plateau we witnessed a wonderful sight,
rendered more poetic by the slight vagueness of a veil of mist. To the
south of Diamantino was the Serra Tombador, extending as far as S. Luiz
de Caceres, about 250 kil. as the crow flies to the south-west. Then
below us was the Lagoa dos Veados with no outlet, and close by the
head-waters of the Rio Preto (a tributary of the Arinos). The Serra do
Tombador was parallel nearly all along with the River Paraguay.

Owing to departing so late in the day from Diamantino, and the time we
had wasted on the way with social compliments, we were only able to go 12
kil. that afternoon. We halted near the shed of a _seringueiro_ (rubber
collector), at an elevation of 1,530 ft., close to the Chapesa, a
streamlet flowing into the Agua Fria (cold water), which in its turn
threw itself into the Rio Preto.

It was muggy and warm during the night--min. 65 deg. Fahr.--with swarms of
mosquitoes. We were glad to leave the next morning, following a
north-westerly course across a wonderfully beautiful meadow with circular
groups of trees and a long belt of vegetation along the stream. It was
then that I made my first acquaintance in Brazil with the _seringueira_
(_Syphonia elastica_ or _Hevea brasiliensis_), which was fairly plentiful
in that region. As we shall see, that rubber tree, producing the best
rubber known, became more and more common as we proceeded north.

In the cuts of rivers, soft red volcanic rock was exposed, with a surface
layer of white sand and grey ashes in the flat meadow. The padding of
earth was thin. Except close to rivers and in extinct craters where the
accumulations of earth and cinders were often deeper with a good supply
of moisture from underneath, the trees were feeble and anaemic. There
again I was amazed to find how unstable and weak most trees were. One
could knock them down with a mere hard push--as the roots had no hold in
the ground, where they spread horizontally almost on the surface, owing
to the rock underneath which prevented their penetrating farther than the
thin upper layer of earth, sand, and ashes. If you happened to lean
against a tree 4 or 5 in. in diameter, it was not uncommon to see the
tree tumble down and you too. The wood also of those trees was very
brittle and watery, with no power of resistance worth mentioning.

Many were the streamlets which flowed into the Rio Preto at elevations
from 1,450 to 1,500 ft., viz. the Burity Comprido, the Bujui,