KAIETEUR FALL.

Northern Advocate, 27 May 1921, Page 1

KAIETEUR FALL.

A BRITISH GUIANA WONDER

The wonder and the glory of a waterfall that is five times the height of Niagara are described by T. H. Macdermot in, the-journal of the Royal Colonial Institute. It is the Kaieteur Fall or Old Man's Fall, on the upper reaches of the Potaro, a tributary of the Essequibo River, in British Guiana. Its discovery i s generally credited to '"Mr Brown, who n 1870 went on the business of a geological survey for the Government. Yet \Europeans first knew Gu/ana through-the eyes of Coinm.bu3 to 1498. Sir Walter Raleigh penetrated it during- two expeditions, and if he did not actually look upon this fall he gav.j a description of something that hz did see at a • great distance which might have been this splendid vision of water leaping and rebounding downwards 822 ft to the. valley 'below. The first part of that mighty leap of the river from the lip of the towering precipice till again the the flood strike s the rock and rebounding swims over in a sloping cataract for another plunge, is 740 ft. Then the descent i s finished on another lap of 81ft. In the rainy season the width of water is 400 ft. In dry weather it will shrink 50ft or mT>re and its 20ft of depth will thin to <a very few. In the rainy season it gathers a tremendous majesty, a beauty and solemnity and might of impression hard indeed to put into words. British Guiana has many an impressive, charming or entrancing sight. It has in its soil wealth untold, wealth that is slowly being opened up for the future, but nothing in this magic province «an surpass in unique interest and combined majesty and beauty Kaieteur, the fall that 13-five times the height of Niagara.