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#23 Broad fields covered
with thick shrubs, near Serra
de Santo Antonio in the desert of the province of Minas
Gerais
Latin translation by
Ben Hennelly
I sketched this picture during my trip from Tejuco,
the primary town of the district that takes its name from diamond, Diamante,
to Vila de Fanado,
capital of the region called Termo
de Minas, on June 13th between the villages of Buriti and Calumbi. It portrays the characteristic vegetation covering the high plain Chapadas that rise between the rivers Arassuahy to the east and Jequetinhonha to the west.(1) The plain
gradually lowers, so that the abrupt rocks and deep valleys and defiles
of the diamond district recede behind you to the south. Only gentle
vales cut through the length of the plain, and, since everything the
eye passes over is wrapped with exceedingly thick shrubs, the traveler
is moved by the sight in a remarkable way. For, surrounded by an immense
sea of foliage and overwhelmed by the swell, as it were, only one who
is on horseback, or who has climbed one of the trees that rise up infrequently
there, is able to raise his eyes above and to view this great plain.
The thicket is of the kind the people of Minas call Serrado or Carrasco: a large variety of shrubs with foliage that
is not very succulent, which are pressed up close together and often
connected by the roving branches of the bushes and by chains of flowers;
only rarely does a taller, fully-crowned tree or palm interrupt the
shrubs. The tortuous paths that lead through this extremely crowded
thicket are often so confined and narrow that you must take good care
that you do not stray from them. When it happened more than once that,
occupied collecting plants, I was left behind by the train of pack-animals,
only by listening to the sound of the bells was I able to find my way
back to them, following with quick foot. Woe to that tired traveler,
who alone and on foot is borne astray in this sea of shrubs, where there
is no trace of human cultivation, and all the tokens of primeval nature.
With this singular and generally frightful face of nature square the
words of our greatest poet, Goethe, whose long-time acquaintance I will
always consider one of fortune's greatest gifts:
"But who is it off to the side? His path loses itself in the thicket,
Behind him the shrubs close together, The grass stands back up, The
waste engulfs him." (2)
Only a few mountains, swimming like deep-blue clouds in the farthest
sky, limit here and there the prospect into boundless space. The mountains  visible here belong to that diamond-rich ridge called Serra
de S. Antonio do Gran Mogol. This mountain, as much as the
diamond district itself, is formed of a siliceous rock they call Itacolumite,
following the example of Guileme de Eschwege. In the eastern part of
these fields is found a foliaceous granite, somewhat like micaceous schist, which in places surrounds another of the same appearance, but
harder and of finer structure, which in some places rises up in small
mountains, and elsewhere is enclosed in distinct masses by the other.
In the western part of the fields a formation of micaceous schist predominates,
which passes into argillaceous and talcose schist and contains nested
strata of Itacolumite.
Relatively few fonts cool the plant life of this region, a region so
far from enjoying the rather cool, windy sky of the area of Serro
Frio, that it is far warmer and drier, and its air is perpetually
still. Indeed, because of the unbroken drought during the months comparable
to our summer (2), it  usually
happens that many shrubs drop their leaves; as a result, all the more
easily can be seen the winding chains of parasites and the various arms
(I mean the pricks, thorns, spines) with which these densely branched
shrubs bristle. It is possible to adduce only a part of the plants that
grow in this region. One observes many Bignoniaceae,
from the genera of Anemopaegma, Jacaranda and Pithecoctenium,
several Acaciae, Mimosae and Cassiae, Qualeae, Callisthenae, Kielmeyerae, Ochnae, various genera
of Malpighiaceae, Myrsinae, Lucumae, Aspidospermae, Sparattanthelium, Anonae, Delimae, Crotones, Lychnophorae, Vernoniae, Albertiniae, Barnadeziae, Lippiae, Hyptides, a species
of Bombax, various Laurineae, and, from
the palms, Cocos flexuosa, Cocos capitata, Diplothemium
campestre, Astrocaryum campestre, Acrocomia sclerocarpa.
#23 of 42 etching
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