He began to ascend from the river-bank, under the guidance of an Indian, at the valley of the Cotinga; and first he saw, rising two hundred feet above the level of the plain, the great Waetipu or Sun Mountain, formed of horizontal beds of sandstone (this formation is as peculiar to the region as the strange level hill-tops are to the Cape district of South Africa), the alternate hard and soft layers of which produced most singular traces on its sides, while near it stood two curious conical peaks. He rested that night in an old mud-walled palm-thatched house, situated on a great lonely elevated land, and early next forenoon the travellers rounded the end of the Sun Mountain, and a glorious view of Roraima burst upon them, with the sun’s rays lighting up its curious details. ‘Turn,’ says our author, ‘in any direction I would, most wonderful scenery was presented to my view, from the great pink precipiced Roraima in the north-west, looking like a huge fortification surrounded by a gigantic glacis, to the great undulating plain stretching southward as far as the eye could reach, where at the horizon land melted into sky.’
This wonderful mountain is one of the greatest natural curiosities on the face of the earth, and it is much to be regretted that Mr Brown was not able to inspect it more closely, and examine its structure and individual features more in detail. This was, however, rendered impossible by that prosaic but irresistible obstacle, want of food! In the vicinity of the mountain he found only deserted villages, and the scanty supply of provisions which he and his guide had carried up from the plain was speedily exhausted. Our traveller succeeded in ascending the sloping portion of the marvellous mountain—in which Nature seems to have furnished Art with a perfect model of a fortress—to a height of five thousand one hundred feet above the level of the sea. Between the highest point reached by him and the foot of the great perpendicular portion, towering high above, is a band of thick forest. ‘Looking up at the great wall of rock,’ says the writer, ‘two thousand feet in height, I could see that a forest covered its top, and that in places on its sides where small trees or shrubs could gain a hold with their roots, there they clung. The great beds of white, pink, and red sandstone of which it is composed are interbedded with layers of red shale, the whole resting upon a great bed of diorite.’
One tries in vain to picture to one’s fancy this wondrous mass of upheaved earth, stone, and forest, looking like a fortress reared by Titans against the assaults of all the forces of Nature besides. Science tells us that Roraima and its surrounding similarly shaped neighbours once stood as islands in the ocean; but at what period of the earth’s history, how far back in the awful lapses of time, who can say? ‘If,’ says the author, ‘any mammals then lived upon them, when the sea washed the bases of their cliffs, the descendants of those mammals may live there still, for all communication with their tops and the surrounding country has been ever since effectually cut off by their perpendicular sides.’
The length of Roraima is about twelve miles; and its top is perfectly level. ‘The area of the surface,’ says Mr Brown, ‘must be considerable, for Sir R. Schomburgk, who visited its southern end, to the westward of the point to which I ascended, describes some beautiful waterfalls as leaping from its sides, forming the drainage of part of its top, and when viewing it from a mountain on the Upper Mazaruni, I distinctly saw, at a distance of thirty miles, an enormous waterfall on its north-east side, of very considerable width and extraordinary height.’
Next in importance to the great mountain Roraima is the great Kaieteur Fall, which the traveller reached by the difficult ascent of Kaieteur. The very existence of this beautiful Fall was previously unknown to the dwellers in George-town, the capital of Demerara, who were astonished to learn that their colony possessed such a gigantic natural wonder; and indeed received Mr Brown’s account of it with some incredulity. On a subsequent journey, undertaken by command of the governor Sir John Scott, Mr Brown and some other English gentlemen made a thorough examination and a scientific report of the Fall.
The Kaieteur Valley is of great extent; bounded by gloomy mountains, whose outlines are broken by gaps and gorges, whence noisy cascades pour down the sides of the great sandstone steeps, while in the far distance is seen the upper portion of the Kaieteur pouring its foaming water over the precipice edge into the depths below. The journey from the landing-place on the river to the head of the Fall is difficult, the way lying through blocks of sandstone and through tangled forest, where it is necessary to cut away the mass of vines, bushropes, shrubs, and undergrowth which obstruct the path. The regular forest ends in a confused mass of rocks at the water’s edge, covered with shrubs and mosses, and directly facing the Fall at a distance of a quarter of a mile from its foot. A more perfect position from which to contemplate this wonder of Nature could not be conceived. The travellers stood on the verge of the rock reef, and before them thundered the Kaieteur Fall, from a height of eight hundred and twenty-two feet, in a cataract four hundred and twenty-two yards wide, fed by the stream at a velocity of four miles an hour; its contact with the water of the basin being a confused scene of fleecy masses of tossing waters, spurting high in the air in front of the downpour, and giving birth to mist-clouds, which rose continuously upwards and over the precipice on the right.
