THE 
AMERICAN NATURALIST. 
VoL. xvit. — APRIL, 1883. — No. 4. 
THE NATURALIST BRAZILIAN EXPEDITION. 
‘Paper I—From Rio DE JANEIRO TO PORTO ALEGRE. 
BY HERBERT H. SMITH. 
Te coasting steamers from Rio de Janeiro to Montevideo 
keep almost constantly within sight of land—rugged gneiss 
mountains of the Brazilian coast range, giving place, beyond 
Santa Catharina, to lower hills. Finally, near S. lat. 29°, the 
rocks disappear altogether; in their stead appear rows of sand- 
dunes, often a hundred feet high, and extending inland as far as 
the eye can distinguish them. These dunes, stretching inter- 
minably along the shore, produce a curious mingled feeling of 
Picturesqueness and desolation; piled and massed like snow- 
drifts, broken and repiled by the winds in strange forms, they 
have an almost mountainous outline. But the eternal still white 
is a fatigue to the eye; in most places one looks in vain even for 
the dusty-bushes which usually grow in such places. Now and 
then a lonely fisherman’s hut is descried or a half-buried wreck— 
tim relic of the dreaded ampero, or of the north-east “ Carpenter 
wind,” so-called because it strews the beach with planks and spars. 
All this coast is regarded as dangerous. It is entirely without 
arbors or shelter of any kind, and there are several shoals and 
Sunken rocks, dreaded by mariners, 
The sand-dunes form the seaward limits of Rio Grande do Sul, 
| Southernmost province of Brazil. But they are not continu- 
mp with the mainland; a few miles back there are two great 
~ Water lakes, parallel with the coast, and together extending 
thang nearly the whole length of the province. The larger and 
p 25 : 
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