138 



TRAVELS IN BRAZIL. 



of those sublime and rugged high Alps of Europe, 

 nor on the other hand, those of a meaner nature ; 

 but the character of these landscapes combines 

 grandeur with simplicity and softness, and these 

 are among the most delightful which we met with 

 between the tropics. As the broad tops of the 

 sarcophagus-formed mountains, rise almost to an 

 equal height (between three and four thousand 

 feet), and the valleys, shaped like a trough, are not 

 very deep, this whole part of the mountains might 

 be called an undulating plateau, in which the Serra 

 de Mantiqueira is gradually lost on the western 

 side. The Serra das Lettras, which has excited 

 the interest of the common people by strange den- 

 dritic figures of the white flexible quartz (or Ge- 

 lenk quartz), which is frequently eaten away, lies 

 but a few miles from this place, and belongs en- 

 tirely to the same formation. In places, for instance 

 near the huts called Capivary, at the foot of the 

 serra of the same name, we found on this quartzy 

 mica-slate, a much decomposed clay-slate, of a car- 

 nation or greenish colour containing garnets, and 

 the direction of this clay-slate was more south (i, e, 

 S.W. or S.S.W.) than that of the mica-slate. The 

 mica or quartz slate is white or yellowish, of a fine 

 granular structure, and appears to be incumbent, 

 sometimes upon granite and sometimes on a lilac- 

 coloured granite-gneiss, in which there are garnets 

 and black shorl. We had frequently seen such 

 gneiss standing out near Villa de Campanha and on 

 the Rio Verde. All this part of the mountain is 



