AN ENORMOUS PLATEAU 
From that point we rose still higher to the summit of 
a great tableland, absolutely flat and waterless for over 
thirty kilometres. The soil was red in colour, with slippery 
dried grass upon it and sparse, stunted vegetation. The 
trees seldom reached a height of five feet. They were 
mostly gomarabia or goma arabica — a sickly looking 
acacia; passanto , with its huge leaves, piqui or pequia 
(.Aspidosperma sessiliflorum and eburneum Fr. All.), the 
fibrous piteira or poteira (Fourcroya gigantea Vent.), 
and short tocum or tucum palms (Astro car yum tucuma 
M.). Occasionally one saw a passanto tree slightly 
taller, perhaps some ten to twelve feet high, most ansemic 
looking. 
After having travelled some twenty-four kilometres 
from our last camp we came to a great expanse of taquary , 
a kind of shrub three feet high with spiky leaves of a 
wonderful green colour. 
We gazed upon the superb view of an enormous 
plateau to the west with deep indentations in its vertical 
sides. Huge spurs or rams of rock stretched out across 
the deep depression, separating the plateau to the west 
from the one on which we were standing. Both plateaux 
were of equal height, and had evidently at one time formed 
one immense, flat surface. On our side the plateau 
showed a huge slip of red, volcanic earth, with a lower 
stratum parallel to it of baked, brown rock. Under it 
were white lime and ashes, in sections or drifts. In the 
centre of the valley formed by the separation of the two 
sections there remained a formidable crater — extinct, of 
course — with an arc-shaped wall standing erect in its 
centre, and other lower walls forming an elongated, quad¬ 
rangular channel from southeast to northwest in the 
bottom of the crater. Two conspicuous monoliths stood 
behind the huge lip of the crater to the southwest at the 
bottom of the valley, and also other remnants of the great 
convulsion of nature which had once taken place there. 
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