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page 155 ---Serra de Congonhas---Congonhas do Campo---Morro de Solidade--- Rhexias, melastomas, declieuxias, lisianthus, composites, &c., of the most diversified forms, stood all round us. We had ascended to a considerable
Serra de Congonhas height up the side branches of the Serra de Congonhas, which rose to the west in beautiful outlines, when the fog gradually sunk under us, and the varied tops of the mountains, reddened by the first beams of the sun, appeared above the grey ocean vapour. A number of white angus cattle (angus-brancos) uttered their shrill notes in the campos nearest to us. This morning offered us a delightful pleasure; we here enjoyed a sunrise like that upon our Alps, but rendered more beautiful by the luxuriance and charms of the tropical nature. From the highest point of the mountain the way led us down into a deep and narrow valley, in which we crossed the little river Congonhas, which flows from that place westward to the Paraopeba. A much steeper mountain, the Morro de Solidade, rose directly across our road, which the mules ascended with great difficulty, by a narrow slippery path. From its summit, a magnificent prospect lay before us of an extensive country, intersected by high and low mountains, covered, for the most part,
Congonhas do Campo, province of Minas Gerais 2006 with pastures, but here and there with dark forests; the village of Congonhas do Campo, surrounded with its red stone quarries (lavras), lay solitary at our feet. The basis of this massy mountain is the same granular quartzy mica-slate which we have already frequently mentioned; incumbent upon it to a great thickness is a very fine mica, approaching talc-slate, of a white, bluish-yellowish-greenish, grey, or brownish colour.
Farm at Solidade, Minas Gerais page 156 ---geology---castles of steel and crystal------ The direction of this rock, which occurs in strata of very different thickness, is on the whole from S.E. to N.W., i.e. contrary to what we observed on the whole in the principal mountain. The lustre of its strata, which are alternately of the thickness of half an inch and less, to that of a foot, but seldom more, on the rifts, gives this fossil extraordinary beauty, and when the bare parts of the mountain are illumined by the sun, they dazzle the eye, like the castles of steel or crystal in the poem of Ariosto. Large veins of a white or bluish white quartz, of a glassy fracture and lustre, traverse the rock in various directions. Considerable masses of it are also found scattered on the surface. In many places, there appears, over the mica layers of greenish or yellowish grey colour, that particular modification of mica-slate, which Mr. VonEschwege * has called iron mica-slate. It forms layers of different thickness upon it. Brown iron-stone also lies here and there, especially in loose pieces, scattered on the surface. According to the analogy of its appearance on the mountain of Villa Rica, its layers seem to be the uppermost strata in this formation; in and upon them we observed magnetic iron-stone crystals; and these are octahedrons from the size of a pea to that of half an inch.
Octahedron crystals
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