When I arose next morning at daybreak, I found the thermometer at 46°. While breakfast was preparing I again went out to botanize, but added little more than a few Ferns to my collection of the previous evening. Our journey to the place where we slept was of very gradual ascent; we had now to commence the _ascent proper_ of the peaks. Leaving behind all that was not actually necessary to be taken along with us, we began our journey by passing the waterfall, and walking up the bed of the stream, along the gently sloping face of a granite rock; the ascent of several parts of this was rather difficult, having to crawl up on our hands and knees; after half an hour’s hard work we reached a comparatively flat wooded spot. On the steep part I collected, in moist places, an _Eriocaulon_, a small _Sun-Dew_, and a new genus belonging to the _Gentian_ tribe; among these grew also the curious _Burmannia bicolor_. In passing through the wood above mentioned, I saw plenty of my new _Cactus_ growing on the stems of the larger trees, whilst the rocks were covered with _Gesnerias_, and different kinds of _Orchidaceous_ plants. Emerging from the wood we encountered another steep rocky place, almost entirely covered with a large pine-apple-like _Tillandsia_, above which rose a few plants of a fine large scarlet-flowered shrubby _Salvia_ (_S. Benthamiana_, Gardn.), and a pale-blossomed _Virgularia_. On a nearly bare portion of the rock, grew several patches of a large herbaceous plant, belonging to the tribe of the _Gentians_; it grows from a foot to two feet high, with thick succulent glaucous leaves, the upper ones connate, and from out of which proceed about half a dozen pedicels, each bearing a single large flower, the calyx of which is much inflated and tinged with purple; it is the _Prepusa connata_, Gardn. The only previously known species was found by Martius, on a large mountain range between the Diamond country and Bahia; a third was afterwards discovered on the very summit of the Organ Mountains. Passing this place, we again entered a wooded tract, where we found many Tapir paths, as we had also done the day previous in the woods through which we passed, which rendered our progress much quicker than it otherwise would have been, as the branches above only require to be cut away to make a good road. Judging from the abundance of the tracts which we here met with, the Tapir must be a very common animal in this remote and solitary part of the mountains; here they are as yet out of the reach of the hunter, who commits great havock among those which inhabit the lower woods, and there is also abundance of herbage to supply them with food. In passing through this wood, one of the blacks shot a _Jacutinga_ (_Penelope Jacutinga_, Spix), and I collected specimens of a few Orchidaceous plants, and a large yellow-flowered _Senecio_.