416 



A JOURNEY IN BRAZIL. 



indisposition at Manaos for some days at the time we had 

 appointed for the excursion, Major Coutinho preceded me, 

 and had already made one trip to the serra, with some very 

 interesting results, when I joined him, and we took a sec- 

 ond journey together. Monte Alegre lies on a side arm of 

 the Amazons, a little off from its main course. This side 

 arm, called the Rio Gurupatuba, is simply a channel, run- 

 ning parallel with the Amazons, and cutting through from 

 a higher to a lower point. Its dimensions are, however, 

 greatly exaggerated in all the maps thus far published, 

 where it is usually made to appear as a considerable north- 

 ern tributary of the Amazons. The town stands on an 

 elevated terrace, separated from the main stream by the Rio 

 Gurupatuba and by an extensive flat, consisting of numer- 

 ous lakes divided from each other by low, alluvial land, and 

 mostly connected by narrow channels. To the west of the 

 town this terrace sinks abruptly to a wide sandy plain 

 called the Campos, covered with a low forest-growth, and 

 bordered on its farther limit by the picturesque serra of 

 Erer^. The form of this mountain is so abrupt, its rise 

 from the plains so bold and sudden, that it seems more 

 than twice its real height. Judging by the eye and com- 

 paring it with the mountains I had last seen, — the Corco- 

 vado, the Gavia, and Tijuca range in the neighborhood of 

 Rio, — I had supposed it to be three or four thousand feet 

 high, and was greatly astonished when our barometric ob 

 servations showed it to be somewhat less than nine hundred 

 feet in its most elevated point. This, however, agrees with 

 Martius's measurement of the Almeyrim hills, which he 

 says are eight hundred feet in height. 



We passed three days in the investigation of the Serra 

 of Erer^, and found it to consist wholly of the sandstone 



