The Latest Journey to Roraima. 17 
to all, and gave the hunters an opportunity to kill deer and two or three bush 
fowl, welcome additions to the usual fare. On the morning of August 9th 
we took up the journey and climbed up to the magnificent headland above 
Yakontipu, and, looking out over the beautiful valley of the Kwating, whose 
plain spread 1,500 feet below, at last we could see flat- topped and cloud-veiled 
Roraima, which stood beyond and to the north of terraced Weitipu. Another 
night in the forest on the Imber Creek, and then by a supreme effort the next 
day we arrived at the site of Parmak, only two miles east of the Kwating. But 
Parmak had vanished! All that remained was one mud-walled banaboo 
and our visions of a dry and comfortable house in which to swing the ham- 
mocks, cherished throughout the tedious and wet march of the long day, were 
rudely dispelled. By torch and lamp light the camp was made in the dripping 
forest. every one utterly worn out and discouraged. 
But the morrow always brings new life and counsel, and the next day we 
were cheered by the assertion of a volunteer guide that a way led to Roraima 
by a trail two days shorter than the one followed by earlier travellers. With re- 
newed hopes, therefore. we started from Parmak about noon of August 11th, 
walked the short distance to the Kwating River, and crossed in corials. The 
new path led southward to the shallow but broad valley of the Karnaireng, an 
affluent of the Kwating from the west, and early in the afternoon camp was 
made in a deserted and dilapidated banaboo on the savannahs. On the succeed- 
ing day we followed the Kanaireng toward its head, climbed over 700 feet 
through the forest, and found ourselves to the south-east of Weitipu on a 
beautiful savannah that averaged 4,000 feet in altitude. A solitary banaboo 
(Plate 5). oceupied by an Arecuna and his flourishing family, stands directly 
south of Weitipu, on the very crest of the ridge which divides the head waters 
of the Amazon and Orinoco. Guided by this man, we proceeded onward and 
camped in a small patch of trees on Erkui Creek, due west of Weitipu’s centre. 
By evening of the next day, August 13th, we had reached Roraima! Mak- 
ing an early start from Erkui we passed on to a ford of the Arabopo and 
climbed steadily up the savannah terraces beyond to an altitude of 4,200 feet. 
A dip into the forest along the Paiapalu was followed by another climb to a 
table-land 4,500 feet high, directly south of Roraima. From its edge, we 
had a glorious view of the great cliff-walled mountain (fig. 6), so like a vast 
battlement, that has lured many into the interior, and whose latest victim had 
breathed his last at its foot only two or three weeks before my arrival. For a 
time we sat and gazed upon it almost spell-bound, for the scene was one of rare 
beauty. Hundreds of feet below our escarpment, the savannahs rolled up- 
wards to the forest belt that girdles the mountain just below the high cliffs ; 
Kukenaam to the west is scarcely less impressive than its more famous sister ; 
to the east the lesser mountains of the Pakaraima series range in a jagged line 
on to Yakontipu and beyond, forming a natural boundary between the water- 
shed of the Amazon and the systems of British Guiana. 
Yet no new description of Roraima is needed ; others have pictured it in 
graphic words with directness and power, and the circumstances of the present 
brief writing do not sanction my own panegyrics. With the fruits of success 
