SOUTH AMERICA. 



135 



clouds are continually settling on the tops of the moun- 

 tains and descending in vapor. The droughts of 

 summer are among the most serious complaints in a 

 great part of Brazil^ especially to the east of the first 

 range of mountains. We were greatly surprised to 

 find so much good soil and such marks of industry and 

 cultivation^ where we expected to find every thing 

 .waste and barren. In every little winding of the tor- 

 rent or shelf of rock, the ground was cultivated, and a 

 neat cottage of brick covered with burnt tiles, peered 

 amid the thick verdure of tropical fruit trees. The 

 chief culture near the city is grass, which is cut daily 

 and carried to town for the supply of the immense 

 number of domestic animals, kept for the pleasure or 

 use of the inhabitants. They cultivate besides, Indian 

 corn, coffee, bananas, mangoes, oranges, and the king 

 of fruits, the pine apple.* To describe the richness, 

 variety, and beauty of nature, is impossible. Nothing 

 so much strikes the stranger with wonder, as the lux- 

 uriant garb with which the earth is clothed in tropical 

 climates; he sees plants and trees entirely new to him, 

 or the few that he has known rising here to a gi- 

 I gantic size; shrubs have become trees, and humble 

 j herbs enlarged to shrubs. He sees here in their na- 

 i tive splendor, those productions of the vegetable king- 



i dom, which he is accustomed to admire in hot houses. 



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Among the most conspicuous are the palms, of many 

 different kinds, the opuntia, and others so often de- 

 scribed by travellers in these regions; pyramids of the 



* A Portuguese poet has the following conceit: 

 He 0 regio Anana%^ fructa tao boa, 

 Que a mesma Natureza naniorada 

 Quiz como a Rey cingilla de Coroa. 



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