Chaima women are not pretty according to our ideas of beauty; however, the girls have a sweet, melancholic look, which softens their often hard and wild mouths. They wear their hair in two plaits and do not paint their skin; in their extreme poverty they use no ornaments apart from shell, bird-bone and seed necklaces and bracelets Both women and men are very muscular, though plump and round. I saw no Indian with any natural deformity. In the wild state, which is a state of equality, nothing can induce a man to marry a deformed or ill woman. Such a woman, if she survives the accidents of life, dies childless.

In Cariaco we found most of the inhabitants in their hammocks, ill with intermittent fevers that in autumn become malignant and lead to dysentery. If you think how extraordinarily fertile and humid the plain is, and of the amount of vegetation that rots there, it is easy to understand why the atmosphere here is not as healthy as it is at Cumanà. In the torrid zone the amazing fertility of the soil, the frequent and prolonged rainy season, and the extraordinary opulence of the vegetation are advantages outweighed by a climate dangerous for whites.