150 TlMEKRI. 
table-land, on Roraima, and that we are looking east- 
ward, down toward the sea. We should find, were 
such a bird's-eye view really possible, that the table-land, 
or savannah as it is there called, is an open, generally 
treeless country, its elevated surface hardly anywhere 
level, but swelling up in many hills and even in some 
mountain ranges. We find that only along the courses 
of the rivers, or in the lower parts where water has 
accumulated in some form, are there more or less exten- 
sive belts of trees ; and that, on the savannah itself, even 
these trees are, considering that we are in the tropics, of 
no great size. Further eastward, on the lower part of 
the slope, toward the sea, where the rivers have already 
grown wider and approached each other more nearly, 
the trees are more in number and of larger size. Still 
further eastward, yet lower down the slope, the belts Of 
trees, pertaining each to its own river, have widened 
with the rivers, till they have approached, and then 
joined, each other. And here the trees are of yet 
larger size. At last, at the bottom of the slope 
between its foot and the still far-distant sea waves, the 
wide tract of alluvial soil which has been deposited 
between the slope and the sea, having either been 
brought down by the rivers or cast up from the sea, is 
virtually entirely occupied by the omnipresent forest of 
trees, which have there attained their true gigantic trop- 
ical size. If we except certain small patches of very 
swampy open land, locally called wet savannahs, within 
this forest of the alluvial tra6t, all is forest except the 
very narrow strip of land actually washed by the waves, 
which has been cleared by men for habitation and 
cultivation, and not even that toward the north. 
