236 Obituary — Charles Barrington Brown. 



author of several papers contributed to the earliest volumes of the 

 Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, whose drawings of 

 sections of the Cape Breton coal-fields are found in most geological 

 textbooks since Lyell's Principles. 



Born at Cape Breton, he was educated at Harvard University, and 

 at the Boyal School of Mines, London (1862-4), taking his 

 associateship in Geology. On the recommendation of Sir Charles 

 Lyell, a close friend of his father, he was appointed to the Geological 

 Survey of the West Indies (Jamaica) and of British Guiana 

 (Demerara), on which he served with J. G. Sawkins from 1864 to 

 1870. For the next four years, from 1870 to 1873, he was in sole 

 charge of the Survey. His reports on the Geology of British Guiana 

 and of Jamaica in collaboration with that geologist are still the 

 standard works on the subject, and earned the commendation of the 

 Governors of those colonies. 



During his travels on the Potaro River, a tributary of the 

 Essequebo, he made the discovery, in April, 1870, of the famous 

 Kaieteur Falls, the highest known true waterfall in the world, 

 822 feet in height and 123 yards wide ; the chief wonder of British 

 Guiana. An account of this discovery is to be found in one of 

 Barrington Brown's books, Canoe and Camp Life in British Guiana, 

 London, 1877, and in the Journal of the Boyal Geographical Society 

 (vol. xli, 1871). This is his description of the discovery : — 



"Descending the river [Potaro] rapidly all day, we came within 

 sound of the roar of a large fall. . . . When we came to the northern 

 end of the savanna I observed that heavy masses of vapour were 

 drifting before the north-east wind, making the trees, grass, and 

 shrubs on our right dripping wet. This came from the great fall, to 

 which we were in close proximity, but which was hidden from view 

 by a grove of trees. Making a detour to the right through this 

 grove, we came out on the flat rocks at the head of the great fall, 

 and walking to the edge of the precipice, down which the water was 

 precipitated, I gazed with wonder and delight at the singular and 

 magnificent sight that lay before me. 



"Not being prepared for anything so grand and startling I could 

 not at first believe my eyes, but felt that it was all a dream. 



"There, however, was the dark, silent flow of water down which 

 we had travelled, passing slowly but surely to the brink of a great 

 precipice, and breaking into ripples as it approached its doom. Then 

 curving over the edge in a smooth mass of brownish tinge, changing 

 into snow-white fleecy foam, it was precipitated downwards into 

 a black seething cauldron hundreds of feet below. ... I was 

 prepared to meet with great falls on our way down . . . but nothing 

 of so grand and extraordinary a nature as this ever entered my mind 

 for a moment." 



Shortly afterwards he discovered the less well-known but never- 

 theless remarkable fall of Ourindouie, on the Ireng River, a tributary 

 of the Rio Branco. It may be remembered that a Dr. Bovallius 

 announced, in 1907, the discovery of a waterfall on- that river 

 " rivalling Niagara ", which he proposed to call the "Chamberlain 

 Pall". Brown, on reading this account, recognized a description of 



