KAIETUK, MOTHER OF MISTS
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep.
W. WORDSWORTH: _Ode_.
There were showers at dawn, but these had passed over when we started
from Tukeit in the early morning to climb up on to the Kaietuk plateau.
The existing forest trail, after leaving Tukeit, traverses some low
foot-hills, and then rises sharply to cross the Washibaru creek. Next
follows another steep ascent to the Korumê creek, which is bridged by
_tacoubas_ at a point whose Indian name has been translated as the
“Devil’s Mother’s Pillars.” Here the country is very broken, and the
whole channel of the Korumê has been strewn with large boulders that
completely hide the water from sight. It would seem probable that in time
past cliffs stood on both sides of this gorge, and that they crumbled
inwards, so blocking the exit of the Korumê, which, nevertheless, has
burrowed a way underneath the rocks and hurries down in a very abrupt
cataract to the Potaro. From the Devil’s Mother’s Pillars there is an
exceedingly steep climb, with a gradient resembling in places a ladder
rather than a road, until the edge of the Kaietuk plateau is reached at
a tree on which the word “Amen” has been cut. Gossip has it that on one
occasion a respected colonist was hoisted up to this point, two Indians
pulling him with a rope in front and two more pushing him behind. He lay
down under this tree almost at his last gasp; and, while he recovered
breath, his companion cut the word “Amen” in the trunk. It certainly is
a villainous climb, especially in rainy weather, when the moss-covered
stepping-stones are wet and slippery, and it does not improve with
acquaintance. From Amen Point the forest trail runs along a ridge more
or less level for another couple of miles or so to the Kaietuk savannah,
with the precipitous gorge of the Potaro on one side and the deep-cut
valley of the Korumê on the other. The Indians say that this path
originated in a track by which otters descended from the Upper to the
Lower Potaro; and, whether this be so or not, the line is certainly quite
unsuitable for human traffic even on foot.
The whole trail runs always in forest, never affording any view of the
Kaietuk Falls or of anything save the vista of tree-trunks immediately
ahead. Big boulders lie scattered pell-mell round about in the jungle,
some as large as houses, and many curious orchidaceous plants thrive in
the drenchingly moist atmosphere. The so-called “Kaieteur lily,” whose
green leaves are striped with brown and black lines and whose heart, when
in flower, is a scarlet feather, grows gaily on boulder and tree-stem.
Then suddenly, when we had been about two hours on the march from Tukeit,
the forest ended and the trail debouched on a savannah of flat rock,
covered with a thin layer of sand, in which grass and many charming
wild-flowers grow freely. No sooner do you reach the savannah than you
also come upon the last of Sprostons’ rest-houses. It stands out in the
open, at a considerable distance from any water, save what is caught upon
its corrugated iron roof and conveyed to a vat. Behind it and on both
sides all view is cut off by the forest, which is only a few feet away.
In front there is a small open savannah, and beyond range upon range of
blue, forest-clad hills. But there is still no sign or sound whatever of
the mighty waterfall, and those who do not know could never guess that
anything extraordinary was near by.
We rested for a few minutes in the bungalow, enjoying the view and the
delicious change of climate which comes from ascending some 1,500 feet.
Then we walked on a hundred yards or so across the savannah. The first
sign of danger ahead is a deep fissure in the ground, which must be
crossed carefully. A few steps more, and with appalling suddenness a
terrific chasm yawns at one’s feet. From the rest-house nothing can be
seen of precipice or chasm, and the forests which clothe the cliff-tops
upon the opposite side of the river gorge appear to meet the edge of
the savannah. Indeed, this abrupt rift in a landscape which does not
otherwise suggest anything stupendous startled me afresh each time. It
takes hours to realize the scene. We stood on the overhanging lip of a
precipice: thin air below us for many hundred feet. Still, however, the
waterfall was almost a mile away across the gulf; and nothing could be
seen of it, for the whole gorge was filled with mist and thick, white,
fleecy cloud. “Mother of Mists” should Kaietuk be named, as Roraima
is called “Father of Streams.” In point of fact, however, the word
_Kaietuk_ (Dr. Bovallius writes it _Kaijituik_) means “Old Man’s Rock,”
and the falls are so named by the Indians, because of a folk-tale to the
effect that an aged Indian, becoming a nuisance to his relatives, as his
feet were infested with chigoes, which they had to pick out for him, was
put in a woodskin and sent to drift to his death over this abyss. Strange
that Kaietuk’s majestic beauty should have inspired no better legend
than this! The word _tuk_ or _tuik_ means “rock,” and is also found in
Paka_tuk_, Ama_tuk_, Wara_tuk_, and _Tuk_eit, all of which are well-known
cataracts on the Potaro River. The usual spelling “Kaieteur” is a mere
mistake.
