In this plantation, as in all the provinces of Venezuela, you can distinguish, from afar, three kinds of sugar cane by the color of their leaves; the old Creole cane, Otaheite cane and Batavia cane. The first has a darker green leaf, a thinner stalk with knots close together. It was the first sugar cane introduced from India to Sicily, the Canaries and the West Indies. The second is lighter green; its stalk is fatter, more succulent. The whole plant seems more luxuriant. It arrived thanks to the voyages of Bougainville, Cook and Bligh. Bougainville brought it to Mauritius, where it went to Cayenne, Martinique and from 1792 to the rest of the West Indies. Otaheite sugar cane, the to of the islanders, is one of the most important agricultural acquisitions due to the voyages of naturalists. On the same plot of land it gives a third of vezou (juice) more than Creole cane, but due to the thickness of its stalk and strength of its ligneous fibers furnishes much more fuel. This is an advantage in the West Indian Islands where the destruction of the forests has forced planters to use the bagasse as fuel for their furnaces. The third species, the violet sugar cane, is called Batavia or Guinea cane, and certainly comes from Java. Its leaves are purple and large and it is preferred in Caracas for making rum. (79) At Tuy they were busy finishing a ditch to bring irrigation water. This enterprise had cost the owner 7, piastres to build and 4, piastres in lawsuits with his neighbors. While the lawyers argued over the canal, which was only half finished, de Manterola had already begun to doubt the worth of his project. I took the level of the ground with a lunette d'épreuve placed on an artificial horizon and found that the dam had been placed 8 feet too low. What sums of money have not been uselessly spent in the Spanish colonies founding constructions on poor levelling!

'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.

The Aragua valleys form a basin, closed between granitic and calcareous mountain ranges of unequal height. Due to the land's peculiar configuration, the small rivers of the Aragua valleys form an enclosed system and flow into a basin blocked off on all sides; these rivers do not flow to the ocean but end in an inland lake, and thanks to constant evaporation lose themselves, so to speak, in the air. These rivers and lakes determine the fertility of the soil and agricultural produce in the valleys. The aspect of the place and the experience of some fifty years show that the water-level is not constant; that the balance between evaporation and inflow is broken. As the lake lies 1, feet above the neighboring Calabozo steppes, and 1, feet above sea-level, it was thought that the water filtered out through a subterranean channel. As islands emerge, and the water-level progressively decreases, it is feared the lake might completely dry out.

These scattered features of the countryside, this trait of solitude and grandeur, characterizes the course of the Orinoco, one of the greatest New World rivers. Everywhere water, like land, displays its unique characteristics. The Orinoco bed has no similarities with the Meta, Guaviare, Río Negro or Amazon beds. These differences do not depend solely on the width or speed of the current; they derive from a combination of relations easier to grasp on the spot than to define precisely. In the same way, the shape of the waves, the color of the water, the kind of sky and clouds, all help a navigator guess whether he is in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean or in the equinoctial part of the Pacific.

Our eyes were fixed on groups of coconut trees that bordered the river whose trunks, which were more than sixty feet high, dominated the landscape. The plain was covered with thickets of cassia, capers and arborescent mimosa, which, similar to Italian pines, spread their branches out like parasols. The pinnated leaves of the palms stood out against the blue sky, in which there was not a trace of mist. The sun was climbing rapidly towards its zenith; a dazzling light spread through the atmosphere on to the whitish hills covered in cylindrical cacti, as well as the becalmed sea and the shores populated with pelicans (Pelicanus fuscus, Linn.), flamingos and herons. The intense luminosity of the day, the vivid colors and forms of the vegetation, the variegated plumage of the birds, all bore the grand seal of tropical nature.

An alley of avocado trees led us to the Aragonese Capuchins' hospice. We stopped in front of a Brazil-wood cross, surrounded with benches on which the sick monks sit and say their rosaries, in the middle of a spacious square. The convent backs on to an enormous perpendicular wall of rock, covered with thick vegetation. Dazzling white stone appears every now and then through the foliage. It would be hard to imagine a more picturesque place. Instead of European beeches and maples you find here the imposing ceiba trees and the praga and irasse palms. Numerous springs bubble out from the mountainsides that encircle the Caripe basin and whose southern slopes rise to some 1, feet in height. These springs issue mainly from crevices or narrow gorges. The humidity they bring favors the growth of huge trees, and the Indians, who prefer solitary places, set up their conucos along these ravines. Banana and papaw trees grow around groves of arborescent ferns. This mixture of wild and cultivated plants gives a special charm to this place. From afar, on the naked mountainside, you can pick out the springs by the thick tangles of vegetation, which at first seem to hang from the rock, and then, as they descend into the valley, follow the meandering streams.