It has been suggested that, if it is too late to retain the wonderful Roraima as exclusively British--and to effect this it would be well worth our while to barter away some other portion of the disputed territory--then an arrangement might be come to to make it neutral ground. Standing, as it does, in the corner where the three countries--Brazil, Venezuela and British Guiana--meet, it is of importance to all three, and, no doubt, in such an endeavour, we should have the support of Brazil as against Venezuela. * * * * * With regard to the oft-discussed question of the situation of the traditional city of Manoa, or El Dorado--as the Spaniards called it--most authorities, including Humboldt and Schomburgk, agree in giving British Guiana as its probable site. We are told that it stood on an island in the midst of a great lake called 'Parima'; but no such lake is now to be found in South America anywhere near the locality indicated. An explanation of the mystery, however, is afforded by the suggestion that such a great lake, or inland sea, almost certainly existed at one time in precisely this part of the continent; in that case what are now mountains in the country would then have been islands. Indeed, most of British Guiana lies somewhat low, and it is estimated that if the _highlands_ were to sink two thousand feet the whole country would be under water--the mountain summits excepted--and there would then be only 'a narrow strait' between the Roraima range and the Andes. In this great supposed ancient lake the group of islands now represented by mountain summits might well have been the home of a powerful and conquering race--as is to-day Japan with its group of more than three thousand islands--and Roraima, as the highest, and therefore the most easily defensible, may very well have been selected as their fastness, and the site of their capital city. Schomburgk thus states his speculations upon the point, in his book on British Guiana, page 6:-- "The geological structure of this region leaves but little doubt that it was once the bed of an inland lake which, by one of those catastrophes of which even later times give us examples, broke its barriers, forcing for its waters a path to the Atlantic. May we not connect with the former existence of this inland sea the fable of the lake Parima and the El Dorado? Thousands of years may have elapsed; generations may have been buried and returned to dust; nations who once wandered on its banks may be extinct and exist no more in name; still, tradition of Parima and the El Dorado survived these changes of time; transmitted from father to son, its fame was carried across the Atlantic and kindled the romantic fire of the chivalric Raleigh." * * * * *