40 TlMEHRI. 
ground orchids. The pitcher-plant {Heliamphora) was 
there too in abundance, and of a size and luxuriance 
so far surpassing its habit in the El Dorado swamp that 
it seemed to us a new plant. 
Up this part of the slope we made our way with com- 
parative ease till we reached a point where one step 
more would bring our eyes on a level with the top — and 
we should see what had never been seen since the world 
began, should see that of which, if it cannot be said all 
the world has wondered, at least many people have 
long and earnestly wondered, should see that of which 
all the few, white men or red, whose eyes had ever 
rested on the mountain had declared would never be 
seen while the world lasts — should learn what is on top 
of Roraima. 
Then the step was taken — and we saw surely as 
strange a sight, regarded simply as a product of nature, as 
may be seen in this world ; nay it would probably not be 
rash to assert that very few sights even as strange can be 
seen. The first impression was one of inability men- 
tally to grasp such surroundings ; the next that one was 
entering on some strange country of nightmares for 
which an appropriate and wildly fantastic landscape had 
been formed, some dreadful and stormy day, when, in 
their mid career, the broken and chaotic clouds had been 
stiffened, in a single instant, into stone. For all around 
were rocks and pinnacles of rocks of seemingly impossibly 
fantastic forms, standing in apparently impossibly fantastic 
ways — nay placed one on, or next to, the other in 
positions seeming to defy every law of gravity — rocks in 
groups, rocks standing singly, rocks in terraces, 
rocks as columns, rocks as walls and rocks as 
