ACROSS UNKNOWN SOUTH AMERICA 
Considering how the maps of those regions had been 
got together, it was really wonderful that, with all their 
blunders, they gave as much information as they did. 
Unhappy, nevertheless, would be the poor traveller who 
relied on those maps in making a journey across the 
country. For instance, if you expected to come upon a 
certain river in one day and did not get there until after 
ten or fifteen days’ hard marching; if you expected to 
find a mountain range — nearly as high as the Himalayas 
or at least as high as the Andes, according to the deep 
shading on the maps — and found instead an interminable 
flat plain; and if you saw on your map rivers marked 
navigable, and found rapids instead, in comparison with 
which the terrible ones of Niagara are mere child’s play, 
you would certainly become rather sceptical of prettily 
drawn maps. 
On most of the maps of Brazil one saw marked to the 
east of the Araguaya, in the Goyaz Province, an immense 
range with no less a name than Cordilheira Geral la Serra 
do Estrondo — or 44 General Range of the Mountains of 
Noise.” They were marked as the most prominent range 
in Brazil, quite as high as the Andes of Peru, Bolivia, and 
Chili; whereas, as a matter of fact, I was told on good 
authority that they were mere low hills, where there were 
any hills at all. 
To come to great geographical mistakes which came 
under my direct observation, I found a very palpable one 
in the head-waters of the Cuyaba River, which had their 
source to the north of the Serra Azul and not to the south, 
as marked on many maps, including the Brazilian official 
maps. 
We had to our left the Serra das Pedra — 44 Range 
of Rocks ” — an extraordinarily rocky range, which was 
crossed almost at right angles by the Chapadao das 
Porcas. We marched through a wonderful growth of 
palmeiraSj some of the palms being as much as thirty feet 
354 
