The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-06-02 00:00:00

BRITISH GUIANA.

EXTRACTS FROM " A DESCRIPTION OF BRITISH GUIANA,
GEOGRAPHICAL AND STATISTICAL: EXHIBITING ITS
RESOURCES AND CAPABILITIES, TOGETHER WITII THE
PRESENT CONDITION, AND FUTURE PROSPECTS OF THE
COLONY. BY It. 11. SCHOMBURGIC, ESQ."
(Continued from our last)
GEOLOGY.
Mr. Hillhouse, in his voyage up the Mazaruni, observed
at some distance a conical peak, resembling the crater of a
volcano*.
There is a tradition that a volcano still in action exists up
the river Siparuni, and it is mentioned by Hartzink that it
had been discovered in 1749 t. Though I attempted repeat-
edly to procure information on this subject, when in those
'regions, I did not succeed. If, therefore, an active volcano
existed, it is probable that it is now extinct. The Indians of
Pirara told me that there was, on the south-western angle of
the Sierra Pacaraima, a mountainwhence, from time to time.
detonations are heard.
Earthquakes are very seldom felt in Guiana, and the shocks
are but slight; if therefore the connexion between volcanoes
and earthquakes be admitted, the rarity and slightness of the
shocks do not point to the circumstance that volcanic phe-
nomena find much fuel in Guiana. Major Staple, well known
for his experiments, and in many instances for his great suc-
cess in obtaining fresh water in George Town by boring,
discovered a mineral spring upon his own premises in
Cuminsburgh, which is strongly impregnated with iron.- I
have frequently met with springs in the interior which were
more or less impregnated with that metal, sometimes so
strongly that the water was of an ochreous colour, but none
which possessed thermal waters.
Guiana is not devoid of phenomena which are of interest ,
to the geologist, and which add to the picturesque and mag-
nificent scenery of that colony. The greatest geological
wonder of Guiana is no doubt Ataraipu, which, with full
right, may be called a natural pyramid, far surpassing in
height and grandeur the Egyptian piles constructed by the
labour of man.
The Ataraipn is on the Western bank of the river Guidaru
in 2 deg. 55 min. N. lat. Its base is wooded for about 350
feet; from thence rises the mass of granite, devoid of all
vegetation, in a pyramidical form for about 550 feet more :
making its whole height about 900 feet above the river.
A column fashioned by nature, and compared by the In-
dians to the trunk of a crownless tree, is called Pouracpiapa,
or " the felled tree," and is of great interest. It occupies
the summit of a small hillock at the outskirts of the Paca-
raima mountains, and is about twenty-five miles N.N.W.
from the Macusi village of Pirara. Th;s column, the regular
form of which would cause any one who viewed it at some
distance to suppose it to be the trunk of a decayed tree, is
about fifty feet high.
Two gigantic piles of granite rise on the western bunks of
the Essequibo, from the declivity of a hill to a height of about
140 to 150 feet. The Comuti or Taquiare consists of a huge
boulder of granite, surpassing in size the celebrated pedestal
of the statue of Peter 1.; on this rests an oval piece of gra-
nite, which bears a third in the shape of a jar; it is covered
by a fourth, and the resemblance of the two latter to a water-
jar with its cover is so great, that the Indians have called it
Comuti or Taquiare, which in the language of the Arawaaks
and Caribs signifies respectively a jar.
The pile is called Kamai, which signifies the tube or strainer
which is used tier expressing the juice of the cassada toot,
before it is made into bread.
The mural precipices of Roraima, which 1 have already
mentioned, deserve the notice of every geologist and lover of
the picturesque. They are not only remarkable for their
structure, but from the cascades—the highest known, viz.,
1400 to 1500 feet—which descend from them.
There are many more remarkable structures which deserved
notice, if the limits of this work permitted their description ;
—the tracts of huge granite boulders • mountains several
thousand feet high, consisting of solid granite, covered
scarcely with any vegetation ; the great cataracts of the rivers
Corentyn, Berbice, Essequibo, which, although they otter
impediments to navigation, we cannot help admiring as lovers
of the picturesque.