The mists of the waterfall are drawn up and dispersed in the sunshine,
but directly the sun goes they fill up the gorge and hide everything.
Indeed, it was not till the afternoon on the day of our arrival that the
weather cleared and Kaietuk stood revealed in all its grandeur. I fear
it is almost impossible to give in words any idea of this wonder, but I
will make an attempt. Lazy, dreamy Potaro suddenly leaps down fully eight
hundred feet vertically into a great black caldron below, and then flows
through a vast amphitheatre of precipices, towering to an equal height
on either bank, their bases clothed in forest. The black bush-water, as
it reaches the lip of the fall and the sun strikes it, turns first amber
and then to a creamy spray, and falls in festoons of foam, which seem
living and change incessantly. The river was low on this occasion, so
that comparatively little water was going over, and it looked as though
the whole mass turned to spray before reaching the black depths beneath;
but sometimes a puff of wind blew the opalescent foam-curtain aside for
a second, and one caught a glimpse of the amber column descending. The
contrast between the grim, black and red, weather-stained cliffs and the
flying, gleaming, living, falling water is marvellously beautiful. Little
wisps of mist float ceaselessly forth from out the black cavern behind
the fall. A glorious rainbow hovers about it, whilst flights of swallows
cross and recross before it, bathing themselves in the spray in a manner
that would enchant a Japanese artist. Pairs of macaws sail majestically
past the background of white foam, the crimson of their under-wings and
the brilliant blue of their bodies gleaming like jewels when the sun
catches them. The fickle come-and-go of shape and sheen in the restless
cataract makes its strange beauties alive with caprice and mystery; for
the eye can follow during several seconds the lace-like, ever-varying
tracery of each water-wreath as it drops from the lip of Kaietuk to meet
the foam tossed up from the black whirlpool underneath.
We spent all the afternoon studying the fall from various points of
view. At the cliff-edge near Sprostons’ bungalow one can see, but not
photograph, its entire length; and there is a good view of the tumbling
reaches of the river below, which alternate with large, still pools. You
can also look fully a mile upstream above the fall, where Potaro flows
in a straight reach through a vast, densely forested plateau, stretching
away to distant blue hills, also forest-clad, save on their vertical
cliff-sides—hills that beckon the traveller onwards, prophesying further
wonders. For from the Kaietuk savannah a view can be obtained of Mount
Kowatipu, round the spur of which we were to travel on our further
journey to Roraima, and of the lofty range of mountains, called by the
Indians Kamana and Morakabang, at the head of the Kopinang River. There
is also an extensive panorama of the plateau and the mountains on the
right bank of the Potaro.
