The First Ascent of Roraima. 41 
pyramids, rocks ridiculous at every point with count- 
less apparent caricatures of the faces and forms of 
men and animals, apparent caricatures of umbrellas, tor- 
toises, churches, canons, and of innumerable other most 
incongruous and unexpected objects. And between the 
rocks were level spaces, never of great extent, of pure 
yellow sand, with streamlets and little waterfalls and 
pools and shallow lakelets of pure water; and in some 
places there were little marshes filled with low scanty 
and bristling vegetation. And here and there, alike on 
level space and jutting from some crevice in the rock, 
were small shrubs in form like miniature trees, but all 
apparently ot one species. Not a tree was there ; no 
animal life was visible or, it even seemed, so intensely 
quiet and undisturbed did the place look, ever had been 
there. Look where one would on every side it was the 
same; and climb what high rock one liked, in every 
direction, as far as the eye could see was this same 
wildly extraordinary scenery. 
To complete such picture as I am here able to give of 
the scenery on the top of Roraima some few words 
further concerning the vegetation there occurring seem 
necessary, even though all details of this subject must be 
deferred to a future occasion. It has been said that the 
general character of all the plants there present is dwarf ; 
it may be added that it is in this respect almost alpine. 
It almost all occurs in the little swamps, on level water- 
saturated ground, to which reference has already been 
made ; but a very few plants, hardly differing in character 
from those on these levels, occur in the crevices of the 
rocks. Those on the level ground, appearing to the 
eye from a distance to be grasses, are in reality chiefly 
F 
