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Mount Roraima
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==Exploration== European discovery was in 1595, during a Spanish and British race to colonize this part of South America. The English poet, army officer and explorer [[Walter Raleigh]] described it as an immeasurable "crystal mountain" gushing countless waterfalls.<ref name="theseoultimes">{{cite news |language=en |url=http://theseoultimes.com/ST/?url=/ST/db/read.php?idx=830 |title=An unearthly plateau in Venezuela |newspaper=The Seoul Times |author=Dana Kennedy |date=2012-04-12 |access-date=2022-03-21 |archive-date=2022-01-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220109141021/https://theseoultimes.com/ST/?url=%2FST%2Fdb%2Fread.php%3Fidx%3D830 }}</ref><ref name="lagransabana"/> The first expedition to Mount Roraima took place in 1838, when German scientist and explorer [[Robert Hermann Schomburgk]] observed it during a Royal Geographical Society-funded expedition to explore [[British Guiana]] (1835–1839). In 1840, the British government commissioned him to establish the boundaries between British Guiana and Venezuela. When he returned to the area in 1844 to study the local flora, he reported that the peak seemed inaccessible due to its towering cliffs.<ref name="Elms"/><ref name="lagransabana"/> In 1864, German naturalist and botanist [[Carl Ferdinand Appun]] and British geologist [[Charles Barrington Brown]] arrived at the southeastern tip of Mount Roraima for observation and proposed to go up the mountain by hot air balloon.<ref name="lagransabana"/> Although its vertical cliffs make access very difficult, Mount Roraima was the first large mesa to be climbed in the Guyana Plateau.<ref name="PNUD"/><ref name="summitpost"/> [[Henry Whitely (ornithologist)|Henry Whiteley]], who studied the birds of the area, observed that the summit could be reached from the south with the help of ropes and ladders.<ref name="lagransabana"/> [[Everard im Thurn]] and Harry Perkins led an expedition sponsored by the Royal Geographical Society that culminated on December 18, 1884, when the team met local people known as the Pemón who could have climbed to the top of Mount Roraima prior to their expedition. The explorers still believed the top of the cliff to be previously unknown to humans.<ref name="Elms"/> Soon, many expeditions made up of botanists, zoologists and geologists made multiple expeditions to Mount Roraima to study the mostly unknown flora and fauna and special geological conditions of the area.<ref name="summitpost"/><ref name="Carreño"/>
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