442 



NOTES ON BRAZIL. 



and the depth of the neighbouring valley, which, perhaps, has been 

 antecedently produced in the same way. It should be noticed, however, 

 that the word Corgo, in some parts of Brazil, denotes the dry and steep 

 ridge between two ravines, and not the dells themselves. 



The first part of the Downs which we passed exhibited no signs of 

 culture whatever, but, after leaving the Church of Curral Novo, we saw 

 many farm-houses, with small enclosures around them, and noticed 

 there, besides the common articles of culture, some barley, and wheat, 

 and turnips. When compared with the general neglected condition of the 

 country, these appeared something like islands in the ocean, or oases in 

 a desert. Ditches, about six feet wide and as many deep, dug in 

 straight lines with the earth thrown up on the interior bank, divided 

 one estate from another, and formed a boundary between them from 

 one to three leagues in length, and being traced by the eye over 

 successive hills, formed curious intersections of the country. It was 

 painful to contemplate the waste of labour which they exhibited, and to 

 think how much less would have produced hedge-rows of far greater 

 utility. In the more open downs cows and oxen were feeding, almost 

 hidden in a tall wiry kind of grass or rush ; and seemed to thrive, though, 

 from the want of rain, the herbage had lost almost all its succulence. 

 The plants do not grow like our grass, but stand nearly two inches 

 asunder ; the water, in wet seasons, trickling round the roots, and 

 washing away the soil, leaves the place covered with small pieces of 

 brown quartz, which prevents the growth of a closer kind of herbage. 

 This coating of quartz is common over the whole country, except in the 

 yellow clays and lands improved by turning up the soil. It is thickest 

 on the Western sides of the hills, showing, as does also the more frequent 

 appearance of the rock in the same quarter, that the rain falls most 

 abundantly, and heavily, from that part of the heavens. 



This long grass conceals a multitude of reptiles, some of them 

 destructive to man and beast. By the Rattle-snake my guide had, in 

 this neighbourhood, lost his eldest son, who, being bitten in the thumb, 

 and sensible of his danger, ran towards the house, f^om which he was a 



