10 
steirwa; of solid rock tkcit twisted and twined down the slone, and found the 
cawe, vnich my companions tmtered alone as I 'was at the inor.jent ncre interested 
in gettin-; flower-seeds, j-s. itiost peculiar trailing vine fell down over the 
rocks. Its leaves and stem wore somewhat like those of kandering Jew, 
but its flowers were closed, like those of a gentian, and of the most heavenly 
deep blue. A few drops of rain fell, and as we ascended the riant stone 
soaircase it began to come do^m quite heavily. We took refuge in a native 
dwelling constructed between ancient stone walls and roofed over in the crudest 
manner with a few bra-iches and mud. The place was aborainably dark and filthy 
and 1 should much rather have stood in the rain. We looked on the wall s and 
in crevices for spiders, which skipped away at the approach of our flashlisht. 
uneven dirt floor, lined along the walls with dirty bottles and broken reed 
oaskets, on one side a ”bed^^ or bench of branches on which old musty 
leaves and burlap, sacks were thrown. — these were the entire furnishings of 
the inner room. The negro mother stood mutely in a comer, surrounded by the 
three small^ dirty but very picturesque children. The outer room contained 
a sort of raetal cooking arrangement built into the clay, and a gourd partly 
filled with musty black beansma few more eniptjr bottles and a grinding 
pestle v/ere the final kitchen appurtenances# Under pretext of playing y/ith 
our > 
one of the little girls, we turnedy^^ashlight upon her hair, which was 
stiff with licel Ty sympathetic nervous system iLo mediately made my skin 
crawl, and I arose from the bench on which 1 had been sitting and stood in 
the doorwa 3 ^ until the rain let up# 
One more pi cture, — that of the rain- forest at i.lto da 
ax 
hao Paulo, — lingers unforgettably^ in mj memorym ii.s we g 
train, the gray wet mist was blanketing the railroad station and the little 
town that rose on the hill above it, but an invisible finger sometimes 
r lucked aside a fold in the curtain so that v/e could see the cobblestones 