Sir Walter Egerton, who visited Kaietuk in 1913, had a path cut for him
from Sprostons’ rest-house in a downriver direction, near the edge of the
precipice, through an awesome forest among black fissures, huge rocks,
and forbidding caverns, for a distance of about a quarter of a mile,
to a bare jut of cliff, which overhangs the gorge at a point about one
mile as the crow flies from the brink of Kaietuk. From this spot it is
possible to photograph the abyss in its entire height, but not from any
point nearer. The vertical fall is sixfold that of Niagara, and the whole
scene is on so enormous a scale that it is difficult to realize how huge
is every detail of it all, and one sorely needs something to give the
sense of proportion with the ordinary workaday world. There is also a
trail from the rest-house to the brink of the fall, where one obtains a
wonderful view down the gorge to Mount Kenaima at the Amatuk Gateway and
to the dim plains beyond, a distant sea of forest. But from the water’s
edge it is, of course, impossible to see much of the chasm into which
the river falls, unless you lie prone on the overhanging rock and look
straight down into the caldron below. Round about the head of the fall
on the left bank of the Potaro is a curious open plain of hard, smooth
rock. It is almost flat, with a gentle incline toward the river-side,
and is strewn with small, round, white pebbles. Save the wealth of
wild-flowers, only scrub wreathed with golden “Kaietuk vine” and big
orchidaceous plants, some of them ten or twelve feet high, grow there;
but it is a curiously fascinating place, and forms a weird and fantastic
approach to the fall itself. Surely it would be a good thing if British
Guiana made the whole of this unique savannah in the immediate vicinity
of Kaietuk, abounding, as it does, in interesting plants and flowers,
into a colonial park, after the model of the national parks in the United
States; and, if so, when made readily accessible, it should be a source
of health and delight to many generations of our colonists, whose work
compels them to reside, as a rule, on the hot coastal plains.
[Illustration: POTARO GORGE FROM KAIETUK.
To face page 78.]
We reached Kaietuk on Christmas Eve; and, as all our baggage and stores
had to be carried up on the back of our Indian droghers from Tukeit
to a point above the waterfall, where Potaro is again navigable, our
headquarters during all Christmas Day, as well as for the larger part
of Boxing Day, were at Sprostons’ rest-house. I shall never forget that
Christmas Day at Kaietuk. The lights were so wonderful on the gorge,
and a lovely rainbow hovered over the fall. Each time that I turned away
from Kaietuk and looked down the valley I said to myself: “It is more
lovely than the last time I looked this way;” and, whenever I turned back
to that living, moving water, I felt, “This really _is_ more wonderful
than a second ago.” One of the most striking things about Kaietuk is its
silence, due, I suppose, to the foot of the fall being so far below.
Occasionally, when the wind eddied upward, a great sullen growl came up,
and the Makusis standing beside me at the brink of the cliff stepped back
with a grunt of superstitious alarm.
The wonder of it all makes coming away very hard, for one becomes
fascinated by the ever-changing glory and can never look enough. When, in
October, 1917, my husband and I were three weeks in camp on this plateau,
it did not seem one day too long; and we studied Kaietuk in all its
moods—in misty dawn, magnificent day, and ghostly moonlight. We pitched
camp about fifty yards from the edge of the abyss, a few feet above the
river-side. It was a heavenly spot. Our tarpaulins were slung in a little
strip of forest for protection from the weather; but a big rock, jutting
out into the river and overarched by trees, made us the most perfect
“parlour” in the world. As I lay in a hammock, listening to the delicious
swish-swish of the hurrying river, I could see miles and miles of blue
hills and shining stream below me, right away down the gorge to Amatuk.
What happy, lazy hours that hammock afforded me, too blissful even for
reading, when one seemed not wholly awake, yet not at all asleep, and
altogether aware of the loveliness around one! The fall, of course,
could not be seen from the camp, but the air came to us chilled by its
moving waters, cool and invigorating even at midday. Curiously enough,
the mists, which float ceaselessly forth from behind Kaietuk and often
fill the gorge and roll in clouds over the savannah, seemed somehow to be
abruptly cut off by the precipice, and never came our way. Altogether it
was the most perfect of many delightful camps.
But the day’s occupation was by no means limited to hammock musings,
for our object, during those three weeks, was to find a practicable
alignment for a motor-road from the Kaietuk plateau down to Amatuk. A
very interesting and attractive job it was, though it involved us in
many an hour’s hard climbing and scrambling, only to reward us at first
with disappointment.
The work of trail-cutting in the vicinity of Kaietuk is like groping
in the dark. One can see little or nothing beyond the few yards just
ahead; for the forest shuts out all view, save when one reaches an abrupt
cliff-edge or a little patch of rocky savannah. In country such as this
every step has to be cut toilfully up and down hillsides, and no rapid
reconnaissance survey is possible. Oh for a hydroplane, with which to get
a bird’s-eye view of plateau, ravine, and river!
