^84 



TRAVELS IN BRAZIL 



influence of man on these majestic scenes of savage 

 nature. As we descended from the steep emi- 

 nence, and issued from the dark gloom of the 

 forest, we perceived the httle hamlet. Villa de S. 

 Joao Marcos, and afterwards a solitary but hand- 

 some fazenda in the valley. The newly cleared 

 grounds are soon covered, especially on eminences 

 exposed to the sun, with an incredibly thick ves- 

 ture of a kind of brake (Pteris caudata), which, by 

 spreading its tough roots in the ground, becomes a 

 very troublesome weed, and very difficult to be 

 extirpated. The inclination of this plant always 

 to grow upon land that has just been made fit for 

 tillage, is worthy of attention in the history of the 

 diffusion of plants. In the latitude through which 

 we now travelled, we observed several other plants 

 grow immediately after the clearing away of the 

 wood : among these were Phytolacca decandra and 

 icosandra, Scoparia dulcis, Solanum decurrens, and 

 some species of the same genus, Gronovia scandens, 

 Phlomis officinalis, nob., and several kinds of hyptis. 

 In North America, the thick plantations of ferns 

 are used to make potashes, because they contain 

 so much alkali ; but, in Brazil, no attempt has yet 

 been made to employ, for this purpose, the ferns, 

 and those immense quantities of wood yearly felled; 

 because they consider the ashes left after burning 

 the wood, as necessary to manure the soil. 



At Retiro, a miserable fazenda, lying sideways 

 from S. Marcos, in a narrow swampy valley, sur- 



