ACROSS UNKNOWN SOUTH AMERICA 
Continuing our journey, we found to the south a great 
hollow basin in the southwestern end of the range, with 
two hillocks between the range itself and the flat boundary 
plateau to the south. 
The highest point of the hill on which we travelled 
was 1,450 feet above the sea level. Every metre we 
travelled westward became more strangely interesting. 
We were now upon a conglomerate of bespattered lava- 
drops, encased in a coating of solidified ashes. When we 
reached the stream, we had to go through a dark tunnel 
of dense vegetation, great ferns, giant palms, creepers 
with their abundant foliage, and tall trees festooned with 
liane. Having crossed this dark vegetable passage, we 
emerged once more into lovely open campos. 
Great, lumpy, globular, woolly clouds faced us in the 
sky to the west. Horizontal, intermittent, white layers 
were close to the horizon to the east, then three parallel 
lines of feathery mist to the northwest. In quantity of 
clouds the sky that day would meteorologically be 
described as C 4 — which means that four tenths of the 
sky vault was covered. 
One could not help being struck in Central Brazil by 
the almost absolute immobility of the clouds. One seldom 
experienced a strong wind, contrary to what must have 
taken place there in ages gone by, when that country 
must have been the very home of terrific air-currents and 
disturbances on a scale beyond all conception. It was 
only occasionally that a light breeze, merely in gusts of 
a few seconds, would refresh one’s ears and eyes as one 
marched on. What was more remarkable still was the 
sudden change of direction of those spasmodic gusts of 
wind when they did come. 
From a river (elevation 1,250 feet) we proceeded over 
undulations to 1,550 feet. There we were treated to an 
extensive and beautiful view to the west, southwest, and 
northwest. The elevated sky-line formed by the plateau 
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