A GREAT SUBSIDENCE 
hard baked, which rendered them of a yellowish brown 
colour. On the left of us, to the west, a great vertical 
pillar of rock plainly showed the stratification, the con¬ 
tinuation of which could be followed on the opposite side 
of the pass, both in the horizontal strata and those which 
had been forced up at an angle. Looking back from the 
pass, we obtained a heavenly panorama of wooded hills 
to the southeast, far, far beyond in the background, and 
of glorious campos between them and us. With the 
winter coming on — of course you know that south of the 
equator they have their winter when we have our summer 
—beautiful yellowish, reddish, and brown tints of the 
foliage added picturesqueness to the landscape. 
The pass itself was 2,850 feet above the sea level. 
There was not much in the way of vegetation, barring a 
few stunted sucupira trees. The air was exquisitely pure, 
and the water of two streamlets at 2,550 feet altitude 
delicious and cool. We were marching over quantities 
of marble fragments and beautiful crystals, which shone 
like diamonds in the sun. Having gone over the pass, 
we came upon a most extraordinary geological surprise. 
There seemed to have been, in ages long gone by, a great 
subsidence of the region north of us. We were then on 
the steep edge of what remained of the plateau, and down, 
down in the depth below, was an immense valley in which 
Goyaz City lay. 
To the west of us — as I stood impressed by that 
awe-striking scene — we had the irregularly cut con¬ 
tinuation of the edge of the plateau on which we stood, 
supported as it were on a pillar-like granitic wall of im¬ 
mense height and quite vertical, resting on a gently 
sloping base down to the bottom of the vast basin below. 
This great natural wall of gneiss, which contained 
myriads of crystals and mica schists, shone like silver in 
the spots where the sun struck it, and with the lovely pure 
cobalt blue of the distant hills, the deep green of the 
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