ACROSS UNKNOWN SOUTH AMERICA 
of hills, and also on the lowest points of the undulations. 
Those bosquets were few and far apart, only to be found 
where moisture was plentiful. The remains of a high, 
flat plateau, which had escaped while the rest of the 
country had subsided, loomed alone in the distance. 
One of the central hills was crowned by great, black, 
volcanic boulders of the same rock which was visible at 
the southern edge of this great basin, bounded by vertical 
cliffs — all of the same composition. 
Directly southwest the evenness of the sky-line was 
again interrupted by two flat-topped mountains, one not 
unlike the gabled roof of a house, the other like a cylindri¬ 
cal tower on the top of a high, conical hill. We again rose 
to an elevation of 1,950 feet, still travelling on the summit 
of the plateau bordering the deep depression. We were 
compelled to describe a curve in our route, and had 
reached a height of 2,000 feet. We perceived to the 
northeast and east a long, uninterrupted—almost flat — 
sky-line. We had described a sweeping curve right round 
the irregular edge of the undulating plateau. We could 
now look back upon the southern aspect of the vertical 
black and brown rocky cliff, on the summit of which we 
had been travelling. The rocky cliffs were particularly 
precipitous and picturesque in the western portion. 
Interminable campos were still before us. 
I occasionally picked up interesting plants and flowers 
for my botanical collection. Innumerable in this region 
were the plants with medicinal properties. The sentori 
(centaurea) for instance, plentiful there, with its sweetly 
pretty mauve flower, when boiled in water gave a bitter 
decoction good for fever. 
We came upon a patch of landir or landirana trees, 
with luxuriant, dark green foliage. They grew near the 
water, and were by far the tallest and handsomest, 
cleanest-looking trees I had so far seen in Matto Grosso. 
They attained a great height, with extraordinarily dense 
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