The First Ascent of Roraima. 
The next morning we plunged at once back into the 
forest. Any kind of walking more wearisome than this 
long progress, lasting so many days, under a dense roof of 
leaves hardly broken anywhere sufficiently to let in 
any but the smallest gleams of light, over an apparently 
endless and universal floor, renewed throughout the year, 
of fallen and mouldering leaves, can hardly be imagined. 
Moreover one's whole attention is ever occupied and 
strained ; for, under foot, the apparently smooth carpet of 
dead leaves is really most treacherously spread, not on the 
earth, but over, and hiding, a dense and intricate network 
of tree-roots of all shapes and sizes, any one of which 
may at any moment throw the unwary traveller heavily 
and dangerously to the ground ; while, overhead, hang 
down numberless coiled and looped and tangled bush-ropes 
and pendent branches of trees, each ready to catch round 
the neck of the walker or at least to sweep off his hat 
and cause him to stop, to his great discomfort and the 
disturbance of his many burdens. Long walking through 
such changeless gloomy places induces, if I may judge 
from my own experience, a curious and painful feeling. 
The senses of sight, sound and touch are dulled to anni- 
hilation, except, and it is a great exception, so far as 
each of these senses is intensely and painfully on the 
watch for trap-like root or branch threatening head or 
foot, for sound of water to break the stillness, for light 
to dispel the gloom ; and corresponding with this cessa- 
tion of the activities of the senses of the body comes a 
dreamlike activity of the mind, which either races back 
through a long series of just such of the past scenes 
in one's life as are of most painful or most unwel- 
come memory, or flies forward along the anticipated 
