After crossing the Chapada which is three leagues in breadth, the descent is very gradual, and ultimately merges into a marshy plain abounding in Buriti palms. The whole country here bore a very different aspect from that which we had left behind us, the vegetation being fresh and verdant, which was a great relief to the eye, after having been so long accustomed to leafless trees, and a bare soil of red clay. The woods were all evergreen, and between the clusters of noble Buriti palms and the wooded parts of the country, there were large open marshy Campos covered with grass, and other herbaceous vegetation common to marshy tracts. We were now in a country much infested by the incursions of wild Indians, and many of the more solitary habitations had, some time before our arrival, been abandoned by their possessors on that account. After riding about half a mile along the side of the first open tract we came to, we reached one of these deserted dwellings, and a little beyond it, we put up in another also uninhabited. At Saco do Tanque, we were informed that these houses had been abandoned in consequence of an attack which the Indians had made on another, a few months before, a league or two to the westward, when all the inhabitants were put to death. As I had many of my recent collections to put in order, and as this appeared a favourable spot for botanizing, I remained here a day. There was also good pasture for the horses, and they, as well as ourselves, had need of rest. I was not disappointed in the few short rambles which I took in the neighbourhood, as I met with several remarkable plants, quite different from any I had before seen; among these were an _Eryngium_, a _Jussiæa_, which formed a small tree about twenty feet high, a tree-fern, the only one I had seen since I left Crato, and a few curious _Eriocaulons_ from the marshes. In the deserted house in which we took up our quarters, we were dreadfully annoyed both by musquitos and chigoes (_Bich de Pé_).