

CHAPTER III. 



CENTRAL BRAZIL. 



CE 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 

 Espinhac.o, rises about one hundred miles from the coast, and 

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

 hundred 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 with 

 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. 



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Still more desert regions exist, which may vie with those 

 of Africa in barrenness. Almost 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. 



