Of all the natural phenomena that I have seen during my voyages few have produced a greater impression than the palo de vaca. What moved me so deeply was not the proud shadows of the jungles, nor the majestic flow of the rivers, nor the mountains covered with eternal snows, but a few drops of a vegetable juice that brings to mind all the power and fertility of nature. On a barren rocky wall grows a tree with dry leathery leaves; its large woody roots hardly dig into the rocky ground. For months not a drop of rain wets its leaves; the branches appear dry, dead. But if you perforate the trunk, especially at dawn, a sweet nutritious milk pours out. (82)

The tunal is considered here and everywhere in the Spanish colonies as crucial to military defense; and when earthworks are raised the engineers propagate the thorny opuntia, as they keep crocodiles in the ditches. In regions where nature is so fertile, man uses the carnivorous reptile and a plant with an armor of thorns to his advantage.

The Indians told us that the jungles which cover the banks of the Sipapo abound in the climbing plant called bejuco de maimure. This species of liana is very important for the Indians as they weave baskets and mats from it. The Sipapo jungles are completely unknown. It is there that the missionaries place the Rayas tribe, whose mouths are said to be in their navels, perhaps due to the analogy with rays, whose mouths appear to be halfway down their bodies. An old Indian we met at Carichana, who boasted that he had often eaten human flesh, had seen these headless people with his own eyes'.

As night fell we camped on a deserted island in the middle of the river. We dined in the moonlight sitting on scattered empty turtle shells. How pleasing it was to be safe and together! We imagined how it would be if one man had saved himself alone, wandering these deserted banks, meeting more and more tributaries and unable to swim because of the crocodile and caribe fish. We pictured this sensitive man never knowing what had happened to his companions, more worried about them than himself. If you like surrendering to these sad thoughts it is because escaping from danger makes you feel the need for strong emotions.

On the Cumana coast and on Margarita Island most share the opinion that the Gulf of Cariaco was formed as a consequence of a fracturing of the territory and a flooding from the sea. The memory of this powerful cataclysm had been preserved by the Indians up to the fifteenth century, and it is said that by Christopher Columbus's third voyage the Indians still talked about it as recent. In 1530 the inhabitants of the Paria and Cumana coasts were terrified by new shocks. The sea flooded the land and a huge crack was created in the Cariaco mountains and in the gulf of the same name. A great body of salt water, mixed with asphaltum, burst out of the micaceous schist. At the end of the sixteenth century earthquakes were very common and, according to tradition, the sea flooded the shore several times, rising some 90 to 500 feet above normal. The inhabitants fled to the San Antonio hills, and to the hill where the San Francisco convent stands today.