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#17 Prospect
from the peak of the mountain Serra de Tagoahy towards the east, in
the province of Rio de
Janeiro
Latin translation by
Ben Hennelly
The first mountain that must be crossed by travelers passing from the province of Rio de Janeiro to the province of Sao
Paulo is "Serra de Tagoahy", a steep ridge made
up of foliaceous granite and covered almost entirely, from roots to
summit, with thick, ancient forest. Thomas Ender drew the picture we
have set before you, with the skill for which he is distinguished, from
the spot where the steeply twisting road winds into the forest, so that the view toward the plain lying to the east is lost.
It is regrettable that
we cannot render the brilliant magnificence of the  colors that light
up, as it were, the plain there, which is bounded by a not so large
mountain (NW of the city of Rio
de Janeiro) and covered above by a crystalline sky; still,
from the picture the viewer can perceive the manner in which the field
vegetation there is broken up by shrubs and woods of lower sorts. For
they are by no means those solitary, island-like groves that we depicted
in etchings #2 and #5 and described by the name "Capoes". That singular
form of vegetation is observed only where the field vegetation of the"Campo
geral"also lives in its own right. Just as the fields
found in this part of the land appear only in small spaces between woods,
and do not display the character of some peculiar formation of plants
over a broad expanse, so the sparse shrubs in them and tree groupings
pretend, as it were, to form little woods mixed in among the fields.
They  often present themselves in the shape of hedges conjoined by individual
trees. You could say that here live those bushes and trees that love
the sun and have daily need of its omnipotent warmth from many directions.
Among the plants that I came upon most frequently in these places, I
mention Noisettia pyrifolia, Glossarhena floribunda, Securidaea
acuminota, Securidaea divaricata, Cordia glabra, Cordia
hermanniaefolia, Cordia floribunda, Vanillosma pyrifolium, Vanillosma
acuminatum, Schmidelia edulis and Schmidelia levis, Serjania guarumima, Serjania
elegans, Paullinia thalictrifolia, Anthodon paniculatum. There are only a few things that could be added to these notes for the
purpose of explicating the etching. I will mention that a noble Marantae is depicted in front to the left, and in the middle a tall Cocos
botryophora, which here and there in these groves raises its
crown of foliage.
#17 of 42 expedition commentaries
 
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