Published: February 13, 1994
To the Editor: Your readers might like to know that it was a news photographer in search of a story who led the first overland expedition to Angel Falls, in May 1949.
Ruth Robertson, a photographer and former war correspondent, paddled, slogged and hacked her way through the jungle for two weeks to get there. Robertson; Alejandro Laime, a guide; an engineer; a radio operator representing the Venezuelan Government, and 10 local people went in to chart the falls, fixing their height at 3,212 feet, the highest in the world. Before that the falls had been seen by few, and only from the air. Jimmy Angel, as Mr. Brooke notes, crash-landed in 1937 atop the massif.
In 1948, Ms. Robertson was the first person to take an aerial photograph of the falls from within the canyon. As part of preparations for her expedition, she persuaded a friend to fly her in close to the jungle floor. A result was an air view of Angel Falls that was her bread and butter for years.
The account of her overland exploit, together with her photos, appeared in National Geographic in November 1949.
Ms. Robertson lives in Rosenberg, Tex. A show of the expedition photographs will be at George Memorial Library in Richmond, Tex., until Feb. 25 and will open March 1 at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn. PATRICIA HUBBARD Creative Executor to Ruth Robertson Cold Spring, N.Y.