THE CRUISE OF THE ABROLHOS. 85 
enough of the river to eat away any considerable portion of 
the shale underneath; and third, if it did both of these im- 
practicabilities, how the subterranean stream could break 
down the face of the fall faster than the water could carry 
off the fragments and maintain the face of the precipice per- 
pendicular. We do not desire, however, to deprive either 
the guides or the oldest inhabitants of their time-honored 
privilege of astonishing the public, but they should remem- 
ber and take warning from the fate of the “reliable contra- 
band ;” they may, even as he did, — their hold upon the 
credulity of the public. 

THE CRUISE OF THE ‘ABROLHOS.” 
BY C. FRED. HARTT. 

RECIFE DO LIXO, ABROLHOS, AT LOW TIDE. 
AFTER one has travelled up and down the Brazilian coast 
and become familiar with the long sea-beaches, bordered 
with ridges or domes of sand, that almost uninterruptedly 
stretch front the Amazonas to Cape Frio, and with the ever- 
thundering Atlantic surf that draws its foamy line around 
those Ts shores, it seems strange to see at Caravellas a 
