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OBSERVED DURING THE RORAIMA EXPEDITION. 261 
camp, afternoon after afternoon, each laden with a basket (a good load for a man) full of 
these lovely plants, many of them then in full flower. One day I myself, having 
gone down to the Kookenaam to bathe, gathered, just round the small pool I chose for 
that purpose, two most glorious clumps of this orchid, the better of the two having five 
spikes of flower, of which one bore nine, each of the others eight, blossoms—in all forty-one 
of some of the largest and finest-coloured Cattleya-flowers ever seen, on a single small 
plant, the roots of which easily lay on my extended hand *. 
Before now dealing with the plants actually of Roraima, it will be convenient to say a few 
more words as to the form of this south-eastern face of the mountain (woodcut, fig. 2). 
From the bed of the Kookenaam at Teroota (3751 feet) the mountain slopes, somewhat 
gradually though of course not evenly, upward for a distance of about three miles, till a 
height of 5000 feet is attained. This last-mentioned point is that to which a considerable 
number of the plants belonging to the ordinary savannah vegetation of Guiana ascend 7. 
From this point the mountain rises, at first somewhat more abruptly and then again more 
gradually, so as to form, as it were, a terrace about midway up the slope. The upper 
level of this terrace, which lies at a height of about 5400 feet, is almost everywhere 
swampy, though here and there a few rocks crop out. This is the place so enthusiastically 
described by Dr. Schomburgk, on account of the extraordinary richness of its vegetation, 
as a “botanical Eldorado; " and it was here too, just within the forest which edges this 
swamp, that we built our house and made our headquarters. It is to this point that 
the open savannah extends; for above it all is more or less densely forested. Between 
this swamp, lying along its terrace, is a ravine, and again, beyond this ravine, in which it 
must be remembered that the forest begins, the mountain slopes up very abruptly to a 
height of about 6500 feet, to the base, that is, of the actual cliff. In the accompanying 
diagram (woodeut, fig. 2, p. 257) all up to the ravine is distinguished as the savannah-slope ; 
all above, to the base of the cliff, as the forest-slope. It should also be noted that the forest- 
slope is not uniformly clad with trees. ‘The lower part is densely wooded, covered, as it 
were, by dense jungle; next comes а belt of bush, rather than of jungle; while still 
higher, just under the cliff, the masses of rock which have fallen from above lie like a 
moraine, on which are scattered sparse trees, the low, wide-spreading branches of which 
interlock іп a remarkable way $. The actual face of the cliff is, of course, bare; but 
wherever ledges run up for any distance these are often tree- or bush-clad; and the one 
ledge which runs right up to the top, the one by which we ascended, is bush-clad 
to a point about two-thirds up, then bushless but plant-covered. 
In the ascent from Teroota up to about 5000 fect (nearly up, that is, to the commence- 
ment of the El Dorado swamp) we met with many plants new to me scattered among the 
* Full descriptions of this Cattleya have been given in the * Gardeners’ Chronicle,’ 1885, vol. xxiii. pp. 374, 375, 
and vol. xxiv. p. 168. 
+ The most conspicuous of the few plants of the ordinary plain which ascend above this point are :—Polygula 
hygrophila, Н. B. К.; P. longicaulis, H. B. K. ; P. variabilis, Н. B. K.; Sida linifolia, Cav.; Drosera communis, 
A. St.-Hil. ; Pleroma Tibouchinum, Triana; Sipanea pratensis, Aubl.; Pectis elongata, Н. B. K.; Gnaphalium 
spicatum, Lam. ; and Centropogon surinamensis, Presl. 
t This moraine-like part of the slope is curiously like the well-known ** Wistman's Wood " on Dartmoor. 
