79 
i?. Schomburgk^ Dr. Phil. 
trees among which, they fell being shattered into fragments. 
The grandeur and the sublimity of the gigantic mass of this 
marvel of nature, created the continued sensation that the 
projecting summit would fall suddenly and bury me under its 
ruins, and called forth a feeling quite heavy and strange to me. 
A great number of Orchids, Bromeliacece, with large scarlet 
flowers ; ferns, whose delicate fronds were gracefully moved 
by the wind, small shrubs with yellow or white flowers, 
creepers covered with flowers, grew luxuriantly in the chinks 
of the humid rock, and laughingly and provokingly nodded 
from the high stone wall towards me, as if to say, You 
won^t dare to disturb us here, and we are safe from your 
aggression.^^ The hope that the motion caused by the wind 
would break some of them off was never realized. What 
botanical treasures are contained on this stone wall, and how 
many are secreted on the top of it ; but they are secured too 
well from any aggressor, as the ascent is an impossibility. 
The rock consists of a fine-grained red sandstone, on its 
base luxuriantly grew a species of JRubus, whose sweet berries 
were eagerly eaten by us ; it was a nuw species, which the late 
Dr. Klotzsch has described as Ruhus Schoniburgkii, and is pro- 
bably the only species found in the tropics ; also a small 
Melastomaceae, with sulphur yellow flowers, which, at a closer 
examination, proved to be a species Camhes^edtsia, to which I 
could not give, I believe, a more characteristic specific name 
than that of Roraimae, as this peculiar plant was only found 
by me on the rock of the Eoraima. 
The forest, which reached to the base, and the wild mass 
of ferns, prevented a view of the landscape before us. My 
oppression only ceased when we began to descend, and I 
began to breath more freely, when I was out of the reach of 
the stone wall. 
The descent was far more difficult than the ascent. Had I 
taken a mud bath, I could not have arrived in a more dirty 
state to the camp. I had just finished laying my gathered 
treasures between the damp paper, when I had to take to my 
hammock, being attacked by one of the most acute cases of 
intermittent fever, from which I suffered so much during my 
travels in Guiana. 
Our hunters had not given up the hopes of tracing the 
tapir, and therefore had left the camp at daybreak ; this time 
they had been successful, they arrived with part of the vension 
at the camp. For ten days we had no meat, and it was not 
