254 POPULAR GEOGRAPHY OF PLANTS. 



tempted however to forget the object of our journey either 

 by the gay shops, or by the novel (though anything but gay) 

 costume of the ladies we meet in them, muffled up in dark 

 cloth cloaks with large capes, surmounted (Welsh fashion) 

 by a man's hat ; but we will hasten to acquaint ourselves 

 with the nature of vegetation in the surrounding country. 



This task will detain us but too short a time ; for no 

 contrast could be greater than that which exists between 

 the magnificent appearance of the City of Diamonds, sur- 

 rounded with plantations of Orange-trees and Bananas, and 

 the usual productions of a tropical country, interspersed 

 with many fine trees of the large grotesque Brazilian Pine 

 (Araucaria Brasiliana], and the rocky and absolutely bare 

 country which surrounds it on all sides, " which is perhaps 

 one of the most rugged and arid regions in Brazil." Here, 

 truly, the treasures all lie underground ; for as far as the 

 eye can reach, nothing is to be seen but hundreds of bare 

 hills, whose barren tops are whitened by the numerous 

 Lichens with which the rocks are covered; not even the 

 mountains in the highlands of Scotland have a more arid 

 aspect than those which frown down on us on either side of 

 a flat bushy valley through which we pass as we pursue our 

 journey. 



