MONOLITHIC ROCKS 
I camped near the sheds of that “ happy family/’ 
having gone forty-two kilometres from the Rio das Mortes. 
I felt sad the whole night, watching them unperceived. It 
upset me so that I was ill for several days. 
The Rio Jangada, at an altitude of 1,550 feet, was 
1,000 feet lower than the top of the plateau. The river 
flowed west into the Cuyaba River. We crossed the 
stream, a rapid and foaming torrent. We soon began to 
climb again on the opposite side over sweeping undula¬ 
tions. We waded through two more streamlets flowing 
west, the second at an elevation of 1,650 feet. We were 
travelling partly among campos on the summit of cones 
and domes, partly through brush or scrub in the de¬ 
pressions. We struggled on, urging the tired animals, 
rising gradually to 2,150 feet, then to 2,200 feet, over soil 
strewn with volcanic pebbles and scoria?. During the 
night the minimum temperature had been 53° Fahren¬ 
heit, but during the day the sun was extremely hot and 
powerful, and animals and men were sweating freely. 
We marched northward, then slightly to the northwest, 
leaving behind, to the southwest of us, two quadrangular 
tablelands, rising above the undulating line of a depression. 
Shortly after, to the east-northeast, we perceived the 
section of an extinct crater — the easterly point of its 
summit being in itself a semicircular subsidiary crater. 
On one side of the greater crater was a conical depression, 
at the bottom of which (elevation 2,400 feet), was an 
extensive bed of lava blocks of great size — hundreds of 
monolithic rocks standing up like pillars. In fact, they 
stood all along the side of the crater as well as inside it. 
Surrounding a pyramidal hill a group of those huge 
pillars looked, to a casual observer, just like the ruins of 
a tumble-down abbey. 
Three hours’ journey from our camp we reached the 
summit of a dome (elevation 2,500 feet). Beyond it was 
a cuvette with its typical central line of burity palms. 
317 
