We counted more than 500 Caribs in the Cari village; and many more in the surrounding missions. It is curious to meet a once nomadic tribe only recently settled, whose intellectual and physical powers make them different from other Indians. Never have I seen such a tall race (from 5 feet 9 inches to 6 feet 2 inches). As is common all over America the men cover their bodies more than the women, who wear only the guayuco or perizoma in the form of narrow bands. The men wrap the lower part of their bodies down to their hips in a dark blue, almost black, cloth. This drapery is so ample that when the temperature drops at night the Caribs use it to cover their shoulders. Seen from far off against the sky, their bodies, dyed with annatto, and their tall, copper-colored and picturesquely wrapped figures, look like ancient statues. The way the men cut their hair is typical: like monks or choirboys. The partly shaved forehead makes it seem larger than it is. A tuft of hair, cut in a circle, starts near the crown of the head. The resemblance of the Caribs with the monks does not come from mission life, from the false argument that the Indians wanted to imitate their masters, the Franciscan monks. Tribes still independent like those at the source of the Caroní and Branco rivers can be distinguished by their cerquillo de frailes (monks' circular tonsures), which were seen from the earliest discovery of America. All the Caribs that we saw, whether in boats on the Lower Orinoco or in the Piritu missions, differ from other Indians by their height and by the regularity of their features; their noses are shorter and less flat, their cheekbones not so prominent, their physiognomy less Mongoloid. Their eyes, blacker than is usual among the Guiana hordes, show intelligence, almost a capacity for thought. Caribs have a serious manner and a sad look, common to all the New World tribes. Their severe look is heightened by their mania for dyeing their eyebrows with sap from the caruto, then lengthening and joining them together. They often paint black dots all over their faces to make themselves look wilder. The local magistrates, governors and mayors, who alone are authorized to carry long canes, came to visit us. Among these were some young Indians aged between eighteen and twenty, appointed by the missionaries. We were struck to see among these Caribs painted in annatto the same sense of importance, the same cold, scornful manners that can be found among people with the same positions in the Old World. Carib women are less strong, and uglier than the men. They do nearly all the housework and fieldwork. They insistently asked us for pins, which they stuck under their lower lips; they pierce their skin so that the pin's head remains inside the mouth. It is a custom from earlier savage times. The young girls are dyed red and, apart from their guayuco, are naked. Among the different tribes in the two continents the idea of nakedness is relative. In some parts of Asia a woman is not allowed to show a fingertip, while a Carib Indian woman wears only a 2-inch-long guayuco. Even this small band is seen as less essential than the pigment covering her skin. To leave her hut without her coat of annatto dye would be to break all the rules of tribal decency.

After dividing all that belongs to astronomy, botany, zoology, the political description of New Spain, and the history of the ancient civilizations of certain New World nations into separate works, many general results and local descriptions remained left over, which I could still collect into separate treatises. I had prepared several during my journey; on races in South America; on the Orinoco missions; on what hinders civilization in the torrid zone, from the climate to the vegetation; the landscape of the Andes compared to the Swiss Alps; analogies between the rocks of the two continents; the air in the equinoctial regions, etc. I had left Europe with the firm decision not to write what is usually called the historical narrative of a journey, but just to publish the results of my researches. I had arranged the facts not as they presented themselves individually but in their relationships to each other. Surrounded by such powerful nature, and all the things seen every day, the traveler feels no inclination to record in a journal all the ordinary details of life that happen to him.

The recommendations from the Madrid Court assured us that we were always well received in all the Spanish possessions. The Captain-General immediately gave us permission to visit the island. Colonel Armiaga, in command of an infantry regiment, warmly welcomed us to his house. We did not tire of admiring the banana trees, the papaw trees, the Poinciana pulcherrima and other plants usually seen only in greenhouses.

After entering the Río Negro by the Pimichín, and passing the small cataract at the confluence of the two rivers, we saw the mission of Maroa a quarter of a league off. This village of 150 Indians appeared prosperous and cheerful. We bought some beautiful live toucans (piapoco) birds whose 'intelligence' can be trained, like our ravens. Above Maroa we passed the mouths of the Aquio and of the Tomo. We did not enter the Tomo mission, but Father Zea told us with a smile that the Indians of Tomo and Maroa had been in full insurrection because monks had tried to force them to dance the famous 'dance of the devils'. The missionary had wanted to hold the ceremony in which the piastres (who are shamans, doctors and conjurors) evoke the evil spirit Jolokiamo, but in a burlesque way. He thought that the 'dance of the devils' would show the neophytes that Jolokiamo no longer had any power over them. Some young Indians, believing the missionary's promises, agreed to act as devils; they were decked out in black and yellow feathers and jaguar skins with long tails. The church square had been surrounded by soldiers from other missions to make the missionary more redoubtable. Indians who were unsure about the dance and the impotence of the evil spirits were brought along. But the oldest of the Indians managed to imbue all the younger ones with a superstitious dread and they decided to flee al monte. The missionary had to postpone his project of mocking the Indian demon.