Richard Schomburgk's Account of Romima.^ 



Translated by Mrs. M. H. von Ziegezar. 



I HE beauty of the valley of the Kukenaam as well 

 as the friendly welcome which we met with 

 from its inhabitants, the Arekunas, made us 

 fix upon this spot for our headquarters during the time 

 we should remain in the neighbourhood of the Roraima, 

 which was now rising in its full majesty at a distance 

 of only a few miles to the north-east. We had chosen a 

 pi6luresque spot. On the left bank of the Kukenaam, 

 which winds here through innumerable quartz and jasper 

 boulders, the mountain savannah rose destitute of every 

 trace of tree or shrub, and to the N.N.E. the red walls of 

 the Roraima and Kukenaam were almost perpetually 

 shrouded in a thick mass of clouds. 



As the neighbourhood harbours but few mammals and 

 birds, and as the mountain rivers contain also but few and 

 small fiShes, of the size of a finger and belonging chiefly 

 to the family of the siluri, the Arekunas depend almost 

 exclusively on vegetable food. 



In spite of this, they love their home, and more par- 

 ticularly the Roraima, with an attachment equalled only 

 by the passionate love of the Swiss for their Alps. 



The Roraima is the subje6t of all their festive 

 song. Tell them about the beauties of Pirara with its 

 vast savannahs, its numerous herds of cattle, its deer ; 

 about the enormous fish in its rivers, the abundance of 

 food, and they will answer you : '' It cannot be a 



* Reisen in Britisch-Guiana, Vol. ii. Chapter 7, (part only). 



