NOTES ON BRAZIL. 



439 



hundred feet, as we supposed, above the place which we left in the 

 morning. A most extensive view here opened on every side, but the 

 distant horizon did not, as is usual in such cases, melt away into air ; it 

 consisted of a strongly undulated outline, with the intermediate space 

 filled up by bold masses of detached mountains, on one side struck by 

 the full glow of an afternoon tropical sun, while the other was involved 

 in deep blue shade. Toward the North the lofty Serros about Villa 

 Rica, a hundred miles distant in a right line, were pointed out ; toward 

 the South-east appeared the cones near Padre Correio's, from which we 

 had travelled at least a hundred and sixty miles, and had not a slight 

 haze rested in that quarter, we should have beheld the Organ mountains, 

 not far from the Capital ; to the West were clearly seen the Serros of 

 St. Joze and Lenheiro, a ridge of mountains above St. John D' El Rey ; 

 in the North-east the nameless bluff heads of the Mantequeira rose one 

 beyond another in distinguishable shades ; yet the longest line of all was 

 toward the South-west, where the remotest visible mountains were 

 thought to be near the frontiers of St. Paul's. We here stood on the 

 Southern verge of the vast basin of the Rio Grande, one of the principal 

 branches of the mighty Parana, and, looking over the brink, beheld 

 the Northern slope of the long Parahyba, or rather stretched our view 

 across the country which it drains. 



This inclined plane, or Northern half of the vale, the strong support 

 of the Mantequerian Serro, extends about sixty miles, in a straight line, 

 and the angle of its ascent is nearly one degree fifteen minutes. The 

 lower region of it is a broken country, where the naked cones stand 

 thickly, and rise nearly to the height of our present station. On the 

 upper part of the buttress is a covering of red clay, mingled with mica and 

 quartz ; and the core of the extended plains, toward the North, appears to be 

 composed in the same manner of granitic rocks, in a conical shape, which 

 seem, from their occasional appearance on the surface of the plain, to be 

 as thickly strewed, and as sharply pointed, as those below us. The spaces 

 between them are filled up with various substances of later formation, 

 but by far the greater proportion consists of red clay, mingled with mica. 



