Our host had visited the New World with an expedition that was set up to fell wood for the Spanish navy on the Paria Gulf shore. In the vast jungle of mahogany, cedar and Brazil-wood that borders the Caribbean Sea they wanted to select the largest trees, shape them in a rough way for the building of ships, and send them every year to the dockyard at Càdiz. White, unacclimatized men could not support the hard work, the heat, or the effect of the noxious air from the jungle. The same winds that are loaded with the perfume of flowers, leaves and wood also bring, so to speak, the germs of disease into our organs. Destructive fevers carried off not only the ship carpenter but also those who managed the business; so this bay, which the early Spaniards called Golfo Triste on account of the gloomy and wild aspect of its coasts, became the graveyard of European seamen.