The Indian pilot led us across his garden, which seemed more a copse than cultivated land. As proof of the land's fertility he showed us a silk-cotton tree (Bombax heptaphyllum) whose trunk measured nearly 2. feet in diameter after only four years' growth. However, I think the Indian's estimate of the tree's age was somewhat exaggerated. Still on the Cumana beach, in the Guaiqueri's garden, we saw for the first time a guama (Inga spuria) loaded with flowers, remarkable for the length and silvery brilliance of their numerous stamen. We passed the neatly arranged streets of the Indian quarters, bordered with small new houses of attractive design This part of the town has just been rebuilt after the earthquake a year and a half before our arrival that destroyed Cumana. Hardly had we crossed the wooden bridge over the Manzanares river, full of bavas or small crocodiles, than we saw traces of that terrible catastrophe everywhere; new buildings rose over the ruins of the old.