First stay in Cumana - The Manzanares river banks

The further we left the African coast behind the weaker the wind became: it was often completely calm for hours, followed regularly by electrical phenomena. Thick black perfectly shaped clouds formed in the east; it seemed as if a squall might force us to fasten the topsail; then the wind would rise again, a few large raindrops would fall, and the storm would vanish without a single clap of thunder. It is thanks to these squalls alternating with dead calms that you are able to cross the ocean from the Canaries to the West Indies during June and July.

The Indians in Javita number about 160 and come from the Poimisano, Echinavis and Paraganis tribes. They make canoes out of the trunks of sassafras (Ocotea cymbarum), hollowing them out with fire and axes. These trees grow over 100 feet high, their wood is yellow, resinous, and never rots in water. It gives off a rich smell.

Some Indians are not content with coloring themselves evenly all over. They sometimes imitate European clothes by painting them on. We saw one at Parurama who had painted a blue jacket with black buttons on to his skin.

April 21st. After spending two and a half days in the little village of Maypures near the Great Cataracts, we embarked in the canoe that the Carichana missionary had got for us. It had been damaged by the knocks it had received in the river, and by the Indians' carelessness. Once you have passed the Great Cataracts (107) you feel you are in a new world; that you have stepped over the barriers that nature seems to have raised between the civilized coasts and the wild, unknown interior. On the way to the landing-stage we caught a new species of tree frog on the trunk of a hevea. It had a yellow belly, a back and head of velvety purple, and a narrow white stripe from its nose to its hind parts. This frog was 2 inches long; probably allied to the Rana tinctoria whose blood, so it is said, makes the feathers that have been plucked out of a parrot grow again in frizzled yellow and red if poured on to its skin.

We will not continue to describe in detail the local changes produced by the different earthquakes of Cumana. In order to follow our original plan we shall try to generalize our ideas, and include in one section everything that relates to these frightening and difficult-to- explain phenomena. If men of science who visit the Alps of Switzerland or the coasts of Lapland should broaden our knowledge about glaciers and the aurora borealis, then a traveler who has journeyed through Spanish America should mainly fix his attention on volcanoes and earthquakes. Every part of the earth merits particular study. When we cannot hope to guess the causes of natural phenomena, we ought at least to try to discover their laws and, by comparing numerous facts, distinguish what is permanent and constant from what is variable and accidental.

'Tengo en mi pueblo la fàbrica de loza' (I have a pottery works in my village), Father Zea told us and led us to the hut of an Indian family who were baking large earthenware vessels, up to 2. feet high, out in the open on a fire of shrubs. This industry is characteristic of the diverse branches of the Maypures tribes, cultivated since time immemorial. Wherever you dig up the ground in the jungle, far from any human habitations, you find bits of painted pottery. It is noteworthy that the same motifs are used everywhere. The Maypures Indians painted decorations in front of us that were identical to those we had seen on the jars from the Ataruipe caves, with wavy lines, figures of crocodiles, monkeys and a large quadruped that I did not recognize but which was always crouched in the same position.