August 2018 - Sneak Peek

and by experiencing
an early morning
trek that includes
750 steps leading to
the summit. There,
the remains of the
astounding ancient
palace fortress can be
explored.
Mount Kinabalu
Figure 8. North Borneo, Scott 87. (13,435 ft) in the Malaysian
state of Sabah
is the highest and most accessible mountain in Southeast
Asia. Several different views are shown on many North Borneo
stamps from as early as 1894 [Figure 8].
Figure 9. British Guiana, Scott 154 and 155.
The most extensive coverage of natural features involves
a journey across the Caribbean commencing with British
Guiana [Figure 9], now Guyana, located at the top of South
America. Several stamps from 1897 feature the mysterious
legendary Mt. Roraima, the spectacular 8,565-foot-high table-topped
mountain on the border of Venezuela.
Mt. Roraima is thought to have inspired Arthur Conan
Doyle’s epic novel The Lost World, in which an expedition
to a remote plateau discovers a colony of extinct reptiles.
Several excellent online videos record various ascents of
this extraordinary mountain. The experience will leave you
breathless, despite the fact that you won’t come across any
dinosaurs! Several stamps also portray the equally majestic
Kaieteur Falls, which have a single sheer drop of 741 feet,
four times that of Niagara Falls and considered the world’s
highest single-drop falls. Because Kaieteur Falls are so far
from civilization and visiting them involves a long arduous
journey, a superbly recorded series of amazing videos
on YouTube captures the thunderous
roar of plunging water long before the
falls come into view.
Log in to Walter Raleigh’s discovery
of Trinidad’s Lake Asphalt in
1595 to bring up a superb painting reproduced
on three Trinidad & Tobago
6-cent stamps [Figure 10].The original
painting (artist unknown) is in the
boardroom of Tarmac’s premises in
Figure 10. A painting
of Sir Walter Raleigh by
an unknown artist was
the basis for some early
Trinidad and Tobago
stamps, Scott 37, 98 and
81.
Wolverhampton, England. (Tarmac is the United Kingdom’s
leading company dealing with building materials.) The 1960
35-cent design showing workers digging tar from Lake Asphalt
(or Pitch Lake) was, I believe, taken from an old postcard.
The idyllic Blue Basin waterfall is a 10-minute walk
along a somewhat neglected trail from a theft-prone car park.
The pool below the falls is worthy of a visit despite its popularity
with sometimes annoying youngsters making it less
peaceful than when the stamps were issued in 1935.
view of Grand Etang, a small
dormant volcanic crater lake,
now part of a national park
[Figure 11]. The lake may be
Figure 11. Grenada, Scott 116, 305
and 220.
756 AMERICAN PHILATELIST / AUGUST 2018