ACROSS UNKNOWN SOUTH AMERICA 
met no one for some weeks. We made terrific marches 
daily in order to reach that village before the food gave 
out altogether. 
The nights were cold, 47° Fahrenheit being the mini¬ 
mum at our camp on June twenty-third. 
We crossed a small range of hills over a pass 930 feet 
above the sea level, and found ourselves in a spacious 
cuvette with the usual central line of buritys and thick 
vegetation (elevation 900 feet). Soaring over our heads 
were a number of gavido caboclo (Hetorospidias rneridi- 
onalis), a kind of falcon, rending the air with their 
unmusical shrieks. 
After leaving the cuvette we began to ascend the 
Estivado Range, very steep and rocky. Near the 
summit we struggled through a field of great, igneous 
boulders, chiefly upright pillars of granite and white 
marble. Upon the pass (elevation 1,400 feet) was a cir¬ 
cular depression some 300 metres in diameter, perfectly 
flat-bottomed and grassy. It was surrounded by cones 
eighty to a hundred feet high. On the southeast side of 
the range — very steep — was abundant rock, and to the 
northwest side was a padding of brown earth on a gentle 
incline divided into terraces. Here and there pointed 
noses of volcanic blocks, similar to those we had found 
on the opposite side of the range, showed through. We 
went across a depression where water, dripping down the 
mountain-side, had remained stagnant, rendering that spot 
almost impassable. The animals sank chest-deep into 
slush, crashing through the thick and much-entangled 
growth of live and fallen bamboos. 
More campos, fairly wide, were found beyond this, 
and great stretches of foliated slate and sandstone in 
strata turned over into a vertical position, and quantities 
of debris. Then again we cut our way through a cool 
growth of bamboos, handsome palmeiras and akuri palms; 
after which we emerged into campos once more, rising 
360 
