prairie. According to Taunay, who traveled over the country, 
these masses of sandstone in horizontal beds regularly placed 
one above another, are formed of marshy sediment deposited 
by the sea of fresh water, which in former times covered this 
region. 
The ruins of these hills and slopes contributed also to change 
the physiognomy of the landscape. These excoriations were 
picked up and dragged by the rivers, to form new beds and 
soil, and much rock disappeared below the continued crumbling 
of the mountains. Others show nothing except their summits 
above the land of recent formation. Masses that held them to 
the tablelands and the chains of the interior are separated from 
them, because their bases are buried and they emerge abruptly 
from the soil. These distinctive peaks to which the name of 
itambea has been given, raise their heads above a sea of trees, 
like some great buildings erected by the hand of man. To the 
East, the southern part of Matto Grosso, they range themselves 
in files and group themselves in archipelagoes, each time becom- 
ing higher and more numerous. The part that goes towards the 
West are solitary peaks on the circle of the horizon and may be 
seen along the banks of the River Paraguay, and even on the 
other side of the same. 
The Upper Guarporé, Itenez of the Bolivians, although situ- 
ated in the immense basin of the Amazon as a tributary to the 
Madeira River by the Marmoré, belongs to the State of Matto 
Grosso, for the city of this name was founded on its banks and 
nearly the whole population of the state accumulated in this de- 
pression, through whose western half the river finds its way. Its 
principal source is very obscure. It rises in a grotto along the 
the border of the Araxa, and takes first a southerly course, parallel 
to other rivers which descend towards Paraguay. On leaving 
the last hills it curves to the West, and afterwards to the North- 
west, where already enlarged by numerous tributaries it crosses 
the plain, where there is found the city named at its founding 
Villa Bella and to-day called Matto Grosso. 
The Paraguay is one of the most known rivers of South 
America, as a way.of navigation, as Elysée Reclus affirms. Few 
rivers have such a slight declination in proportion to their length. 
Castelnaw says that it rises at an altitude of 305 meters, in 
places where tranquil waters glide slowly to the sea, the altitude 
of the land being scarcely 200 meters. At a point 4,000 kilo- 
meters from the sea, the declination is scarcely 5 centimeters. 
Therefore, steamers of light draft can freelv ascend to the con- 
fines of Brazil, far to the North of the two Republics of Argen- 
tine and Paraguay and arrive at the base of the tableland by 
the principal river and its tributaries, Jauru, Sepotuba, Cuyaba, 
174 
