WILL NO ONE EXPLORE RORAIMA ?
WILL no one explore Roraima, and bring us back the tidings which it has been waiting these thousands of years to give us ? One of the greatest marvels and mysteries of the earth lies on the outskirt of one of our own colonies—only not within British territory, because the frontier-line has been bent in at the spot, on purpose, it would seem, to shut it out—and we leave the mystery unsolved, the marvel uncared for. The description of it, with an illustrative sketch, in Mr. Barrington Brown's "Canoe and Camp Life in British Guiana" (one of the most fascinating books of travel the present writer has read for a long time), is a thing to dream of by the hour. A great table of pink and white and red sandstone, "interbedded with red shale," rises from a height of 5,100 feet above the level of the sea, 2,000 feet sheer into the sapphire tropical sky. A forest crowns it ; the highest waterfall in the world—only one, it would seem, out of several— tumbles from its summit, 2,000 feet at one leap, 3,000 more on a slope of 45 degrees down to the bottom of the valley, broad only two parties of civilised explorers have touched the base of the table, —Sir Robert Schomburge, many years ago; Mr. Brown and a companion in 1869,—each at different spots. Even the length of the mass has not been determined ; Mr. Brown says eight or twelve miles. And he cannot help speculating whether the remains of a former creation may not be found at the top. At any rate, there is the forest on the summit. Of what trees is it com- posed? They cannot well be the same as those at the base. At a distance of 1,500 feet above the sea-level--speaking at least from personal knowledge of one island—the mango-tree in the West Indies, which produces fruit in abundance below, ceases to bear. The change in vegetation must be far more decided where the difference is between 5,000 and 7,000 feet. Thus for millenniums this island of sandstone upon the South American continent must have had its own distinct flora. What may be its fauna ? Very few birds probably ascend to a height of 2,000 feet in the air, the vulture tribe excepted. Nearly the whole of its animated inhabi- tants are likely to be as distinct as its plants. Is it peopled with human beings ? Who can tell ? Why not ? The climate must be temperate, delicious. There is abundance of water, very pro- bably issuing from some lake on the summit. Have we there a group of unknown brothers, cut off from all the rest of their kind ?
The summit, Mr. Brown says, is inaccessible, except by means of balloons. Well, that is a question to be settled on the spot between an engineer and a first-rate "Alpine." (What is the satisfaction of standing on the ice-ridge of the Matterhorn, or crossing the lava-wastes of the Vatna Jokull, compared to what would be the sensation of reaching that mysterious aerial forest, and gazing plumb-down over the sea of tropical verdure beneath, within an horizon the limits of which are absolutely beyond guessing ?) But put it that a balloon is required, surely it would be worth while for one of our scientific Societies to organise a balloon expedition for the purpose. No one can tell what pro- blems in natural science might not be elucidated by the explora- tion. We have here an area of limited extent, within which the secular variation of species by natural selection, if any, must have gone on undisturbed, with only a limited number of conceivable exceptions, since, at least, the very beginning of the present age in the world's life. Can there be a fairer field for the testing of those theories which are occupying men's minds so much in our days? And if there be human creatures on Roraima, what new data must their language, their condition, contribute, for the study of philo- logers, anthropologists, sociologists !
One more wonder remains to be told. Mr. Brown speaks of two other mountains in the same district which are of the same description as Roraima—tables of sandstone, rising up straight in the blue—one larger than Roraima itself. But he has not seen them, nor do they appear on his map. It is only because of their existence, and because, for aught that appears, they may be equally inaccessible with Roraima, that one does not venture to call Roraima the greatest marvel and mysteryof the earth, if there be thus in existence three living fragments of an age before our own, instead of one, that is only the greater reason why we should lose no time in wresting its secrets from the one which lies, so to speak, at our door. But if on exploration Roraima proves to be that which one dreams it may, a question may arise whether it would not be worthy of modern civilisation to secure its preservation, or the preservation of all the three mountains in question, by inter- national treaty, in their primeval condition. If only the vegeta- tion of the tertiary age subsists on those weird summits, its trees have a right not to have their trunks defaced with civilised "posters," nor their feet strewn with the remains of civilised picnics—bottled-beer bottles and sardine-tins.
J. M. L.
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