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soil of these wide plaitls is sandy, and so light that loaded beasts in 

 passing sink into it so much as to impede their progress. The pas- 

 turage is poor, consisting of a grass composed of wiry stalks a foot 

 high, and small rough lancet-shaped leaves ; the animals in grazing 

 pluck them up with the roots covered with sand ; on this account 

 the passage by land is difficult and tedious ; though, on finding any 

 of the streams, which abound in these plains, there is grass and other 

 mild herbage, which afford tolerable pasturage. The plains of Pa- 

 rexis form, to a large extent and breadth, the summit of those high 

 mountains of the same name, and are situated on some of the most 

 elevated land in all Brazil ; for from them descend the two greatest 

 rivers of South America, — the Paraguay, as well in its own nume- 

 rous heads, as in its great and higher branches, the Jauru, the Sypo- 

 tuba, and the Guiaba, — and the Madeira, which is the largest river 

 that flows into the Amazons on the south. 



The Tapajos, flowing in a direction contrary to that of the above- 

 named river, rises on these mountains. Its westermost branch is the 

 river Arinos, which int wines its sources with those of the Cuiaba at a 

 short distance from those of the Paraguay. The river Arinos has a 

 western branch, called Rio Negro, from which, to the point where it 

 is navigable, there is a passage of eight leagues over-land to the river 

 Cuiaba, below its upper and greatest falls; and, in hke manner, from 

 the Arinos itself the passage to the same part of the river Cuiaba is 

 twelve leagues. 



The Arinos is auriferous at its springs, and in 1747 the mines of 

 Santa Isabel were discovered in it, but immediately abandoned, as 

 not answering the expectations created in those fortunate times by 

 the great quantities of gold drawn from the mines of Cuiaba and 

 Matto Grosso. The lands were infested by dangerous tribes of war- 

 like Indians. 



The river Sumidouro empties itself on the south side into the Arinos, 

 and its source being a short distance from that of the Sypotuba, a large 

 western branch of the Paraguay, there is an easy communication froii) 



Q Q 



