On the Cumana coast and on Margarita Island most share the opinion that the Gulf of Cariaco was formed as a consequence of a fracturing of the territory and a flooding from the sea. The memory of this powerful cataclysm had been preserved by the Indians up to the fifteenth century, and it is said that by Christopher Columbus's third voyage the Indians still talked about it as recent. In 1530 the inhabitants of the Paria and Cumana coasts were terrified by new shocks. The sea flooded the land and a huge crack was created in the Cariaco mountains and in the gulf of the same name. A great body of salt water, mixed with asphaltum, burst out of the micaceous schist. At the end of the sixteenth century earthquakes were very common and, according to tradition, the sea flooded the shore several times, rising some 90 to 500 feet above normal. The inhabitants fled to the San Antonio hills, and to the hill where the San Francisco convent stands today.

April 29th. The air was cooler, and without zancudos, but the clouds blocked out all the stars. I begin to miss the Lower Orinoco as the strong current slowed our progress. We stopped for most of the day, looking for plants. It was night when we reached the San Baltasar mission or, as the monks call it, la divina pastora de Baltasar de Atabapo. We lodged with a Catalan missionary, a lively and friendly man who, in the middle of the jungle, displayed the activities of his people. He had planted a wonderful orchard where European figs grew with persea, and lemon trees with mamey. The village was built with a regularity typical of Protestant Germany or America. Here we saw for the first time that white and spongy substance which I have made known as dapicho and zapis. We saw that this stuff was similar to elastic resin. But through sign language the Indians made us think that it came from under ground so we first thought that maybe it was a fossil rubber. A Poimisano Indian was sitting by a fire in the missionary hut transforming dapicho into black rubber. He had stuck several bits on to thin sticks and was roasting it by the fire like meat. As it melts and becomes elastic the dapicho blackens. The Indian then beat the black mass with a club made of Brazil-wood and then kneaded the dapicho into small balls some 3 to 4 inches thick, and let them cool. The balls appear identical to rubber though the surface remains slightly sticky. At San Baltasar they are not used for the game of pelota that Indians play in Uruana and Encaramada but are cut up and used as more effective corks than those made from cork itself. In front of the Casa de los Solteros - the house where men lived - the missionary showed us a drum made from a hollow cylinder of wood. This drum was beaten with great lumps of dapicho serving as drumsticks. The drum has openings that could be blocked by hand to vary the sounds, and was hanging on two light supports. Wild Indians love noisy music. Drums and botutos, the baked-earth before trumpets, are indispensable instruments when Indians decide to play music and make a show.