ACROSS UNKNOWN SOUTH AMERICA 
twenty-eighth, except perhaps a faint curtain of mist near 
the horizon to the west. Two of my horses had unfor¬ 
tunately strayed; and as the men searched the matto 
with trembling knees in fear of meeting a bandeira instead 
of the missing horses, they were not recovered until late in 
the afternoon, so that we did not depart until four p.m. 
We went up to the top of an undulation (elevation 
2,400 feet), on grey ashes as usual in the lower part of 
the hill, and red volcanic sand on the summit. That 
afternoon’s journey was not unlike tobogganing up and 
down all the time, at elevations varying from 2,500 to 
2,350 feet, over domes of sand, ashes, and eruptive rock, 
and dykes with depressions, some 100 feet deep or so, and 
all extending from north to south. 
We saw some gorgeous red araras or macaws of giant 
size. They were a beautiful sight as they flew, with their 
hoarse shrieks, above our heads. 
At sunset we were travelling along the north edge of 
a great, grassy depression, wooded in its central pit, the 
line of depression and of the central vegetation being 
from north to south. 
We were treated to a glorious sunset. The entire sky 
had become of a deep violet colour and Indian red, 
relieved here and there by golden tints, with blue cloudlets 
of wonderful regularity in a line. Curiously enough, the 
most brilliant colouring was to the east and not to the 
west, as would have been expected. Eventually the entire 
sky became of a glorious yellow, like a golden cupola, 
blending into a lovely emerald green in its highest point 
overhead. 
Again we found ourselves on another large dome of 
eruptive rock, in some places reduced into fine, tobacco- 
coloured powder, getting somewhat darker in colour 
where the under stratum was of sand and soft conglom¬ 
erate easily crumbled under pressure, and containing 
pellets of black ferruginous rock and grains of iron. 
270 
