THE KAIETEUR FROM ABOVE.

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Thickets of splendid

most prominent feature in the scene. flowered orchids (Sobralia), as tall as a man, and many other rare and quaint plants grow among the agave groups, each of which is laced together by a large fern (Pteris aquilina), almost, if not quite, identical with the delicately beautiful and graceful English bracken.

This plant-growth lends a most strange character to the scenery of the place. It is quite unlike anything I have seen elsewhere in the colony, and for once realises the common idea of tropical scenery. The savannah is of itself well worthy of a visit.'

Crossing the savannah we soon reached the Kaieteur cliff. Lying at full length on the ground, head over the edge of the cliff, I gazed down.

Then, and only then, the splendid and, in the most solemn sense of the word, awful beauty of the Kaieteur burst. upon me. Seven hundred and fifty feet below, encircled by black boulders, lay a great pool into which the column of white water, graceful as a ceaseless flight of innumerable rockets, thundered from by my side. Behind the fall, through the thinnest parts of the veil of foam and mist, the great black cavern made the white of the water look yet more white.

My first sensations were of a terrible and undefined fear. Those who visit the fall will understand this. When some of the men hurled down one of the big Bromeliads, the act seemed to cause me unbearable pain; I had as soon have hurled myself over as have allowed a repetition of the act just then. Gradually, however, these painful feelings gave way to others of intense wondering delight; and the whole scene,

colossal Bromeliad ever discovered. Mr. Baker has now provisionally named it Brocchinia cordylinoides.

1 Mr. Jenman, who has since had a prolonged opportunity of collecting plants on this savannah, procured and sent from there to Kew a herbarium collection, which is declared by the assistant-director of the Royal Gardens to be almost the most important collection ever received from South America.'

the gigantic weird fall, the dark and slippery places below, the grass-covered rocks at the gate of the amphitheatre, and beyond that the bright thickly wooded valley of the winding river, visible for many miles, were revealed, never to be forgotten.

As soon as we could force ourselves away from the cliff, we formed our camp in a clump of small trees which stands at the very edge of the fall. Here we spent two days, which were fully occupied in searching the whole strange place.

In the rock plateau, not far from the edge of the cliff, are certain long, narrow, and immeasurable deep fissures, lying parallel to the cliff, and therefore at right angles to the bed of the river. They exactly resemble the very narrowest crevasses in a glacier. These seem to throw some light on the process by which the ravine and amphitheatre of the Kaieteur have been formed. It must be remembered that the plateau consists of a layer of hard conglomerate overlying a bed of softer sandstone. The cave behind the column of water has been formed, as Mr. Brown has said, by the back splash from the fall, which has washed away the sandstone from under the conglomerate. The ordinary theory is that the constant passage of the water gradually wears away this conglomerate roof, and so the cave and fall continuously, but very gradually, retreat backward. But it seems to me that the process is not gradual, but by occasional, sudden catastrophes.

Though I was unable to find one of these narrow fissures crossing the actual bed of the stream, yet from their frequent occurrence on other parts of the plateau, and considering that the rock close by the top of the fall is extraordinarily uneven, looking as if much creased and folded; and that the bed of the river just there is much choked by a dense mouth of sedges, it is probable that such fissures do occur across the bed of the river. If so, while the main body of the water would, by reason of its velocity, rush over them, yet some water would trickle down through these fissures, and would gradually

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widen them. The result of this would be that the conglomerate would form, not a roof, but a bridge, over the cave. This bridge would in time give way, its fragments falling to the bottom of the amphitheatre. Only in this way, it seems to me, can the enormous masses of boulders which fill the whole bottom of the ravine be accounted for.

The water being very low at the time of our visit, we were able to obtain a better view of the cave and pool than has been obtained by others; and it certainly seemed that there was a small flow of water outward from the cave and from behind the fall. If this is so, it of course corroborates the above theory.

The more I saw of the Bromeliads of the savannah the more striking they appeared. Unlike most other succulent plants they are of a bright light yellowish-green colour, and seem at first sight very unfitted to find nourishment on this. parched plain of earth-bare rock. A second glance, however, shows a special adaptation to the place of growth. The base of each leaf of the rosette-shaped plant is so curved in at its edges against the leaf immediately within it that it forms a large reservoir for water. Each of these receptacles contains from a half-pint to a pint; so that the whole plant is provided with a store of several quarts of water. These receptacles being fully exposed to the sun, the water within them must evaporate quickly; but the heavy dew which falls here, and the thick clouds of mist which continually rise by night and during the early morning from the fall and drop back on this plain in the form of rain must continually renew the

store.

Another perhaps yet more curious, though inconspicuous plant was a small round-leafed sundew (Drosera rotundifolia), an insect-eating plant which grows plentifully among the loose stones overlying the rocks in the very driest parts of the savannah. Its small red leaves are covered with long hairs, each of which carries a drop of very sticky liquid. Small insects, hovering round the plant, are caught by this gummy substance, and are unable to get away from the