great unexplored regions on the face of the earth
yielded the world’s highest waterfall.
Ihe ranks of the now tiny handful of persons
who have seen Angel Falls seem destined to be
swollen soon by an influx of tourists seeking some
thing genuinely new and different. Captain Char
lie Baughan of Ransa airlines, whose headquarters
arc in Ciudad, Bolivar has no worries about the
curse of Devil Mountain. He has homestaked some
600 acres at the foot of Hacha falls on the Carrao
river about 15 miles below the temporary landing
field at Mayupa. He hopes soon to be opening all
of this country in the most comfortable manner.
His plans envisage the construction of an ultra
modern dude camp serviced by air. It is to be
called the Playa Canaima Club. One will travel to
the falls by jeep. The old giving way to the new
in Venezuela is found not only in the fast-grow
ing Caracas area but throughout the entire land.
Sam Fales, a well known bush pilot, already has
initiated air service to a dude ranch of his own
some 50 miles farther to the south.
But neither of these dude ranches will bring
civilization to more than a tiny segment of the
Lost World. There still will be dugout canoes
manned by semi-clad Indians, in which to push
through rapids and from which intimate close-ups
of alligators and other flesh-loving, sharp-toothed
water creatures may be obtained. There will be
pack trips through the jungles and up the steep
slopes of the strange mesa-topped summits of
majestic mountains. Naturalists will find a new
world of plant and animal life. High boots, mos
quito netting, a machete, and a love of adventure
mixed with a reasonable degree of physical cour
age still will not be amiss in the Gran Sabana.
Although most of the area now has been chart
ed from the air there are large areas where the
white man probably has never set foot. Scientific
explorations of recent years have dispelled the aura
of fantasy shed on the Lost World by Doyle’s ad
venture story. Doyle wove an almost credible ac
count of the adventures of a group of scientists
matched against vicious, pre-historic beasts atop
one of the mountains of the Gran Sabana. As fan
tastic as his story .now appears it was not always
considered so. Serious men of science conceded the
possibility that the animal and plant life of a
thousand years past still might have existed on the
table-top summits of those massive mountains be
lieved to be impassable to both man and beast.
But the lure of an unknown land—the excite
ment of realizing that one is stepping where man
has never trod before—has not yet vanished. The
Lost World is no longer lost, but visitors there
will share in the opening of a new land and en
joy spectacular vistas of jungle and mountain
scenery previously sb»jed by a tiny group of
spirited explorers.
Angel Falls, recently established as the world’s
highest ivaterfall (5,212 feet)—more than twice
the height of the Empire State Building—spurts
from the top of the three-hundred-square-mile
mesa, called Devil’s Mountain, in Venezuela’s
Gran Sabana, a high jungle region stretching be
tween the Orinoco and Amazon Rivers, ivhich was
the setting for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous
novel, "The Lost World”, This photograph was
taken by Nicol Smith, well known lecturer, who
made the expedition to the falls by Grace Line
^’Santa” ship, trailer, airplane a'tzd dugout canoe.
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