RIO DE JANEIRO AND ITS ENVIRONS. 



69 



The mountains along the road, as indeed throughout the 

 neighborhood of Rio, are of very peculiar forms, steep and 

 conical, suggesting at first sight a volcanic origin. It is this 

 abruptness of outline which gives so much grandeur to 

 mountain ranges here, the average height -of which does 

 not exceed two or three thousand feet. A closer examina- 

 tion of their structure shows that their wild, fantastic forms 

 are the result of the slow processes of disintegration, not 

 of sudden convulsions. Indeed, the rocks here differ so 

 much in external character from those of the Northern 

 Hemisphere, that the European geologist stands at fii'st 

 bewildered before them, and feels that the work of his 

 life is to be done over again. It is some time before he 

 obtains a clew to the facts and brings them into harmony 

 with his previous knowledge. Thus far Mr. Agassiz finds 

 himself painfully perplexed by this new aspect of phenome- 

 na so familiar to him in other regions, but so baffling here. 



are four essentially different forms among the palms : the tall ones, with a 

 slender and erect stem, terminating with a crown of long feathery leaves, 

 or with broad fan-shaped leaves ; the bushy ones, the leaves of which rise 

 as it were in tufts from the ground, the stem remaining hidden under the 

 foliage ; the brush-like ones, with a small stem, and a few rather large leaves ; 

 and the winding, creeping, slender species. Their flowers and fruits are as 

 varied as their stock. Some of these fruits may be compared to large woody 

 nuts, with a fleshy mass inside ; othei'S have a scaly covering ; others resemble 

 peaches or apricots, while others still are like plums or grapes. Most of them 

 are eatable and rather pleasant to the taste. It is a thousand pities that so 

 many of these majestic trees should have been deprived of their sonorous native 

 names, to bear henceforth, in the annals of science, the names of some unknown 

 princes, whom flattery alone could rescue from oblivion. The Inaja has become 

 a Maximiliana, the Jara a Leopoldinia, the Pupunha a Guilielma, the Pachiuba 

 an Iriartea, the Carana a Mauritia. The changes from Indian to Greek names 

 have not been more felicitous. I would certainly have preferred Jacitara to 

 Desmonchus, Mucaja to Acrocomia, Baccaba to CEnocarpus, Tucuma to 

 Astrocaryum. Even Euterpe for Assai is hardly an improvement. — L. A. 



