Only the winds and rivers,
Life and death.
R. L. Stevenson: In the Highlands.
From the ridge above the head-waters of the Chitu we descended gently, and after fifteen minutes’ march we forded the Maipa, a deep, sluggish stream, with a belt of forest at its farther side. On the projecting branch of a tree a glorious purple orchid, the only one we saw during our journey, was admiring its reflection in the water. The Maipa probably belongs to the Orinoco watershed. We then traversed the narrow forest belt on the farther bank, and emerged into a curiously-rifted savannah, which led us to the foot of another abrupt hill-side. Up it we went, and found ourselves at the edge of a vast rolling plain, Weitipu on our right and far beyond a big fog-bank, which we knew concealed Roraima. His great form loomed dark in the cloud. This tableland, at the extreme south-east edge of which we stood, extends past the foot of Mount Weitipu almost to the foot of Roraima, and then drops down to the Kukenaam River. Its average level is fully 3,800 feet above the sea, its gentle grassy undulations, broken here and there by clumps of trees beside intersecting watercourses, spread out before us for a distance which it took no less than five and a half hours’ actual march to traverse. This plateau is a superb pasture-land, but no animals now graze there, save a few wild deer. What a country to lie fallow!
We proceeded on our way, fording the Arataparu and the Weiwötö, both large tributaries of the Arabupu. All these streams undoubtedly feed the Kukenaam River, and thus form a part of the Orinoco basin. The ford of the Weiwötö was just above a lovely flashing waterfall, and we camped on its right bank. Now at last did Roraima and Kukenaam deign to take note of us. First the head of the Töwashing pinnacle, which forms Roraima’s south-east corner, emerged from out of a fog-bank; then a piece of grim, grand shoulder, then cloud-drift once again; but gradually more and more of the twin giants was exposed, never clear all at once, but hinted at sufficiently for us to grasp their outlines. I felt smitten with awe and fear. We seemed so minute and so presumptuous to venture unbidden into the presence of these towering monsters in a land that knew us not. The glory and the beauty was very great, as the evening sun fell on them, the fleecy clouds now revealing, now concealing, the black precipices. Well may the Indians feel that the place is holy ground!
I must try to describe the scene more exactly. Weitipu lay on our right almost due north of us, rising sheer up from the plain. This mountain seems to be made of quartz, cliffs of which stood out where the savannah slopes had been washed away. Its southern end is roughly circular at the base, the sides being terraced and the small plateau at the top being surmounted by a sharp peak, which would afford an uninterrupted view to every point of the compass. All this part of the mountain is savannah dotted with occasional tree-clumps, and it is seamed by the gulleys of small streams tumbling from its terraces in sparkling waterfalls. To the northward the mountain is forest-clad, and is shaped into the cliff-sided, flat-topped rectangular block, so characteristic of this country. From its north-west side stretches a sea of forest, in which two crags jut out fantastically side by side, the more conspicuous of the two being known as Muköripö. Between Weitipu and Roraima the land drops very considerably and is densely forested. Then arises Roraima’s south-eastern wall, which is said to be ten miles long. From our camp at Weiwötö we saw it, of course, greatly foreshortened, and the south-western face, up which we eventually climbed, we could not yet see at all; but Kukenaam’s southern end projected far beyond the Töwashing pinnacle. At one moment the clouds cleared away almost entirely, and we counted six long white streaks of water falling vertically down Roraima’s cliff-face. It had evidently rained heavily, for we did not see these cascades again after a spell of fine weather.
Our Weiwötö camp was very exposed and bleak. Joseph looked so shiveringly cold that we spared him an outfit of clothes, which, alas! greatly impaired the dignity and picturesqueness of his appearance. The Makusis, with Mr. Menzies and Haywood, went off for the night to a little wooded island amidstream for shelter. They had stretched one of our tarpaulins for us over an old hut-frame on the open plain, and had made a most inefficient wind-break with the other. As we tossed and shivered on our narrow camp-beds through the chilly night, we could see the dim, cloud-wrapped mountain forms looming against the moonlit sky.
The South-West Face of Mount Roraima, showing the Töwashing Pinnacle.