THE LATEST JOURNEY TO RORAIMA. 
Henry Epwarp Crampton, Ph. D. 
Curator of Invertebrate Zoology, American Museum of Natural History ; 
Professor of Zoology, Columbia University; Associate of the 
Carnegie Institution of Washington. 
During July and August of the past summer the writer had the rare good 
fortune to make a successful journey from Georgetown to Roraima,—the 
famous mountain that stands sentinel at the post where Guiana, Brazil and 
Venezuela are one. The journey was replete with incidents and experiences 
that possess chiefly a personal interest, but in addition certain observations 
were made that may have a general value to those acquainted with the interior 
of this part of South America, as well as to those who may travel toward 
Roraima at some future date. The present brief narrative aims to give a 
general description of the line of travel, the purposes, and the results of the 
expedition. 
The main object, in a word, was to run a biological traverse from the coast 
at Georgetown to the high levels centreing about Mount Roraima. To the 
biologist, the fauna and flora of this portion of South America are particularly 
interesting in connection with the larger problems of geographical distribution 
and evolution, for reasons which may be stated briefly as follow. During the 
glacial period great ice sheets came well down into the United States and 
destroyed many or most of the species living in that vast area. Later the 
climatic conditions changed so as to become those of the present temperate 
situation ; as such changes gradually came about North America was re-popu- 
lated by organisms which set out from South America, and mainly from two 
centres of dispersal. The first of these was the northern Andean region, from 
which most of the emigrants reached the United States by way of the Isthmus 
of Panama, Central America and Mexico. The other centre was the high 
interior region of which Roraima is the present focus, and from this area the 
organisms migrated mainly by way of the West Indies and Florida. With 
these fundamental facts at hand, the Department of Invertebrate Zoology of 
the American Museum reached a point in the development of its scientific work 
where it seemed desirable to undertake an extensive series of explorations in 
the Antilles and northern South America, in correlation with field-studies i 
characteristic localities of North America, in order to trace out as clearly as 
possible the lines of migration and distribution in past geological times, and to 
gain fuller knowledge of the evolutionary history of lower organic forms. In 
pursuance of these purposes, an attack upon the Roraima centre of dispersal 
was determined upon for an initial survey. 
With Mr. Roy, W. Miner and Dr. Frank E. Lutz, Assistant Curators of the 
Department, the writer left New York late in the month of May. Three weeks 
were devoted to biological studies in the island of Dominica, a place that 
attains the ideal for such investigations. Here Mr. Miner remained, an 
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