310 J. C. BRAXXER — DECOMPOSITIOX OF ROOKS IN BRAZIL. 



ing November, and this may be true not only of one but of several of 

 the months. 



Traveling in the interior of the country at certain seasons of the year, 

 one is impressed by the dry beds of what are, at other times, large rivers. 

 This is especiall}^ striking in the northeastern part of Brazil, through the 

 interior of Bahia, Pernambuco, Parah3"ba. Rio Grande do Norte, Ceara, 

 and Piauhy. Streams tliat are at one season large enough to float an 

 ocean steamer and from a hundred to two or three hundred miles in 

 length, often, toward the end of the dry season, are reduced to a series of 

 pools or to a line of hot white sand. This fact is so well known that it 

 is scarcely necessar}^ to do more than mention it here, and the statement 

 is not intended to apply to years of drouth, but to the average condition 

 of the region in question. 



In Bahia, in tlie month of May, Spix and Martins found the Rio do 

 Peixe and the Rio Itapicuru, which is over 200 miles in length, only a 

 string of pools. ^ 



Barao Homem de Mello, who was better acquainted with the physical 

 geography of Brazil than any one else, sa3^s, in speaking of the plains of 

 Ceara : f 



"Durino; this period (the dry season) the heds of streams, here improperly called 

 rivers, dry up entirely. In this province, however, these are nothing more than 

 channels or courses of torrential waters during the rainy season. Thus I crossed 

 today the perfectly dry beds of the Bahu and Guayuba l)et\veen Acarape and Paca- 

 tiiba. Along the large streams, such as the Jaguaribe, which is more than 600 

 kilometers long, there are barely a few pools here and there, the water ceasing alto- 

 gether to flow." This is borne out by Gardner, who says that at Ic6 the Jaguaribe, 

 "which during the rains is of considerable size, becomes quite dry" in the dry 



In the Rio Grande do Norte Koster found the Ceara INIerim in Novem- 

 ber a dry bed its entire length above tidewater. The Rio das Paranhas, 

 the largest stream in that state and in Parahyba do Norte (250 miles long) 

 he found dry at A^u, near its mouth, on December 1, but on recrossing it 

 two weeks later he found it overflowing its banks and "two to three 

 hundred yards in breadth." § 



Even under the equator the rainfall is thus unequally distributed. 

 There are dry treeless plains at many places along the Amazon. Hartt, 



* Reise in Brasilien, ii, p. 724. 



fExciirsoes pelo Ceara. F. I. M. Homem de Mello. Revist. do Inst. Hist, do Brazil, 1872, xxxv, 

 pt. 2, p. 85. 

 X Edin. New Phil. Jour., April, 1841, p. 76. 

 § Travels in Brazil. Henry Koster. 2d ed., London, 1817, vol. i, pp. 113, 147, 217. 



