SEDIMENTARY BELT OF THE COAST OF BRAZIL 219 
In the northern section from Cape Frio to the southern mouth of 
the Amazonas (perhaps also the northern limit of Brazil) the highlands 
on or immediately back of the coast are, for the most part, composed 
of horizontal, or approximately horizontal, sedimentary beds of sand- 
stone, shales, and clays, and more rarely of limestone. ‘This costal 
belt of sedimentary rocks is usually quite narrow, and nowhere does 
it extend more than a fewscores of kilometers from the coast. In the 
comparatively few and short stretches of coast where it is lacking—as 
at Cape Santo Agostinho and near Tamandaré in the state of Pernam- 
buco, Bahia and IIheos in the state of Bahia, and several points on the 
coast of Espirito Santo and Rio de Janeiro between the mouth of the 
Rio Doce and Cape Frio—it appears probable that it has been denuded 
away rather than that it was originally lacking. Its elevation is usual- 
ly under one hundred meters, but in one district at least (near Alag- 
oinhas in the state of Bahia) it is known to rise to an elevation of 
about 400 meters. 
Although frequent references to local occurrences of this sedimen- 
tary belt are to be found in earlier writers,’ the first geological contri- 
bution of value relating to it was made in 1850 by Allport (5), who 
described the occurrence of fossiliferous beds at Bahia containing 
carbonized wood, cyprids, fish and reptile remains, and fresh-water 
mollusks that were referred to the Cretaceous age. ‘The first general 
account of the belt was, however, given in 1870, by Hartt (4) who had 
personally traced it from Cape Frio to Pernambuco. After discrim- 
inating the recent consolidated beaches or stone reefs, which are so 
frequent on this coast and so lable to mislead the geologist, Hartt 
t In 1811 Feldner, a German engineer in the employ of the Brazilian government, 
made explorations for coal in this belt, which were based on the occurrence of fragments 
of carbonized wood in the neighborhood of Bahia. Spix and Martius (1) briefly de- 
scribed some of its outcrops of Bahia and near Ilheos, considering those at the former 
place as of recent formation and those at the latter as equivalent to the European Quader- 
sandstein. ‘The identification in the latter case was evidently based solely on litho- 
logical resemblances, and in the former on fossils supposed to come from its rocks 
which were evidently confounded with those of the consolidated beach, or stone reef, 
later described by Hartt (4) and Branner (11)—a not unnatural error. Pissis (3) in 
1842 mapped quite acccurately the Bahia basin as extending down the coast to beyond 
Marahi, but, misled by shells from the above-mentioned consolidated beach, or more 
probably and less excusably by the shell-heaps on the island of Itaparica described by 
Rathbun (9) which he erroneously attributed to the section at Monserrate Point, he 
determined the formation as Tertiary. 
