ACROSS UNKNOWN" SOUTH AMERICA 
or upon his trousers and put away, and the order care¬ 
lessly obeyed. Even Alcides, who was far superior to 
the others in education, could not be kept away from his 
mirror. While riding he would all the time be gazing at 
his features instead of looking at the beautiful scenery 
around us. 
On leaving camp we again reached the summit of the 
plateau (elevation 2,300 feet), with its patches of red, 
volcanic earth, violet-coloured sand, and snuff-coloured 
dust —extremely fine in quality. After crossing a stream¬ 
let flowing south, we again continued our journey on the 
flat plateau, slightly higher at that point, or 2,400 feet. 
We were in the great plain crossed by the Ponte de 
Pedra rivulet, flowing southward. Once more we obtained 
a gorgeous view looking south. Four parallel ranges, 
stretching roughly from southeast to northwest, stood in 
all their grandeur before us. They were of brilliant red, 
volcanic rock. On the second range from us, rose a 
curious, square block of rock of gigantic size, resembling 
a castle with its door and all. In the distance, to the 
southwest, erosion seemed to have taken place on a great 
scale in the side of the tableland. 
The highest point we had so far reached on the plateau 
on which we were travelling since leaving the Araguaya 
was 2,400 feet. There again we found another of the 
extensive grassy cuvettes — the flat bottom of which was 
only thirty feet lower than the highest point of the plateau. 
A luxuriant growth of burity palms and birero trees 
adorned the centre, the latter very tall and handsome, with 
smooth, white bark and only a dense tuft of dark green 
foliage at their tops. In the cuvettes I saw, the growth of 
the tall vegetation invariably ran the long way of the oval. 
The sky that evening showed great streaks of 
transparent lines of mist from west to east, the central 
radiations of these being formed of lines so precisely 
parallel that they seemed to have been drawn with rule 
286 
