erhaps an absent-minded or a short-sighted
snake, for no sooner did it realize our presence than it quickly veered
round to escape. My men killed it.

At an elevation of 2,550 ft. we met a limpid stream of most delicious
water. At that particular spot it flowed south.

We were now confronted with a range of actual mountains. The trail took
us over wonderful rugged scenery, masses of pillar-like grey rock of
granitic formation. On the summit of the pass we were over strata of
half-solidified tufa in sheets--or foliated--easily crumbled and finely
powdered between one's fingers. The strata were at an angle of 45 deg.,
showing that they had undergone some disturbance. They had been subjected
to great heat, for in some places they had been hard baked, which
rendered them of a yellowish brown colour. On the left of us--to the
west--a great vertical pillar of rock plainly showed the stratification,
the continuation of which could be followed on the opposite side of the
pass, both in the horizontal strata and those which had been forced up at
an angle. Looking back from the pass, we obtained a heavenly panorama of
wooded hills to the south-east, far, far beyond in the background, and of
glorious campos between them and us. With the winter coming on--of
course you know that south of the equator they have their winter when we
have our summer--beautiful yellowish, reddish and brown tints of the
foliage added picturesqueness to the landscape.

The pass itself was 2,850 ft. above the sea level. There was not much in
the way of vegetation, barring a few stunted _sucupira_ trees. The air
was exquisitely pure and the water of two streamlets at 2,550 ft.
delicious and cool. We were marching over quantities of marble fragments
and beautiful crystals, which shone like diamonds in the sun. Having gone
over the pass, we came upon a most extraordinary geological surprise.
There seemed to have been in ages long gone by a great subsidence of the
region north of us. We were then on the steep edge of what remained of
the plateau, and down, down in the depth below was an immense valley in
which Goyaz city lay.

To the west of us--as I stood impressed by that awe-striking scene--we
had the irregularly-cut continuation of the edge of the plateau on which
we stood, supported as it were on a pillar-like granitic wall of immense
height and quite vertical, resting on a gently sloping base down to the
bottom of the vast basin below.

This great na