e west farther away stood
before us a weird-looking plateau with a vertical high wall to the north.
To the south it showed three terraces, the two lower ones supported on
perpendicular cliffs, whereas a convex slope was between the second and
third, or top terrace. To the south-west in the far distance another high
plateau could be perceived, also with vertical cliffs to the north, but
slanting at its southern end--a shape characteristic of nearly all the
isolated mountains of that zone.

Looking south we perceived great tongues of lava extending from east to
west--the eastern point being higher than the western, showing that the
lava had flowed there from east to west. Then there was also a great
sloping grassy slant, possibly over another extensive lava-flow, from the
crater we had examined. Extending toward the south-west was another
tongue of lava of great width when measured from north-west to
south-east, the latter (south-east) being its lowest point. On its
north-east side this great flow had a high vertical face. Between these
enormous tongues of lava, east to west and south-east to north-west, was
a depression or channel extending as far as a distant high dome in three
terraces to the south-west. On our course we came upon more curious
flattened eruptive rocks, which had split on falling with great force to
earth after having been ejected from a volcano.

Other parallel ranges could be clearly perceived. To bearings magnetic
160 deg. were again to be seen our old friends the two strange gabled-roof
and tower mountains.

I climbed up on the Paredaozinho volcano (2,100 ft. above the sea level)
to examine its extinct crater, subdivided into two distinct large
craters and a subsidiary one.

One of these craters extended from east to west, and had in one section
on its rim a giant dome split into quadrangular and lozenge-shaped
sections, not unlike magnified mosaic work. Next to it was a great hill
with a vertical natural wall overlooking the crater itself. The
horizontal strata of this natural wall, each about a foot thick, looked
exactly like a wonderful masonry work, so perfectly straight were the
strata, and the square and rectangular rocks laid in lines with such
extraordinary regularity. This wall stood upon solid masses of rock of
immense size--hundreds of feet in height.

The lip of the crater on the south side was just like the well-laid
pavement of a city, so regularly had the lava cracked in contract