We spent all the afternoon studying the fall from various points of view. At the cliff-edge near Sprostons’ bungalow one can see, but not photograph, its entire length; and there is a good view of the tumbling reaches of the river below, which alternate with large, still pools. You can also look fully a mile upstream above the fall, where Potaro flows in a straight reach through a vast, densely forested plateau, stretching away to distant blue hills, also forest-clad, save on their vertical cliff-sides—hills that beckon the traveller onwards, prophesying further wonders. For from the Kaietuk savannah a view can be obtained of Mount Kowatipu, round the spur of which we were to travel on our further journey to Roraima, and of the lofty range of mountains, called by the Indians Kamana and Morakabang, at the head of the Kopinang River. There is also an extensive panorama of the plateau and the mountains on the right bank of the Potaro.
Sir Walter Egerton, who visited Kaietuk in 1913, had a path cut for him from Sprostons’ rest-house in a downriver direction, near the edge of the precipice, through an awesome forest among black fissures, huge rocks, and forbidding caverns, for a distance of about a quarter of a mile, to a bare jut of cliff, which overhangs the gorge at a point about one mile as the crow flies from the brink of Kaietuk. From this spot it is possible to photograph the abyss in its entire height, but not from any point nearer. The vertical fall is sixfold that of Niagara, and the whole scene is on so enormous a scale that it is difficult to realize how huge is every detail of it all, and one sorely needs something to give the sense of proportion with the ordinary workaday world. There is also a trail from the rest-house to the brink of the fall, where one obtains a wonderful view down the gorge to Mount Kenaima at the Amatuk Gateway and to the dim plains beyond, a distant sea of forest. But from the water’s edge it is, of course, impossible to see much of the chasm into which the river falls, unless you lie prone on the overhanging rock and look straight down into the caldron below. Round about the head of the fall on the left bank of the Potaro is a curious open plain of hard, smooth rock. It is almost flat, with a gentle incline toward the river-side, and is strewn with small, round, white pebbles. Save the wealth of wild-flowers, only scrub wreathed with golden “Kaietuk vine” and big orchidaceous plants, some of them ten or twelve feet high, grow there; but it is a curiously fascinating place, and forms a weird and fantastic approach to the fall itself. Surely it would be a good thing if British Guiana made the whole of this unique savannah in the immediate vicinity of Kaietuk, abounding, as it does, in interesting plants and flowers, into a colonial park, after the model of the national parks in the United States; and, if so, when made readily accessible, it should be a source of health and delight to many generations of our colonists, whose work compels them to reside, as a rule, on the hot coastal plains.
Potaro Gorge from Kaietuk.
We reached Kaietuk on Christmas Eve; and, as all our baggage and stores had to be carried up on the back of our Indian droghers from Tukeit to a point above the waterfall, where Potaro is again navigable, our headquarters during all Christmas Day, as well as for the larger part of Boxing Day, were at Sprostons’ rest-house. I shall never forget that Christmas Day at Kaietuk. The lights were so wonderful on the gorge, and a lovely rainbow hovered over the fall. Each time that I turned away from Kaietuk and looked down the valley I said to myself: “It is more lovely than the last time I looked this way;” and, whenever I turned back to that living, moving water, I felt, “This really is more wonderful than a second ago.” One of the most striking things about Kaietuk is its silence, due, I suppose, to the foot of the fall being so far below. Occasionally, when the wind eddied upward, a great sullen growl came up, and the Makusis standing beside me at the brink of the cliff stepped back with a grunt of superstitious alarm.
The wonder of it all makes coming away very hard, for one becomes fascinated by the ever-changing glory and can never look enough. When, in October, 1917, my husband and I were three weeks in camp on this plateau, it did not seem one day too long; and we studied Kaietuk in all its moods—in misty dawn, magnificent day, and ghostly moonlight. We pitched camp about fifty yards from the edge of the abyss, a few feet above the river-side. It was a heavenly spot. Our tarpaulins were slung in a little strip of forest for protection from the weather; but a big rock, jutting out into the river and overarched by trees, made us the most perfect “parlour” in the world. As I lay in a hammock, listening to the delicious swish-swish of the hurrying river, I could see miles and miles of blue hills and shining stream below me, right away down the gorge to Amatuk. What happy, lazy hours that hammock afforded me, too blissful even for reading, when one seemed not wholly awake, yet not at all asleep, and altogether aware of the loveliness around one! The fall, of course, could not be seen from the camp, but the air came to us chilled by its moving waters, cool and invigorating even at midday. Curiously enough, the mists, which float ceaselessly forth from behind Kaietuk and often fill the gorge and roll in clouds over the savannah, seemed somehow to be abruptly cut off by the precipice, and never came our way. Altogether it was the most perfect of many delightful camps.
But the day’s occupation was by no means limited to hammock musings, for our object, during those three weeks, was to find a practicable alignment for a motor-road from the Kaietuk plateau down to Amatuk. A very interesting and attractive job it was, though it involved us in many an hour’s hard climbing and scrambling, only to reward us at first with disappointment.
The work of trail-cutting in the vicinity of Kaietuk is like groping in the dark. One can see little or nothing beyond the few yards just ahead; for the forest shuts out all view, save when one reaches an abrupt cliff-edge or a little patch of rocky savannah. In country such as this every step has to be cut toilfully up and down hillsides, and no rapid reconnaissance survey is possible. Oh for a hydroplane, with which to get a bird’s-eye view of plateau, ravine, and river!