224 TlMEHRI. 
Here our Indians manifested what was for them un- 
usual excitement, and stood gazing out across the 
valley at the slope which rose on the other side, 
pointing, at . apparently about the height at which 
we ourselves were standing, into the thick rainy mist 
which had been driving over the top of the forest 
all that morning. There, the guide said, was Mount 
Russell ; and he was very anxious that we should at 
once ascend it. But, not anticipating much pleasure 
from going up a mountain in thick mist, we waited 
where we were till the next morning. 
Before long the mist rose, and through the arch 
formed by the two trees closest to us we saw the long 
flat-topped mountain, everywhere thickly covered with 
trees except where, near its summit, two bare cliffs rose 
above the trees of the lower slope, while they themselves 
were crowned by flat tops, also tree-covered. It was a 
pretty picture and one unusual in Guiana ; but any- 
where else the mountain would have been called a 
hill — perhaps ' Russell Rise' or, as a legendary ARTHUR 
has his seat at Edinburgh, so in future ages might the 
then legendary ' Sugar King' give his name to ' Russell's 
Seat.' 
The ascent next day was short but stiff. Between 
our camp and the mountain lay not, as, misled by 
the thickness of the forest, we had thought, one 
valley, but three valleys, beyond the last of which 
the mountain sloped upward, at first gradually, its 
lower part being littered by huge broken granite boulders, 
on the top of some of which timber trees had rooted and 
grown huge where apparently was no earth till now they 
