114 BULLETIN: MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 
and two thousand and ninety kilometres from the northernmost reef 
at Ceará, 
Have there been changes within the historic period ? — Several writers 
have expressed the opinion that the northeast coast of Brazil has been 
elevated recently. It is not always clear whether they mean “recently ” 
in the historic or in the geologic sense. Capanema, however, speaks of 
a recession of the sea at one place at the rate of “ten fathoms in thirty 
years.” + 
This must necessarily be taken to mean an elevation during the 
present century. 
The point at which this particular elevation is said to have occurred 
is Aquiraz in the State of Ceará, four leagues southeast of the city of 
Ceará and half a league from the coast. It is off the ordinary routes of 
travel, and as the writer has not visited the place and knows of no ac- 
count of it by other observers, we can only judge it by what is known 
of other places on this coast. 
Inasmuch as the sandstone reefs of northeast Brazil have attracted the 
attention of navigators and travellers since the earliest times, and as 
these reefs are of great importance to commerce, and inasmuch as any 
elevation or depression of the coast would immediately produce notice- 
able effects upon them, they afford an excellent means of judging 
ав to whether or not any such changes of level have taken place since 
the discovery of Brazil. 
It was to have been expected that so remarkable a natural phenomenon 
as the sandstone reefs of Brazil would arrest the attention of the early 
navigators. The oldest accounts we have of the reefs relate to those at 
Porto Seguro and at Pernambuco. 
Pero Vaz de Caminha, one of the companions of Cabral, the discoverer 
of Brazil, was the first to make mention of the reefs,— the one at Porto 
Seguro, where Cabral landed in the year 1500. He merely mentions it, 
however, ав a “reef having a very good and secure port inside of it.” 2 
Pero Lopes de Souza was at Pernambuco in 1530; he mentions 
the reef at that place, the one near Cabo Sto. Agostinho, and one at 
1 Trabalhos da Commissão Scientifica, I. Introducção, р. схххуй. Rio de 
Janeiro, 1865. 
2 Carta de Pedro Vaas de Caminha a El Rei D. Manoel. Collecção de noticias 
para a historia e geografia das nacóes ultramarinas que vivem nos dominios Portu- 
guezes. Tom. IV., No, IIL, р. 180 a. Lisbóa, 1826. 
Corografia Brazilica de Manoel Ayres де Cazal. L,p.12-34. Rio de Janeiro, 1817. 
Revista do Instituto Historico e Geographico do Brazil, 1877, XL., Pt. IL, р. 18-37. 
