But the shores of Lake Valencia are not famed solely for their picturesque beauties: the basin presents several phenomena whose interpretation holds great interest for natural historians and for the inhabitants. What causes the lowering of the lake's water-level? Is it receding faster than before? Will the balance between the flowing in and the draining out be restored, or will the fear that the lake might dry up be proved justified?

Our first excursion to the Araya peninsula was followed by another more important and instructive one to the mountain missions of the Chaima Indians. Such a variety of objects attracted our attention. We found ourselves in a country bristling with forests on our way to visit a convent shaded by palm trees and arborescent ferns in a narrow valley which was deliciously fresh, despite being in the middle of the torrid zone. In the surrounding mountains there are eaves inhabited by thousands of nocturnal birds; and, what struck our imagination more than all the marvels of the physical world, even further up we found a people until recently still nomadic, hardly free from a natural, wild state, but not barbarians, made stupid more from ignorance than from long years of being brutalized. What we knew about history increased our interest in these people. The promontory of Paria was what Columbus first saw of this continent; these valleys ended there, devastated first by the warlike, cannibalistic Caribs, then by the mercantile and orderly European nations. If the Spaniards visited these shores it was only to get, either by violence or exchange, slaves, pearls, gold and dye-woods; they tried to dignify their motives for such an insatiable greed with the pretence of religious zeal.

The outlying area of Cumana is as densely populated as the old town. This includes Los Cerritos, where we met with attractive tamarind trees, San Francisco to the south-east, and the place where the Guaiqueri live. The name of this tribe was quite unknown before the conquest. The Indians who use this name used to belong to the Warao who still inhabit the marshy area of the Orinoco delta. Some old men assured me that the language of their ancestors was a Warao dialect, but in Cumana and Margarita not one Indian has spoken anything but Castilian for over a century.

If you compare the Río Negro with the Amazon, the River Plate or the Orinoco it is but a river of the second order. Possessing it has been, for centuries, of great political interest for the Spanish Government because it affords its rivals, the Portuguese, easy access into the Guianan missions to worry the Capitanía-General of Caracas in its southern limits. Three hundred years have passed in pointless territorial disputes. In different times, according to their degree of civilization, people have leaned either on papal authority or on astronomy. As they have generally been keener to prolong this dispute rather than solve it, only nautical science and geography have gained anything. When the affairs of Paraguay and the possession of the Sacramento colony became important for the two Courts of Madrid and Lisbon, commissioners were sent out to study the boundaries of the Orinoco, Amazon and River Plate. Besides the idle, who filled archives with their complaints and lawsuits, there were a few educated engineers and some naval officers acquainted with the means of determining the position of a place. The little we knew up to the of the last century about the geography of the interior of the Continent is due to these hard-working men. It is pleasing to remind ourselves that the sciences gained accidentally from these border commissions, often forgotten by the states that sent them out.

On feast days, after celebrating mass, the whole community assembles in front of the church. Young girls leave bundles of firewood, maize, bananas and other foodstuff at the missionary's feet. At the same time the governor, mayor and other municipal officers, all pure Indians, exhort the Indians to work, arrange who will do what, scold the lazy and, it has to be said, cruelly beat those who refuse to obey. These strokes are received with the same impassivity with which they are given. These acts of justice last a long time and are frequently seen by any traveler who crosses the llanos. It would be better if the priest did not impose corporal punishment as soon as he left the altar; he should not witness the punishment of men and women in his priestly robes; but his abuse arises from the bizarre principles on which missions are based. The most arbitrary civil powers are tightly linked to the rights exercised by priests; yet, though the Caribs are not cannibals, and you would like them to be treated gently, you do realize that some violence is necessary to maintain order in a new society.

After the blacks I was interested in the number of white criollos, who I call Hispano-Americans, (70) and those whites horn in Europe. It is difficult to find exact figures for such a delicate issue. People in the New World, as in the Old, hate population censuses because they think they are being carried out to increase taxation. The number of white criollos may reach some 200, to 210, people. (71)

After struggling a while with our plan to descend the Guarapiche river to the Golfo Triste, we took the direct road to the mountains. The Guanaguana and Caripe valleys are separated by an embankment or calcareous ridge famous for miles around for its name Cuchilla de Guanaguana. We found this way tiring because we still had to climb the cordilleras, but it is by no means as dangerous as they claim in Cumanà. In many places the path is no more than 14 or 15 inches wide; the mountain ridge it follows is covered with a short slippery grass; its sides are both very steep and the traveler who fell could roll some 700 to 800 feet down over that grass. However, the mountain has abrupt slopes, not precipices. The local mules are so sure-footed that they inspire confidence. They behave just like mules from Switzerland or the Pyrenees. The wilder a country, the more acute and sensitive is instinct in domestic animals. When the mules glimpse a danger they stop and turn their heads from right to left and raise and lower their ears as if thinking. They delay making up their minds, but always choose the right course of action if the traveler does not distract them or make them continue. In the Andes, during journeys of six and seven months, in mountains furrowed with torrents, the intelligence of horses and beasts of burden develops in a surprising way. You often hear mountain people say: 'I will not give you a mule with a comfortable gait, but the one that reasons best (la màs racional). This popular expression, the result of long experiences, contradicts far more convincingly than speculative philosophy those who claim that animals are simply animated machines.