PEOGEESS OF GEOGEAPHICAL EESEAECH IN GUIANA. 7 



wider knowledge of the country ; for which, however, they earned the evil reputa- 

 tion of a land of pestilence and death. Of all the educated exiles who eventually 

 returned to the mother country, not one was found capable or willing to prepare a 

 work of permanent value on the land of his banishment. 



After the wars of the Revolution and of the Empire the first voyages of discovery 

 modelled on the memorable expeditions of Humboldt and Bonpland to the New 

 World were those undertaken by the brothers Schomburgk in the years 1835-39. 

 After investigating nearly the whole of British Guiana, these distinguished tra- 

 vellers crossed the mountains and connected their itineraries with those of Humboldt 

 and other explorers in the Orinoco basin. In French Guiana the divide between 

 the Oyapok, Yari, and Araguari rivers had already been crossed by Adam de 

 Bauve in 1830. Leprieur had traversed the same regions, descending the Yari 

 for a distance of over fifty leagues, while Gatier surveyed the course of the Mana 

 to its sources. 



During the twenty years from 1849 to 1868, Appun, friend and associate of 

 the forest Indians, devoted himself to the study more especially of the plants and 

 animals of exuberant tropical nature in British and Venezuelan Guianas ; the geolo- 

 gists Brown and Sawkins continued on the mainland as far as the Pacaraima 

 mountains the researches they had successfully carried out in the neighbouring 

 island of Trinidad ; Idenburg occupied himself with the climatology and sanitary 

 condition of Butch Guiana ; Crevaux in 1876 and Coudreau in 1883 resumed the 

 work of the Schomburgks at other points nearer to the Amazons, thus connecting 

 the itineraries of the seaboard with those of the inland Brazilian slopes in the Rio 

 Branco and Rio Negro basins. 



Since the year 1883 Everard im Thurn has been occupied with careful carto- 

 graphie surveys of the disputed north-western territory claimed by Great Britain 

 on the Venezuelan frontier. Triangulations are still lacking for accurate maps of 

 that region, but we already possess all the elements needed to lay down with suffi- 

 cient precision the course of the ramifying streams and the relief of the mountains, 

 bringing the details into harmony with the more scientific surveys of the coastlands 

 and fluvial estuaries. 



Of the numerous publications dealing with the geographical literature of the 

 Guianas, their populations, administration, and economic conditions, some are of 

 great value to students of anthropology and political economy. Amongst them are 

 the writings of Kappler and Anthony Trollope, Gifford Palgrave's Dutch Guiana 

 (1876), and, above all, Everard im Thurn s classical work on The Indians of Guiana 

 (1883). 



Physical Features — Roraima. 



Between Venezuela and British Guiana the chief mountain mass, forming the 

 natural frontier of both regions, is the superb Roraima, a square block or table of 

 pink sandstone, which discharges from a height of 7,500 feet several cascades 

 blown into ribbons of spray by the breeze. The whole system of mountains, col- 

 lectively known as the Pacaraima range, presents its loftiest crests to the west and 

 south-west in the Upper Rio Branco basin. 



