On the evening of the second day after leaving Icó, we arrived at the Villa de Lavra de Mangabeira, which is about ten leagues distant. A little beyond Icó the road becomes very rough, frequently ascending and again descending over rocky paths, on which account it is no longer serviceable for the transit of waggons, all further traffic into the interior being now effected either on horseback or, strange as it may appear, upon oxen. The diversity of hill and dale renders this part of the journey less monotonous, and although the herbaceous vegetation was much destroyed by the heat, the greater part of the trees, which are both large and more numerous, still retained their leaves; the most abundant tree that I observed was called by the inhabitants Aroeira; it is a species of _Schinus_, perhaps _S. Aroeira_, St. Hil., and reaches to the height of thirty or forty feet; as the stem grows very straight, it is much used in house-building; at this time it was destitute of leaves, but from the ends of its branches were suspended clusters of small fruit of a dark colour, giving it very much the appearance of the European alder when covered with its dark-brown catlins. The other trees consist chiefly of large _Acacias_ and _Mimosas_, _Bignonias_ of considerable size covered with yellow and rose coloured flowers, a _Triplaris_, and, the most beautiful of all, a large _Jacaranda_, the wide-spreading branches of which were densely covered with great panicles of beautiful large blue flowers, not unlike those of the no less splendid _Gloxinia speciosa_; among these sometimes appear a few solitary Carnahuba palms, but in hollow sheltered places they often occur in groups; large _Cacti_ are not uncommon, and we passed over some elevated open shrubby tracts abounding in a species of _Krameria_.