You would think their mental stupidity greater than that of children when a white asks them questions about objects that have surrounded them since birth. Missionaries assured us that this is not due to timidity, and that among the missionary Indians in charge of public works this is not an innate stupidity but a block they have concerning the mechanisms of a language so different to their mother tongue. The Indians affirmed or denied whatever pleased the monks, and laziness, accompanied by that cunning courtesy common to all Indians, made them sometimes give the answers suggested by the questions. Travelers cannot be wary enough of this over-obliging approbation when they want to find out what Indians think. To test an Indian alcalde I asked him 'if he did not think that the Caripe river that comes from the Guacharo caves might not return there by some unknown entrance after climbing up the hill'. He looked as if he gave it serious thought for a while and answered in support of my theory: 'If it did not do this how else is there always water in the river?

Days passed quickly in the Capuchin convent in the Caripe mountains, despite our simple but monotonous life. From sunrise to sunset we toured the forests and mountains near by looking for plants, and have never collected so many. When the heavy rain stopped us travelling far we visited Indian huts and the communal conuco, or attended the nightly meetings when the alcaldes handed out the work for the following day. We did not return to the convent until bells called us for meals in the refectory with the monks. At dawn we sometimes accompanied them to the church to attend doctrina, that is, religious classes for Indians. It was hard explaining dogma to people who hardly knew Spanish. The monks are almost completely ignorant of the Chaima Indian language, and the resemblance of sounds between the languages muddles the poor Indians so that strange ideas arise. One day we witnessed a missionary struggling to explain to his class that invierno, winter, and infierno, hell, were not the same thing, but as different as hot and cold. The Chaima Indians know winter only as the rainy season, and imagine that 'the white's hell' is a place where the evil are exposed to horrific rainstorms. The missionary lost his temper, but it was useless; the first impression caused by the almost identical words persisted; in the Indians' minds the images of rain and hell could not be separated.

Every day we went botanizing in the Turbaco forests from five in the morning until dark: these long walks would have been a delight in this fertile marshy soil if we had not been devoured by mosquitoes, zancudos, chigoes and numberless insects already described in the Orinoco part of this narrative. In the midst of these wonderful forests, smelling the flowers of the Crinum erubescens and Pancratium littorale, we often came across Indian conucos, little banana and maize plantations where Indians, ever ready to flee from whites, live during the rainy season. This taste for the jungle and isolation typifies the American Indian. Though the Spanish population has mixed with the Indian population in Turbaco, the latter display the same lack of culture as in the Guianan missions. Examining their farming tools, the way they build their bamboo huts, their clothes and crude arts, I ask myself what the copper race has earned by contact with European civilization.