24 TlMEHRI. 
ledge, running diagonally from the bottom to the top of 
the opposite cliff of Roraima, which, from where we 
were, certainly seemed to offer a very practicable way of 
ascent. Yet, knowing that of the few other than Indians 
who had visited Roraima and had pronounced its summit 
inaccessible almost all had tried to attack it from the 
very point at which we now were, we failed to persuade 
ourselves that our ledge was really practicable. And 
only at one other point on this face of Roraima did it 
seem in the lecst possible even to think of attempting an 
ascent; and this second point afforded but the very 
smallest gleam of hope. 
The day after our arrival at Teroota, PERKINS and I, 
with tw f o of the Pomeroon Indians, went up the savannah 
slope of Roraima as far as the spot where SlEDEL had 
built his house. We found him some four miles up the 
slope, almost at the top of the savannah, at a point 
which afterward proved to be 5,405 feet above the sea 
level and 1,654 feet above the village of Teroota. He had 
made a tiny clearing within the edge of the forest where it 
met the savannah and had there established himself. He 
gave us much and valuable information. He had 
visited this same point on Roraima in the previous 
April, and had then found, and collected, consider- 
able quantities of his Cattleya ; but the plants had 
perished on the way home, and he had now returned 
for a fresh supply. He had noticed our ledge, but was 
convinced of its impracticability ; and he had moreover 
heard a tradition, which I afterward heard but always 
discredited, that some Indians had once attempted to 
ascend by it to the summit, but had been stopped almost 
before they made any progress up it by a great ravine 
