ACROSS UNKNOWN SOUTH AMERICA 
from the very summit of the dome, at an elevation of 2,400 
feet. On all sides we had beautiful, domed prominences 
with wonderful grazing land. 
Alcides — careless, like all the others, with his rifle — 
was nearly killed that day. His rifle went off accidentally, 
and the bullet went right through the brim of his hat, 
just grazing his forehead. But we were accustomed to 
this sort of thing — it had happened so often — that I 
began to wonder when bullets would really wound or kill 
somebody. Indeed, we had a guardian angel over us. 
We had descended into the belt of forest in the 
depression (elevation 2,270 feet), where a streamlet 
flowed to the northeast into the Rio das Mortes. We were 
travelling in a northeasterly direction, owing to the forma¬ 
tion of the country; but finding that it would take me 
too much away from my intended course, I again altered 
our direction to a course due north. At an elevation of 
2,480 feet we went over an extraordinary natural bridge 
of solidified ashes and earth, a regular tunnel, under which 
passed a streamlet of delicious water — the Pulado 
stream. The river emerged some distance off from under 
the tunnel. Curiously enough, while the vegetation was 
quite dense both above and below the natural bridge, there 
was no vegetation at all along the hundred metres forming 
the width of the bridge. Perhaps that was due to the lack 
of evaporation in that section, which supplied the trees 
elsewhere with moisture. 
We rode over many domes of an elevation of 2,550 
feet, and then over some that were smaller in diameter 
but of greater height. In the depressions between we 
invariably found rows of burity palms amidst other 
vegetation, and the characteristic, heavily foliaged trees. 
We encamped near a delicious spring of water on the 
very summit of a dome. The water emerged from a 
circular hole and was warm — so much so that the next 
morning, when my Fahrenheit thermometer registered an 
808 
