The ruins of these hills and slopes contributed also to change the physiognomy of the landscape. These excoriations were picked up and dragged by the rivers, to form new beds and soil, and much rock disappeared below the continued crumbling of the mountains. Others show nothing except their summits above the land of recent formation. Masses that held them to the tablelands and the chains of the interior are separated from them, because their bases are buried and they emerge abruptly from the soil. These distinctive peaks to which the name of =itambea= has been given, raise their heads above a sea of trees, like some great buildings erected by the hand of man. To the East, the southern part of Matto Grosso, they range themselves in files and group themselves in archipelagoes, each time becoming higher and more numerous. The part that goes towards the West are solitary peaks on the circle of the horizon and may be seen along the banks of the River Paraguay, and even on the other side of the same. The Upper Guaporé, Itenez of the Bolivians, although situated in the immense basin of the Amazon as a tributary to the Madeira River by the Mamoré, belongs to the State of Matto Grosso, for the city of this name was founded on its banks and nearly the whole population of the state accumulated in this depression, through whose western half the river finds its way. Its principal source is very obscure. It rises in a grotto along the border of the Araxá, and takes first a southerly course, parallel to other rivers which descend towards Paraguay. On leaving the last hills it curves to the West, and afterwards to the Northwest, where already enlarged by numerous tributaries it crosses the plain, where there is found the city named at its founding Villa Bella and to-day called Matto Grosso. The Paraguay is one of the most known rivers of South America, as a way of navigation, as Elysée Reclus affirms. Few rivers have such a slight declination in proportion to their length. Castelnaw says that it rises at an altitude of 305 meters, in places where tranquil waters glide slowly to the sea, the altitude of the land being scarcely 200 meters. At a point 4,000 kilometers from the sea, the declination is scarcely 5 centimeters. Therefore, steamers of light draft can freely ascend to the confines of Brazil, far to the North of the two Republics of Argentine and Paraguay and arrive at the base of the tableland by the principal river and its tributaries, Jaurú, Sepotuba, Cuyabá, S. Lourenço and Taquary. The Paraguay presents another notable phenomenon, which is the crossing its sources with those of the tributaries of the Amazon. [Illustration: SMOKING RUBBER.]