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James Taylor, a cooper employed on the Roraima, gives the following account of his experience of the disaster: "Hearing a tremendous report and seeing the ashes falling thicker, I dived into a room, dragging with me Samuel Thomas, a gangway man and fellow countryman, shutting the door tightly. Shortly after I heard a voice, which I recognized as that of the chief mate, Mr. Scott.
The Roraima Mountain begins to be regarded as quite easy travel for the orchid-hunter nowadays. If I mention that the canoe-work on this route demands thirty-two portages, thirty-two loadings and unloadings of the cargo, the reader can judge what a "difficult road" must be. Ascending the Roraima, Mr. Dressel, collecting for Mr. Sander, lost his herbarium in the Essequibo River.
We also found on our last visit something new a very large bulbed Oncidium, or may be Catasetum, on the top of Roraima, where we spent a night, but got only two specimens, one of which got lost, and the other one I left in the hands of Mr. Rodway, but so we tried our best.
So strong indeed was his confidence that he despatched a man post-haste over the Atlantic to explore the Roraima mountain; and, further, gave him strict injunctions to collect nothing but this precious species.
Osmers to Roraima, but he broke down before we reached the Savannah. He lay there for a week, and I gave him up; he recovered, however, and dragged himself into the Savannah near Roraima, about three days distant from it, where I left him. Here we found and made a splendid collection of about 3000 first-class plants of different kinds.
Out of eighteen vessels lying in the roads only one, the British steamship Roddam, escaped, and she, I hear, lost more than half on board. It was a dying crew that took her out. "Our boat, the Roraima, of the Quebec Line, arrived at St. Pierre early Thursday morning. For hours before we entered the roadstead we could see flames and smoke rising from Mont Pelee.
She says she experienced a feeling of suffocation, which was followed by intense heat. The afterpart of the Roraima broke out in flames. Ben Benson, the carpenter of the Roraima, severely burned, assisted Miss King and Margaret Stokes to escape. With the help of Mr. Scott, the first mate of the Roraima, he constructed a raft, with life preservers. Upon this Miss King and Margaret were placed.
I may have seen Roraima during that mentally clouded period.
As well expect to find a palæolithic man quietly chipping flints on a Pacific atoll, or to discover the ancestor of all horses on the isolated and crag-encircled summit of Roraima, as to unearth a real live Ceratodus from a modern estuary. In 1870, however, Mr.
The steamer Roddam, of which I am captain, left St. Lucia at midnight of May 7, and was off St. Pierre, Martinique, at 6 o'clock on the morning of the 8th. I noticed that the volcano, Mont Pelee, was smoking, and crept slowly in toward the bay, finding there among others the steamer Roraima, the telegraph repairing steamer Grappler and four sailing vessels.
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