Nothing can compare to the majestic tranquillity of the stars in the sky in this solitary place. At nightfall, when we stared at the point where the horizon meets the meadows on this gently rolling plain, it seemed, as later in the Orinoco steppes, as if we were seeing the surface of an ocean supporting the starry vault. The tree at whose feet we sat, the luminous insects dancing in the air, the shining constellations of the Southern hemisphere, everything reminded us that we were far from our homeland. And if, in the middle of this exotic nature, the sound of cow bells or the bellowing of a bull came from the small valleys, memories of our native land were suddenly awoken. It was as if we heard distant voices echoing across the ocean, magically carrying us from one hemisphere to another. How strangely mobile is man's imagination, eternal source of his joys and pains!

The fine Carib tribes inhabit only a small part of the country they once occupied before the discovery of America. European cruelty ensured that they completely vanished from the West Indies and Darien coasts. Once subdued they lived in populous villages in Nueva Barcelona province and Spanish Guiana. I think you could count more than 35, Caribs living in the Piritu llanos and on the banks of the Caroní and Cuyuni. If you add the independent Caribs living in the Cayenne and Pacaraymo mountains between the Essequibo and Branco river sources they would reach a total of 40, pure-blooded Indians. I linger on this point because the Caribs, before my voyage, had been supposed to have become extinct.

April 16th. Towards evening we heard that our boats had passed both rapids in less than six hours, and arrived in good condition at the Puerto de Arriba. 'Your boat will not be wrecked because you are not carrying goods, and you travel with the monk of the Raudales, a little brown man said to us bitterly. By his accent we recognized him as a Catalan. He traded in tortoise oil with the mission Indians, and was not a friend of the missionaries. 'The frail boats belong to us Catalans who, with permission from the Guianan Government, but not from the president of the mission, try to trade above the Atures and Maypures. Our boats are wrecked in the Raudales, key to all the missions beyond, and then Indians take us back to Carichana and try to force us to stop trading. What is the source of this deep hatred of the missions in the Spanish colonies? It cannot be because they are rich in the Upper Orinoco. They have no houses, no goats and few cows. The resentment is aimed at the ways the missionaries obstinately close their territories off to white men.

The Caripe grotto measures exactly 472 meters and keeps the same width and height of 60 to 70 feet all through. It was difficult to persuade the Indians to penetrate any further into the grotto than where they usually went to collect the fat. We needed the padres' authority to make them go as far as the point where the ground rises suddenly at a 60-degree angle and where the rivulet forms a small underground cascade. This cave, home of nocturnal birds, is for the Indian a mystical place; they believe that the souls of their ancestors live in its depths. Man - they say - should fear these places not illumined by the sun (zis) or moon (nuna). To join the guàcharos is synonymous with joining your ancestors, that is, to die. For this reason, the magicians (piaches) and the poisoners (imorons) cast their nocturnal spells to call up the supreme evil spirit Ivorokiamo. Thus, all over the earth similarities may be found in the early fictions of people, especially those concerning the two principles ruling the world: the abode of souls after death, the happiness of the virtuous and the punishment of the guilty. The most different and barbarous languages present a certain number of similar images because they have the same source in the nature of our intelligence and our sensations. Darkness is everywhere connected with death.