CHAPTER III. 



CENTRAL BRAZIL. 



HE centre of Brazil is occupied by a high table- 

 land, crossed by a series of serras, mostly running 

 north and south. The most eastern, — the Serra de 

 Espinha^o, — rises about one hundred miles from the coast, and 

 the table-land extends from it westward for upwards of six 

 himdred miles. Numerous peaks besides the serras rise 

 amidst it, few of them reaching a greater elevation than one 

 thousand feet above its surface. It is mostly clothed witli 

 coarse grass and bushes, and single-standing trees, which in 

 summer shed their leaves, when, the grass being burned up 

 by the sun, the region has a desert and barren appearance. 

 Here and there the plain as well as the hills are covered with 

 sand, and at others with bare rocks. 



Still more desert regions exist, which may vie with those 

 of Africa in barrenness. Ahnost in the very centre of the 

 continent is a sandy desert, called the Campos dos Paricis. 

 Here the surface is formed by long-backed ridges of sandy 

 hills parallel to one another. So loose is the soil, that even 

 the patient mule with a burden on his back can hardly make 

 his way across it. 



