Backlands by Euclides da Cunha

Cambaio extending westward; and to the north the agitated contours of Caipã. These are all linked and joined in the gradual configuration of a huge closed curve.
    As he observes these proud peaks from level ground where they shut off the horizon, the traveler gets the heartening impression that he is standing on a very high plateau, a remarkable plain resting on the summits of the mountain ranges.
    Along the rutted flats below, small watercourses worm along slowly, scarcely visible, serpentine. . . .
    Only one of them can be made out, the Vaza-Barris. It runs across the land, twisting and meandering. A larger hollow can be seen caught up in one of these curves, surrounded by hill. . . . Filling it completely is a crowd of shacks looking like a heap of roofs. . . .

III
The Climate
    From the brief indications laid out before, one can gather that the geological and topographical characteristics, as well as other physical agents, are so intermingled in these places that it is impossible to ascertain which of their characteristic influences predominates.
    On the one hand, however, there has been a strong influence of earlier conditions on later ones, which has led in turn to an increase in the influence of the original conditions, all of which persist in a sort of mutual set of influences. From this perennial conflict, as it has become, and endless vicious circle the mesological traits of the region become quite evident. There is no way to describe it in all of its modalities. We are lacking in the most ordinary observations thanks to the proverbial indifference we have shown concerning matters of this region as we rest in the comfortable ease of well-fed beggars.
    No scientific pioneer has yet undergone the harshness of this corner of the backlands for sufficient time to come up with any definitions.
    Martius passed through these parts with the main aim of taking a look at the meteorite that had fallen on the banks of the Bendegó, and the area has been familiar to European academics since 1810 thanks to A. F. Mornay and Wollaston. Forging through the savage region, desertus australis as Martius christened it, he paid scant attention to that land covered by a luxuriant flora, silva horrida in his alarmed Latin. Those who came before and after him on foot, pricked by the stubble on the same trails, gave the impression of someone running away. Those backlands, then, always avoided, are unknown even today and will remain so for a long time to come.
    What follow are some vague conjectures. We passed through the region at the beginning of a broiling summer, and so we saw it only within that frame of reference and in its worst aspect. What we write here carries some defective traces of that single, isolated impression, an unfavorable one as well, held in balance as it is between the calmness of thought and the crippling emotions of war. In addition to this we have only the data provided by a single thermometer and a dubious barometer, a pitiful scientific arsenal with which to go into battle there. These tools will not give us even the vaguest features of a climate that varies with the slightest change in the disposition of its topography. This makes for quite different weather in villages along the edge of the region. Monte Santo, for example, on a first comparison is much better off than Queimadas, which differs from that of villages to the north, with no continuity of aspect, as one might expect to see given its intermediate location. The proximity of mountainous massifs keeps the climate stable, and it makes one think of some maritime locale that has suddenly appeared in the middle of the continent: an insignificant variation in heat; a sky where the air is totally transparent and unchangingly clear; and the prevailing winds, from the southeast in winter and from the northeast in summer, alternate with rare regularity. It is like an island. No matter what location a traveler leaves from, if he heads north he will be struck by the