52 



travels of Marco Polo, Columbus, the 

 transcontinental journey of Lewis and 

 Clark, and the vo\age of the 1 1. M.S. 

 Beagle are coniplctch- gone. Yet today 

 there remain ever increasing demands 

 for more refined field procedure in 

 natural histor}', and surely there has 

 never been keener competition in ex- 

 ploration for new sources of raw ma- 

 terials, petroleum, metals, and plants 

 of economic promise than there has 

 been in the past decade. Exploration 

 will remain for some time to come an 

 important tool of modem society. 



In the conduct of exploration, two 

 primary' general requisites precede or- 

 ganization and preparation for the ex- 

 pedition, viz., a well considered and 

 selected objective, and an adequate 

 background knowledge of the country 

 or region to be visited, viz., its geology, 

 geography, biological history, language 

 and social customs. The general phys- 

 ical characters of the selected region 

 would predetermine the kind of prob- 

 lems to be met, and hence the require- 

 ments of equipment, supplies and 

 foods. Obviously, if an expedition were 

 to be sent to the Arctic, the types of 

 clothing, camp equipment, etc., would 

 be greatly different from those re- 

 quired for an expedition to the tropics. 



As it happens, this piece is being 

 written aboard a 300 ton, twin-engined, 

 diesel powered passenger ship, now 

 about 600 miles inland, plowing up- 

 stream to the head of large river-craft 

 navigation at Puerto A)acucho, the 

 capital city of the Territor}^, built at the 

 foot of the great rapids of the Orinoco 

 in Amazonian Venezuela. Preparation 

 for this trip has been going on for 

 some time. Organization is still in 

 progress. An outline in some small de- 

 tail, giving the background, objective, 

 organization and preparation of the 

 present trip, may serve to typify one 

 kind of exploration. 



PIIYTOGEOGRAPIIY AND EXPLOR^VTION 

 BACKGROUND 



A hundred and twenty years ago, 

 Robert Schomburgk, while performing 

 a geographical commission for the 

 Royal Socictv in London, doing general 

 exploration for the Colony of British 

 Guiana, and collecting large series of 

 plants and animals to be studied and 

 distributed by the Royal Botanic Gar- 

 dens, Kew, and the British Museum, 

 Kensington, crossed the Tacutu River 

 to visit the old fort of San Joaquim, 

 which lay at the confluence of the 

 Araricucra and Tacutu where the Rio 

 Branco, one of the principal tribu- 

 taries of the Amazon is formed. Travel- 

 ing northward from Joaquim, Schom- 

 burgk traversed rugged terrain domi- 

 nated by cnstalline rocks of the Gua- 

 yana Shield and intrusive granites. 

 Some fifty miles south of the present 

 Venezuelan-Brazilian frontier, he en- 

 countered series of sandstone sediments 

 and associated sedimentan' volcanics, 

 and was thus the first European of rec- 

 ord to set foot on the eastern region of 

 the Roraima Formation (Martins some 

 years earlier collected on sandstone 

 areas in Colombian Amazonas). Fur- 

 ther to the north he reached a chain 

 of exceedinglv high sandstone block 

 mountains, the most prominent of 

 which was called bv the Indians "Ro- 

 raima." Schomburgk's descriptions of 

 the terrain and collections from the 

 slopes of Roraima and the surrounding 

 sedimentar}' plateau, together with ma- 

 terial collected on his visit four years 

 later, aroused much interest in England 

 and on the Continent. Subsequently, a 

 succession of European biologists 

 visited the Roraima area, the last of 

 whom was Ernst Ule, circa 1912. 



In dugout and on foot during his first 

 visit to the sandstone regions of Gua- 

 vana, Robert Schomburgk, still under 

 commission of the Royal Societ)', trav- 

 eled westerlv for some four hundred 

 miles until he made contact on the 



