We Enter the Tuaruttt Bange. 
51 
stalks showed up above tlie surface in isolated places, the low-lying 
vegetation was completely covered. 
127. Soon after getting over the watery savannah, we entered the 
wooded Tuarntu Eange jnst as we struck a small defile leading to the 
dense virgin forest in between mountains from 4 to 500ft. high, which 
in the distance were overtopped by a still higher chain. The path became 
more and more stony and impassable until it finally disappeared 
altogether, when it came into view again on some small stony patches 
of savannah which, from, now onwards, alternated with the thick 
jirimeval forest, almost without a break. 
128. Our negroes and mulattoes received the strictest orders to kcef.» 
more together and particularly with the advance guard of the procession, 
because in between the craggy remnants and through tlie trackless 
forest, it was oidy too easy to lose one's way. In many places we had 
tinall} to employ hands as well as feet at one and the same time to get 
over the granite boulders that often formed regular zones and barricades. 
It was the wildest and most romantic scenery I had yet seen : a landscape 
{•f iulinite charm, which in its constant change from phantastic rocky 
ridges, that towered here over the rank foliage like cyclopean buildings, 
to the loveliest meadow valleys, fixed one's attention with somle super- 
natural influence. The brown figures with tlieir loads climbed the 
sombre masses like ants : they vanished now Itetween the crevices and 
fissures, to reappear soon after like miners out of a shaft. At last a 
liuge pyramid that at a distance of about two m,iles on our left rose far 
and away above its surroundings attracted the notice of every member of 
our party; the Wapisianas called it Aikuwe, and my brother imagined 
himself transjiorted close to the banks of the Quitaro where an exactly 
similarly shaped rocky crag, the Ataraipu (Devil's Rock) gazes grini 
and gloomy over its foaming and cataract-bi'oken waters. Tlie forest, 
wliicli intersected the wild stretches of savannali, grew finally so thick 
tliat even the scorching rays of the mid-day sun proved incapable of 
penetrating the tree-tops tliat were so tightly int|erlaced in, and bound 
up with, one nnotlier l)y vine-rope. While a lesser quantity of rocky chips 
— angular, sharp, and pointed — made tlie path easier to tread, it was 
covered instead with huge tree-roots which l)y continually being knocked 
up against, only caused my sandal-strings to cut deeper into the inter- 
digital sjiaces. so that witli every fresh blow the pain caused me to make 
a most deceyitive spring and raise a scream. What would I have given 
if l)y some magic T could have raised a pair of slioes or boots, or something 
at least that would have enabled my limbs to accustom themselves to the 
stilt-like pace of tlie Indians. With these generally prosaic obstacles, 
were yet assort'ated here and there the barricades of up-rooted trees, 
which yesterday's and previous storms had heaped atop of one another, 
as well as the huge beds of dried pimpler-palnr fronds/ (Astroran/iim] 
Barfrift), the spines of which T felt at every step, with the result tliat 
my feet also got Avounded elsewhere than on the heels. For the first time, 
the Indians were the oliject of m,y envy: the brown figures slipped 
between tlic trees and over all these ol»structions like shadows, without 
the l)lood running off their feet, or getting their hands and arms tori] 
