Occasional Notes. 335 
points certainly to some more deeply-seated and powerful 
denuding fa6tor, such as that surmised by Mr. Bar- 
RINGTON BROWN, than simply to the forces of aerial 
denudation. 
Mr. DRESSEL gives a very entrancing pi6lure of the 
views obtained from Roraima, of .the underlying parts. 
At the time of his descent, the clouds were apparently 
drifting towards, or were hanging by, the mountain in 
the South-west ; so that while the view horizontally was 
hidden by a veil of white, the underlying country was 
lighted by sunshine, with striking contrasts of hill, and 
vale or plain — the former gloriously gilded by the sheen 
which touched it and crowned it, and the latter bathed 
in a thin film of darkness, deepening as the day declined, 
and as the shadows gradually stole across the hills. But 
after all, this can alone be fully and fitly portrayed by 
the pen of one who has gazed upon the scene. 
In Mr. DRESSEL'S experience, the descent was one of 
very great difficulty, since he found himself frequently 
landed at the bottom of various pits or hollows from which 
it was often difficult to extricate himself or to be extricated. 
At the same time, he regards the difficulty of ascent and 
descent of Roraima as little compared with that of the 
Merume mountains, over which he had to climb to and from 
the Mazaruni — an opinion that calls to mind Mr. BARRING- 
TON BROWN'S experiences in those mountains in his trip 
while surveying the colony. To increase the difficulty 
and danger of this descent of Roraima, Mr. DRESSEL 
states that it got dark before they had passed through 
the forest belt ; his progress was therefore more a suc- 
cession of falls than the stately march of the man who 
had made the third ascent of the famous mountain. As 
uu 2 
