ROEAIMA IN THE DISTANCE. 
175 
conduced to fill us with a holy terror. I had never experienced such an 
uproar before. The quantity of water that fell during that hour must 
have been 4 inches. In spite of the innumerable strokes of lightning 
none w^ould seem to have struck, an event which tlie Indians assured us 
took place very rarely. Is it perliaps because the electi'lcally charged 
clouds pass so high over tlie surface that the contained fluid cannot reach 
it? If that be tlie case, one must conclude that the lower! cloud layers 
cannot enclose any. In the course of an anxious hour the clearest of 
starry heavens shed its soft light over the surrounding olijects now 
reposing in the depths of silence: the rain drops from the branches and 
leaves and the crashing of a tree now opening a! path for the first time 
were the only indications of Die whirlwind that had swept the mountain 
vale. In the morning tlie thermometer read 6P.° Fahr., a temperature 
that caused our teeth to chatter and forced us to make sharp progress. 
415. Our road lay along an undulating valley, now straight to the 
North. After crossing the river Cuino which flows towards the Zuappi 
from the N.W. it again went up-hill. The top was reached, and there be- 
fore us, to the N.E., rising in the dusky blue distance like a black sharply 
defined gigantic wall, was a dark clump of crag which the Indians greeted 
with the cry of "Roraima, Roraima !" But hardly had the greeting been 
repeated than an envious veil of cloud again hid the sombre gloomy 
massif, the goal of our journey, even before T had secured a good view of 
it. Our old friend, the mighty dome-shaped Zabang, of which we had 
only very rarely lost s;ght throughout the entire tnp over the ranges, 
towered again in the east mth all its pride of majesty up above the moun- 
tains around, and likewise maintained from here its well-earned claim to 
Olympus. The moun^tains in our immediate vicinity rose in mighty 
terraces that could not have been laid more skilfully by human hands and 
here and there even jutted out into the most regular bastions of which the 
mathematical precision of slope and sharply corresponding angles could 
hardly upset the belief that the square and plummet must have been used 
in their construction. 
416. The path now went down hill again into a valley replete with 
an abundance of tropical vegetation, and through a thick oasis of lovely 
isolated virgin forest trees and still nu^re beautiful tree ferns : on its 
farther edge we met one solitary house the occupants of which were sur- 
prised at seeing our pale faces and set some roasted maize before us. In 
the afternoon our course took a stretch along the 30-ft. high northern or 
left bank of the Cuino : it was covered with tree-like grasses and Ziiufi- 
heraceae and in spite of its height shoAved the most unequivocal signs of 
having been flooded over. On its southern bank there rose Mounts Cama- 
razin and Carimamparu, the river taking many a turn at the foot of the 
latter. We wer,e actively pursuing our way onw^ard towards evening 
through a valley with, alternating oases and savannahs to which Mount 
Apamapo, running from S.E. to N.W. some miles to the eastward, ex- 
tended, when,- — just as we were about to pitch camp on the edgö of an 
oasis at the foot of Mt. Mukuripa that had blocked the outlet to the 
northward ever since morning, — we noticed a large ant-bear, the first 
mammal met with since Torong-Yauwise, harmlessly and leisurely 
