EXPOSURES ALONG THE CONDE d'eU RAILWAY 55 



tion of 73 meters and up to 82 meters above tide, there are waterworn 

 boulders, some of them half a meter in diameter, overlying crystalline 

 schists. Farther down the side of the valley the schists are all more or 

 less decomposed and are overlain with a line of waterworn pebbles, and 

 above these is the soil of a deep red color. 



Two or 3 kilometers east of Pau Ferro are good exposures of the 

 schists with overlying waterworn boulders. The gravel is from 1 to 2 

 meters thick and especially heavy about 100 meters east of the station 

 of Pau Ferro. The gravel bed is generally covered by from 1 to 2 meters 

 of soil. 



At Pau Ferro station (66 kilometers from Parahyba) a well has been 

 dug east of the railway track in the lower part of the valley, and from 

 this were taken many waterworn boulders. The pebbles in the vicinity 

 are subangular rather than round, though clearly waterworn. North- 

 west of Pau Ferro are several cuts along the railway in which schist is 

 exposed with waterworn materials overlying it. One of these cuts is 

 about 5 meters deep ; the gravel beds overlying the schist are a meter or 

 more in thickness, but they thin down and almost disappear in places. 

 This sheet of waterworn gravel passes completely over the lower water- 

 sheds. The soil over the schist is in places not more than half a meter 

 thick. There are white bands of pegmatite in some of the exposures of 

 crystalline rocks. 



Mulungti station (elevation, 62.5 meters) stands on a black clay or soil 

 that forms the flat floor of a narrow valley draining into the Rio Maman- 

 guape. This black muck-like soil looks like the bottom of an old lake 

 or swamp. The soil is the so-called " massape." In the diy season it 

 opens in big cracks. ( 



In the Mamanguape valley there are several lakes apparently in pro- 

 cess of filing up with organic matter. 



On the divide between the Mamanguape and Caxoeira station, at an 

 elevation 94 meters, some of the schists are very micaceous, and the 

 pebble bed is heavy, coarse, and widespread. South of Caxoeira station 

 (93 kilometers from Parahyba) schists decayed in places so closely resem- 

 ble the particolored sediments on the coast that at a distance of 10 

 meters they could not be distinguished from each other. On closer in- 

 spection the bedding planes (or schistosity) of the shist may be traced 

 through the colored earth. The earth produced by the decomposition 

 of the shist here is sometimes highly colored and sometimes gra}\ 



Independencia, formerly known as Guarabira, is the terminal station 

 of the railway. It is 98 kilometers from the city of Parahyba, and has 

 an elevation of . 70 meters above tide, and is about 45 kilometers from 

 the seacoast. The rocks exposed in place about the town are all schists, 



