ORGAN MOUNTAINS. 



485 



the heat. The road winds gently up the serra, turning 

 sometim'es with so sharp an angle that below we could 

 see all the ground we had travelled over. On one hand is 

 the mountain-side, clothed with a vegetation of surpassing 

 beauty, bright with crimson parasites, with the rich pur- 

 ple flowers of the Quaresma and the delicate blue blossoms 

 of the Utricularia, as fragile and as graceful as the harebell. 

 On the other hand, we looked down sometimes into narrow 

 gorges, clothed with magnificent forest, from which huge 

 masses of rock projected here and there ; sometimes into 

 wider valleys opening out ihto the plain below, and giving 

 a distant view of the harbor and its archipelago of islands 

 surrounded by mountains, the whole scene glittering in the 

 sunshine, or veiled by shadows, as the fitful day showed it 

 to us. 



The ascent may be easily accomplished on foot in three or 

 four hours. We had nothing to urge us forward, however, 

 except a growing desire for breakfast, appeased every now 

 and then by an orange, of which we had a good supply in 

 the tin case for plants, and many a slow train of laden mules 

 passed us in their upward march, and left us far behind as we 

 loitered along, though not lazily. On the contrary, Mr. Agas- 

 siz and his friends found plenty of occupation in botanizing 

 and geologizing. They stopped constantly to gather para- 

 sites, to study ferns and mosses, to break boulders, to collect 

 insects and the little land-shells found here and there along 

 the road. We saw one most beautiful insect, hardly larger 

 than a lady-bug, but of the most exquisite colors and gleam- 

 ing like a jewel on the leaf where it had alighted. In 

 breaking the stones along the roadside Mr. Agassiz found 

 many evidences of erratics, several of them being Diorite, 

 entirely distinct from the rock in place. The surfaces of 



