488 



A JOURNEY IN BRAZIL. 



summit, on the extreme point of which a large boulder is 

 placed. It looks as if a touch would dislodge it ; and yet 

 for how many a long year has it held its place there through 

 storm and sunshine ! We looked up at this huge fragment 

 of rock on its dizzy height, and wondered whether it was 

 erratic, or simply an effect of decomposition on the spot, — 

 a point impossible of decision at that distance. If the lat- 

 ter, it seems strange that the weather should have worn 

 and excavated such a mass underneath, without destroying 

 its upper surface, thus detaching it from the mountain, till 

 it stands, as now, in bold relief, only supported by a single 

 point of attachment on the extreme summit. We spent the 

 rest of the day in a walk to a very pretty cascade which 

 comes rushing down through the wood a mile or two from 

 the village. 



June 11th. — We left the inn at half past seven this morn- 

 ing, to pass the day again in rambling. Following the main 

 road for a quarter of a mile or so beyond the village, we 

 presently turned to the left into a narrow, shady pathway. 

 It led us through the woods to the edge of a deep basin 

 sunk between the mountains, on the slopes of which were 

 strewn many immense boulders. A curious feature of the 

 Organ Mountains which we have observed repeatedly even 

 in this short excursion is, that between their strangely 

 fantastic forms the country sinks down into well-defined 

 basins, which usually have no outlet. Following the brink 

 of such a basin for a couple of miles, and crossing an in- 

 tervening ridge, we came out upon a kind of plateau over- 

 hanging another depression of the same character, and com- 

 manding a magnificent view of the chain, in the very centre 

 of which it seems to be, for the mountains rise tier upon 

 tier around it on every side. On this plateau stands the 



