousand feet above the level of the 

 sea. Their tops were covered with dark clouds. We 

 rapidly approached them, and as we came to the foot 

 of a steep spur jutting out into the low-lying plain, we 

 saw that up its ridge went the shining double track of 

 the railway. The locomotive which had drawn us to 

 the foot of the incline was shunted to a side-track, and 

 another was made fast behind to push the train up the 

 slope. We went at the heavy grade slowly, but the 

 snorting of the engine behind us proved that it required 



