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portion of Brazil; namely the states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa 
Catharina, Parand, and a few rapid excursions across S&o Paulo, and 
Minas Geraes, as well as the brief visit to Maraht’ in Bahia. 
That the sedimentary beds of the Brazilian Permian. once 
held some petroleum is attested by the evidence of the Iraty black 
shale which gives off the characteristic odor of this substance from 
Sao Paulo to Rio Grande do Sul. 
The natural coke at Limeira and the Albertite near Lages in this 
same shale also attest its petroliferous character 
The sandstone saturated with wlphaltic residua at Bofete in 
Sao Paulo, tells the same story ; namely, that these deposits of the 
Santa Catharina system of rocks once held petroleum, and if reports 
are to be credited, a small quantity of petroleum was actually found in 
the deep boring at Bofete near the base of the Santa Catharina beds. But 
another factor must be taken into account. The rocks of this system 
are everywhere in Brazil traversed by fissures through which great 
flows of eruptives welled out to the surface ruptiring the strata and 
often baking them into a partial metamorphic condition. These scismic 
activities would certainly release all or most of the volatile products 
in any petroleum deposits, and leave the remainder as an una- 
vailable asphaltic residuum just like that foundin the sandstone at 
Bofete. 
It is true that large areas are comparatively free from any visible 
evidence of these old eruptive flows, and it is barely possible that in 
some of these, petroleum deposits might yet exist in available form, 
but this is quite doubtful, and the chances are all against the finding 
of petroleum in commercial quantity anywhere in South Brazil. 
The result of the deep drilling at Iraty, which is distant from any 
known outcrop of igneous rocks, confirms this conclusion, that it 
is useless to expect petroleum deposits of any considerable quatity 
anywhere in South Brazil. 
What North Brazil may hold in this line, the writer cannot 
venture to predict, sinse his travels have not extended into that 
region, but if one might reason from the presence of the great 
deposits of asphalt in the adjoining countries of Venezuela, etc. 
(since all deposits of asphalt are simply residua of former im- 
mense oil pools elevated to the surface, the original cover having 
been removed by erosion) one might foretell that if any large 
deposits: of petroleum are ever found in Brazil, they will be loca- 
