THE STORY

Rock Shapes, RORAIMA's Summit

Their first impression of the summit was one of inability mentally to grasp their surroundings. They appeared to have entered a strange country of nightmares, a wildly fantastic landscape. All around them were rocks and pinnacles that seemed to defy gravity and challenge imagination. Rock shapes sculptured in the form "of caricatures of faces, of animals, of umbrellas, tortoises, churches, cannons, and of innumerable other most incongruous and unexpected objects". Between the rocks they noticed level spaces of pure yellow sand, with stream-lets and little waterfalls, and marshes with low, bristling vegetation. The first signs of animal life were large lizards that skittered from rock to rock, and the 'pipping' sounds of frogs.

The summit of Mount Roraima turned out to be a harsh but beautiful world above the clouds. Im Thurn and Perkins had no sooner accomplished their historic first ascent of Roraima than a thick mist engulfed the summit, obscuring any view of more than fifty metres or so, and therefore limiting their exploration. After a very short time, the successful explorers began their descent, leaving it for future expeditions to carry out more detailed surveys of the mysterious plateau.

Turtle Rock, RORAIMA's Summit

Oreophrynella quelchii

The first scientific exploration of Roraima, by Messrs. McConnell and Quelch, took place ten years later, in 1894, and was followed soon afterwards by a second expedition by the same two men. They reaped a wonderful harvest of curious and unique new plant and animal species, many of which were to bear the names of their discoverers. It took many years, however, to work through, and to catalogue, their collections. There were no dinosaurs, of course; neither were there any animals larger than a Coatimundi. The animals that were found showed a high degree of melanism: black lizards, black frogs, black butterflies. Why black? Perhaps to aid in heat absorption on this chilly mountain top, and perhaps to provide camouflage on the weather beaten rock surfaces coated with blackish algae. The richness of the collections, however, were provided by the plants. Even IM Thurn, after only a few hours on the summit following his successful first ascent, wrote of the plants: "Probably no district of equally small size has yielded greater botanical results as has Roraima.... (it is) an oasis clothed with vegetation distinct from that of the country which immediately surrounds it."