"It is otherwise in southern Brazil. From the State of San Paolo southwards the seaward face of the plateau is a huge bank, some 2,500 or 3,000 feet in height, which separates a narrow strip of coast from the basin of the great rivers inland. This long bank or watershed bears successively the titles of Serra do Mar and Serra Geral. From San Paolo to the Rio Grande no river pierces its barrier; but the streams which rise upon its landward side, almost within sight of the sea, cross the whole width of the plateau before they join the Paraná or the Uruguay. Thus the Serra do Mar is not really a mountain range; though it has, from the sea, all the appearance of one, owing to its denticulated ridge; but the traveller who reaches the crest by crossing the inland plateau arrives at the highest point by the ascent of imperceptible gradients, and only discovers the _serra_ when he breaks suddenly upon the sight of the ocean thousands of feet below. "Beyond the _serra_ is the territory of Minas; a confused mass of mountainous groups, among which it is no easy matter to trace one's way, either on the map or on the trail itself. An enormous backbone of granite, the Mantiqueira, crosses the southern portion of Minas; and the railway painfully ascends its grassy slopes. The Mantiqueira, which receives on its southern flank the rains brought by the ocean winds, is the highest point of the plateau, and the hydrographic centre of Brazil. It gives birth to the Rio Grande, the principal arm of the Paraná. "As soon as we cross the southern frontier of the State of San Paolo the plateau is transformed; there is no more granite, and the landscape grows tamer. The primitive measures of gneiss and granite, out of which the Serra do Mar is carved, are covered to the westward by a bed of sedimentary rocks, of which the strata, dipping toward the west, plunge one after the other under other more recent strata. They consist exclusively of red and grey sandstone, and the sandy soil which results from their decomposition covers the western portions of the four southern States. The topography of the country changes with the geologic structure. The outcrops of sandstone, which one crosses in travelling westward, cut the tableland into successive flats. Irregular ranges turn their abrupter slopes towards the east, as the banks of the Meuse and Moselle in the basin of the Seine; the rivers flow close underneath them, running through narrow gorges. Even the least experienced eye could never mistake these cliffs of sandstone for ridges of granite; these are not mountain chains, not _serras_, but, according to the local term, _serrinhas_.