There are many dressed and half-dressed building 

 stones buried in the beach sands about the southern 

 end of this reef. These stones are supposed to have 

 been left here by the Dutch, as no one seems to know 

 when they were taken out. It used to be supposed 

 that the reef rock used at Pernambuco and Olinda 

 for architectural purposes all came from the Pernam- 

 buco reef. It appears, however, that the Gaibu reef 

 was the source from which some, perhaps most, of 

 this stone came. This reef protects no harbor, and, 

 being close to Pernambuco, and in a bay where boats 

 could readily be loaded, it offered a convenient source 

 of supply of these excellent building stones without 

 trespassing on the Pernambuco reef, which had greater 

 value as a pi'otection to the port. 



The stone reef south of Cabo Santo Agostinho. — 

 The finest stone reef on the coast of Brazil is the one 

 lying immediately south of Cabo Santo Agostinho in 

 the State of Pernambuco. No steamers enter the 

 port behind this reef and no highways cross the hills 

 of the Cape above it ; being thus of but little com- 

 mercial importance, the reef is only slightly or not 

 at all known. Recent charts represent it in a con- 

 ventional fashion. The best map I have seen of it 

 is that of Lichthart, the Dutch cartographer, made 

 more than three hundred years ago, and the only 

 views of it hitherto published are the woodcuts given 

 in Liais' UEspace Celeste (pp. 542, 546). 



As in other cases, we are concerned to a certain 

 extent with the physical features of the country on 

 the land side of the reef. In this instance these 

 features are so broad that their relations to the his- 

 tory of the reef are not so clear as they are in the 

 cases of several of the small reefs with a similar 

 history, but with a more compact topograph}'. 



The features of the region as a whole can be seen 

 best from the high hills on the southern side of the 

 cape. The view is superb. To the left the long 

 straight reef stretches away to the south, a vanish- 

 ing line. Behind this is the bay with one straight 

 side against the reef, while the other curves in and 

 out to meet the three streams, — the !Merepe, the 

 Ipojuca, the Tatuoca, and the Suape, that enter it 

 from the flat lands on tlie west. Here and thoro 

 through this flat region one gets a glimpse of the 

 shining waters of these streams, but for the most part 

 they are hidden by the forests that cover the valley. 



CC-fiUUM 



■r-. 



Fig. 39. 



