be easily powdered
under comparatively light pressure, and scratched with no difficulty with
one's nails. It was of various densities of red tones, according to the
amount of baking it had undergone. The superposed red strata had a dip
northward in some localities. The rock was much fissured, and had either
gone through excessive contraction in cooling or else perhaps had been
shattered by some earthly commotion--such as must have occurred often in
that region in ages gone by, for, if not, how could one account for
finding scattered blocks of this red rock resting upon the surface of
great stretches--sometimes for 20 or 30 kil.--of uninterrupted sand or
ashes which covered such great expanses of that country?

In the valleys, near water, _burity_ palms were numerous.

Overhead the sky was always interesting. The days nearly invariably began
with a clear, speckless sky, but, mind you, never of quite so deep a blue
as the sky of Italy or Egypt. The sky of Central Brazil was always of a
whitish cobalt blue. That morning--an exception to prove the rule--we had
awakened to a thick mist around us, which enveloped and damped
everything. No sooner did the sun rise than the mist was quickly
dispelled. In the late morning, about 10 o'clock, clouds began to form
high in the sky--not along the horizon, as is generally the case in most
countries--and grew in intensity and size during the afternoon. Nearly
every day at about sunset a peculiar flimsy, almost transparent, streak
of mist stretched right across the sky from east to west, either in the
shape of a curved line, or, as we had observed as recently as the day
before, resembling with its side filaments a gigantic feather or the
skeleton of a fish.

In the State of Goyaz, it may be remembered, we had a more beautiful and
complete effect at sunset of many radiating lines, starting from the east
and joining again to the west, but here we merely had one single streak
dividing the sky in two. When the sun had long disappeared under the
horizon, that streak high up in the sky was still lighted by its
rays--becoming first golden, then red. The effect was quite weird.

My men went during the night on another fishing expedition, but with no
luck--partly due to the infamy of our dogs. They used as bait for their
large hooks _toucinho_, or pork fat, of which they had started out
provided with a huge piece. They walked off a good distance from camp to
find a suitable spot. Unfortunatel