The Indians we found to be of no use to us as guides to the country, and
they did not at all relish the job on which we were engaged. They have
a superstitious fear of Kaietuk and all its surroundings. They consider
that the whole place spooks, and they constantly murmur about “kenaima”
whilst at work. This is their word for ghosts and spirits, and they
have given to the mountain standing above Amatuk, at the entrance to
the Potaro gorge, the name of Mount Kenaima. From its summit the smoke
as of fires is said constantly to ascend, though no man walks thereon.
Between Kangaruma and Chenapowu, some fifty miles of river, there is not
a single human habitation, and the surrounding country appears unknown
to the aborigines. Our men dared not even look at the Kaietuk Fall when
by themselves, and, if obliged to approach it, hurried past with averted
eyes. They would not leave camp unless two might go together, and they
plainly were reluctant to cut lines through the rock-strewn forests
round about, painting their faces with red streaks to ward off malign
influences. Would that evil could indeed be averted by so simple an
expedient! The truth may be that the numerous caverns of this region are
haunted by jaguars and possibly by other wild beasts, and that Indians
have been killed from time to time when passing through the gorge.
Still, after many failures we at last succeeded in finding a line. My
husband’s first idea was to circumvent entirely the ravines of the
Washibaru and Korumê creeks, which form the chief obstacles in the ascent
to Kaietuk. So he cut a path from the edge of Kaietuk Fall in a direction
at right angles to the Potaro across the Kaietuk plateau, descending into
the Korumê valley. He then continued up this valley until he reached a
saddle, where, at a height of about 1,150 feet above Tukeit, is the
source of the Korumê. After that he crossed over on to another plateau
above the left bank of the Korumê, and so made his way to the head-waters
of the Washibaru creek. But, although the two ravines had thus been
circumvented, no reasonable gradient could be found downhill, beyond
Washibaru Head, either to Tukeit or to Waratuk. At last we decided to
explore the Korumê defile itself, in spite of its forbidding aspect at
Devil’s Mother’s Pillars, and shortly after dawn one day we walked to
Korumê Head, taking four Makusis with us.
The Indians had so persistently declared this valley to be “no walky”
that we scarcely dared to hope that it would be possible to get along
it for any distance; and my husband, anticipating some very troublesome
scrambling, desired me to return to camp and leave him with the four
men to make the attempt. But the men hung back so much that I was
obliged to follow to drive them after him. My husband led the way,
plunging ahead through a thick jungle of scrub and bush-rope. Then,
when he reached the farthest point from which he could see me through
the forest veil, he signalled to me, and I gave the word to the men to
cut a straight line to where he stood. This process we repeated again
and again hour after hour. The going was amazingly good—too good to
last, and we expected every minute to be stopped by a waterfall or by
a jumble of rock and cliff. It was very exciting and very delightful.
The gradient was 28 per cent. over the first 4,854 feet, there being
no rock obstruction whatsoever. Then for another 4,438 feet of gentle
descent the ground surface, though by no means bad, was less easy, and
the line had to be graded round the hill-side instead of running on the
valley floor. Eventually we were held up by a welter of huge _tacoubas_,
and turned back, our men being tired and sulky. But on later days my
husband completed the trail, though from the point where we had stopped
on the first day things were not so easy. Obstacles were incessant for
the remaining 2,400 feet to Devil’s Mother’s Pillars, where it will be
necessary to make a hair-pin bend in the road alignment, and the country
between the Korumê and the Washibaru creeks is also rough and difficult.
Nevertheless, when we broke up camp at Kaietuk to return to Georgetown,
we had a complete track to Tukeit, and since then the line has been
surveyed, continued to Amatuk, and examined by an engineer, who reported
on the 31st October, 1918, that the cost of a motor-road from Amatuk
to Washibaru would be about $92,000, and from Washibaru up the Korumê
valley to Kaietuk plateau about $37,300. It only remains now to trace
the alignment of a road from Garraway’s Landing to Amatuk in order to
complete the scheme of a highway from Bartika past Kaburi and across the
Potaro-Konawaruk Road to Kaietuk. What a difference it will make to life
in British Guiana when it is possible to reach that wonderland in a day’s
drive by motor-car from Bartika!
THE ASCENT TO THE HIGHLAND SAVANNAHS