162 TlMEHRI. 
This 5,000 feet of height, it must be explained, is 
made up of a sloping base, the pediment of the pillar, 
of about 3,000 feet, which is surmounted by the more 
stri6lly pillar-like portion, 2,000 feet in height. The 
plateau on top of the pillar is a very slightly, indeed 
almost imperceptibly, hollowed basin — four miles wide 
by some seven or eight miles long, it must be remem- 
bered — over which are scattered innumerable single 
rocks and piles of rocks, the largest of which are appar- 
ently some eighty or ninety feet in height. The sloping 
basal part of the mountain is, everywhere but toward 
the south-east covered by dense, but not lofty, forest ; 
while on the south-east a considerable portion of it, 
which portion does not however extend up to the foot of 
the actual cliff, is treeless and grass-covered. The cliff 
itself is bare, but for a comparatively few mosses, ferns, 
grasses and trailing plants clinging closely to the rougher 
parts of its surface, especially where the many water-falls 
trickle down the rock-face, and for the dwarf shrubs, 
ever dwarfer and more alpine in character toward the 
top, which have found a lodgement on the few trans- 
verse ledges which break the evenness of the surface. 
The hollow basin at the top of the pillar is, wherever a 
little soil has accumulated in the depressions of the bare 
group of mountains apparently very similar in physical feature to Ro- 
raima, though on a much smaller scale, which he discovered further 
south on the continent. Mr. Wells was kind enough to show me a 
series of his sketches of these mountains and the country surrounding 
them. Not only was the similarity of the mountains to Roraima 
striking, but I was also much struck by some sketches of places exa6Hy 
corresponding to what I have described as Eppellings. Mr. Wells, 
while disclaiming all botanical knowledge, assures me that the vegeta- 
tion of his group docs not correspond with that of Roraima. 