Two of the exploring party swam across the foaming river and visited the edge of the basin on the eastern side; after which they returned to the landing, accompanied by all the Indians but three. The others did not like to pass the night in such a mysterious place. Mr Brown and one of his friends had poles rigged up and lashed together under a large rock, which formed a sort of cave, where they slung their hammocks for the night. That must have been a night never to be forgotten, when, in the primeval wilds of that unknown land, the traveller lay in his swinging couch and watched and listened to the eternal fall and multitudinous roar of the mighty waters. ‘A subdued light,’ he says, ‘penetrated even into our valley of shadows, and I knew that the moon must have risen above the eastern horizon. By this light I could make out the brink of the Fall against the sky; and as I gazed upon it two bright stars rose slowly beyond, looking as if they had emerged from the water itself. Then the first rays of the moon, as it rose above the mountain in the east, shed a silvery light across the Fall’s crest, and lit up a portion of the descending fleecy column.’ During the day the sun’s rays, shining on the mist, produced a lovely rainbow, reaching from the top to the foot of the Fall, which, moving slowly outwards with the mist, faded gradually away, while with each accession of mist a new one was formed.
After they had thoroughly enjoyed the spectacle from opposite the foot of the Fall, the travellers proceeded to its head, camped in the bush on the river’s brink, about fifty feet above the edge of the Fall, and there made their measurements. On both evenings of their stay they watched with interest the swallows’ homeward flight to their roosting-places in a cave behind the Fall. The birds came late in the afternoon in large flocks from all quarters of the compass, and wheeled round in great circles at different altitudes. Gradually one flock amalgamated with another, till at last near sundown they had gathered into two or three immense bodies, which kept wheeling round in a compact mass about one hundred yards above the heads of the travellers. Mr Brown asked his friend how he would describe their numbers, and he replied that he thought ‘myriads of millions’ would about do it.
While the travellers were wondering how the birds would get into the cave behind the giant sheet of falling water, the question was solved in an extraordinary manner, and the intruders on that wonderful scene beheld a spectacle which in itself would have made the occasion memorable. ‘Suddenly a portion of the mass swooped down with incredible, with extraordinary velocity to the edge of the Fall, seemingly close to the face of the column of water, and then being lost to our view. The rushing sound of their wings in their downward flight was very strange, and produced the feeling that birds of ill omen were about. Approaching the edge of the precipice we waited to see the next lot go down, so as to observe how they managed to get behind the water. We had not to wait long before down dropped a cloud of them over the edge, past the face of the Fall, for about one hundred feet; then, with the rapidity of lightning, they changed their downward course to one at right angles, and thus shot through the mist on either side into the gloomy cave. Their motions were so rapid that we could hardly make out how they were executed. It appeared to me that, as they swooped down, their wings were but half spread, and their heads downwards; but after passing the edge they turned their bodies in a horizontal position, descending by gravity alone until they arrived at the required level, when they again made use of their wings and flew off at right angles into the cave. Just before dusk the greater portion descended in a continuous stream for a considerable time, but small flocks and single birds kept arriving until it was quite dark. When a single bird shot down, its velocity was so great that it seemed to form a short continuous black line against the sky.’ This gives the reader a vivid idea of the speed with which a bird can cleave the air while on the swoop.
At all times the valley of the Kaieteur is beautiful, but it is most beautiful when, in the afternoon, great shadows are flung across it, and the opening is lit up by the golden reflection of the sky over the great plains beyond. On the Upper Essequibo—which is inhabited by caymans of great size ‘and fearfully tame,’ there are also several beautiful Falls; and as for a great portion of its extent the banks of the river are totally devoid of human population, the birds and mammals are as tame as the caymans. Jaguars, whose prey are the wild hogs, abound, and large tigers are tolerably numerous. It is curious that they should not be more numerous, for no animals prey upon them, and the few killed by wandering Indians would not affect their number in any sensible degree. Not until the thirtieth day of their voyage on the Upper Essequibo did the travellers see any ‘natives;’ then they fell in with a tribe of redskins with artificially elongated and flattened heads, who were terrified at the sight of white men. They proved to be harmless and friendly people. It is said that in this wild region, farther to the south, near the head-waters of the Trombetas, there is a tribe who have ponds of water encircled by stockades, to which they retire for the night, sleeping with their bodies submerged. This, however, the author holds to be an Indian ‘yarn.’