1930 MOUNT RORAIMA magazine article, BRAZIL expedition, natives geology

Description

Selling is a 1930 magazine article about:
MOUNT RORAIMA, BRAZIL
Title: THROUGH BRAZIL TO THE SUMMIT OF MOUNT RORAIMA
Author: G. H. H. Tate
Quoting the first page “A huge table-land, remote, forbidding, belted by stupendous precipices of craggy sandstone, towering eternally among its mantling clouds- that is Mount Roraima. Rising calmly, gradually, at a point where the British Guiana- Venezuela- Brazil boundaries meet, it surveys its world.
It is very ancient. Picture the earth some three hundred millions of years ago, when Roraima was, as it were, born. No mountain then, but a part of the bottom of vast, shallow lakes and deltas.
Ages passed by, during which the land rose uniformly and gradually; lakes dried up or drained away; sands and silts became compacted and cemented together into a level tract perhaps as great in area as New York State.
During further millions of years the strata were injected by great "sills" of molten rock, coming no one knows whence, that actually floated the topmost two or three thousand feet of sandstone beds.
Still later, long-continued erosion etched away the softer sandstones and dissected the new plateau until it became separated into great blocks that successively grew smaller and crumbled away.
To-day the sole remnant of the ancient lake bottom is the Roraima group of table-lands. Roraima itself has acres of its surface lined with perfectly preserved ripple marks of Paleozoic (or older) waters.
Mount Roraima has ever been a magnet to the explorer, calling, yet defying him to solve the mystery of its origin. In his turn, each man has wrested his mite of knowledge from the region, and the sum total of their discoveries shows in the picture I have attempted to draw.
Fossil records are entirely wanting. Doubtless primitive fishes, gigantic salamanders, dinosaurs, pterodactyls, and early mammals swam, or crept, or roamed, or flew, during their appointed periods, among the lakes and plains of the territory; but the ceaseless wearing away of the rocks prevented the preservation of the smallest evidence of their existence.
Recently the generosity of Mr. Lee Garnett Day permitted the American Museum of Natural History to send a small, but well-equipped, expedition to the plateau. As the leader, I was accompanied by Mr. T. D. Carter, from the Department of Mammalogy, who on this occasion gave his attention primarily to the collection of birds. Mr. G. M. Tate, my brother, arranged to go with us in a supernumerary capacity, ready to turn his hand to any work requiring his attention. He was helpful in taking entire charge of the commissariat of the party. In midsummer we sailed from New York for Para, Brazil.
Several travelers have visited Roraima. Comparatively few, though, have reached its summit, and then generally have remained only for a few hours or for a single night.
Our imperfect knowledge of the animal life of the table-land has been derived from several small collections, which, though they often contained a high proportion of new forms, have merely served as appetizers to scientists.
Such unusual varieties as
Diglossa major
, rarest of the honey creepers;
Thomasomys mcconnelli
, the only mammal recorded from Roraima;
Heliamphora nutans
, a very beautiful pitcherplant and the only kind known from South America-all these suggested untold biological riches awaiting discovery.
The object of our expedition was to obtain specimens of all known species, and at the same time to try to bring the list of the fauna and flora of Roraima as nearly as possible to completion.
For such work, time is an essential factor. Equally important is a complete and ample equipment. So far as we can tell from accounts, the pioneers in the Roraima region were somewhat hampered …"
7” x 10”, 21 pages, 25 B&W photos
These are pages from an actual 1930 magazine.
30K2
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