ACROSS UNKNOWN SOUTH AMERICA 
I climbed up on the Paredaozinho volcano (2,100 feet 
above the sea level) to examine its extinct crater, sub¬ 
divided into two distinct, large craters and a subsidiary 
one. 
One of these craters extended from east to west, and 
had in one section on its rim a giant dome split into 
quadrangular and lozenge-shaped sections, not unlike 
magnified mosaic work. Next to it was a great hill, with 
a vertical natural wall overlooking the crater itself. The 
horizontal strata of this natural wall, each about a foot 
thick, looked exactly like wonderful masonry work, so 
perfectly straight were the strata, and the square and 
rectangular rocks laid in lines with such extraordinary 
regularity. This wall stood upon solid masses of rock of 
immense size, hundreds of feet in height. 
The lip of the crater on the south side was just like 
the well-laid pavement of a city, so regularly had the lava 
cracked in contracting, thus leaving four and five-sided 
geometrical figures, all well fitting in with their neigh¬ 
bours. Again, in this case, the lava, flowing over a convex 
surface, had contracted on the surface, and caused the 
wonderful network of grooves. In one section the crater 
had the appearance of an ancient Roman or Etruscan 
amphitheatre, with seats in many tiers or steps, separated 
by vertical cracks, as if cut out into separate blocks of 
stone. 
On the east side of the greatest portion of one crater, 
which would seem to have been the most active of all, I 
found again immense boulders with stratified rock above 
them resembling masonry work, just the same as and at 
the same elevation as the layers I had examined in the 
larger, elongated, horseshoe crater. In the centre of the 
smaller crater there flowed a rivulet of crystal-like water 
most delicious to drink. Undoubtedly those eastern rocks 
were the lip of the crater, for I discovered there two flows 
of lava in corrugations and network designs such as we 
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