Before leaving the Aragua valleys and its neighboring coasts, I will deal with the cacao plantations, which have always been the main source of wealth in this area. The cacao-producing tree does not grow wild anywhere in the forests north of the Orinoco. This scarcity of wild cacao trees in South America is a curious phenomenon, yet little studied. The amount of trees in the cacao plantations has been estimated at more than 16 million. We met no tribe on the Orinoco that prepared a drink with cacao seeds. Indians suck the pulp of the pod and chuck the seeds, often found in heaps in places where Indians have spent the night. It seems to me that in Caracas cacao cultivation follows the examples of Mexico and Guatemala. Spaniards established in Terra Firma learned how to cultivate the cacao tree -sheltered while young by the leaves of the erythrina and banana, making chocolatl cakes, and using the liquid of the same name, thanks to trade with Mexico, Guatemala and Nicaragua whose people are of Toltec and Aztec origin.

Between the mouths of the Padamo and the Mavaca the Orinoco receives the Ocamo from the north, into which flows the Matacona river. At the source of this last river live the Guainare Indians, far less copper-colored or brown than others in this region. This tribe belongs to what missionaries call 'fair Indians' or Indios blancos. Near the mouth of the Ocamo travelers are shown a rock that is the marvel. It is granite passing into gneiss, characterized by its black mica, which forms little ramified veins. Spaniards call this rock Piedra Mapaya (Map Rock). I chipped off a bit.

The San Francisco mission, situated on the left bank of the Casiquiare, was named after one of the leaders of the boundary expedition, Don Joseph Solano. This educated officer never got any further than San Fernando de Atabapo; he had never seen the Río Negro waters or the Casiquiare, or the Orinoco east of the Guaviare. Ignorance of the Spanish language drove geographers to locate erroneously on the famous La Cruz Olmedilla map the 400 league route made by Joseph Solano to the sources of the Orinoco. The San Francisco mission was founded not by monks but by military authorities. Following the boundary expedition, villages were built wherever an officer or a corporal stopped with his soldiers. Some of the Indians withdrew and remained independent; others, whose chiefs were caught, joined the missions. Where there was no church they were happy to raise a great red wooden cross, and to build a casa fuerte, that is, a house with long beams placed horizontally on top of each other, next to it. This house had two floors; upstairs were placed small cannons; downstairs two soldiers lived, served by Indian families. Tamed Indians established themselves around the casa fuerte. In the event of an attack soldiers would gather the Indians together by sounding the horn, or the baked-earth botuto. These were the nineteen so-called Christian establishments founded by Don Antonio Santos. Military posts had no effect in civilizing the Indians living there. They figured on maps and in mission works as pueblos (villages) and as reducciones apostòlicas.

We counted more than 500 Caribs in the Cari village; and many more in the surrounding missions. It is curious to meet a once nomadic tribe only recently settled, whose intellectual and physical powers make them different from other Indians. Never have I seen such a tall race (from 5 feet 9 inches to 6 feet 2 inches). As is common all over America the men cover their bodies more than the women, who wear only the guayuco or perizoma in the form of narrow bands. The men wrap the lower part of their bodies down to their hips in a dark blue, almost black, cloth. This drapery is so ample that when the temperature drops at night the Caribs use it to cover their shoulders. Seen from far off against the sky, their bodies, dyed with annatto, and their tall, copper-colored and picturesquely wrapped figures, look like ancient statues. The way the men cut their hair is typical: like monks or choirboys. The partly shaved forehead makes it seem larger than it is. A tuft of hair, cut in a circle, starts near the crown of the head. The resemblance of the Caribs with the monks does not come from mission life, from the false argument that the Indians wanted to imitate their masters, the Franciscan monks. Tribes still independent like those at the source of the Caroní and Branco rivers can be distinguished by their cerquillo de frailes (monks' circular tonsures), which were seen from the earliest discovery of America. All the Caribs that we saw, whether in boats on the Lower Orinoco or in the Piritu missions, differ from other Indians by their height and by the regularity of their features; their noses are shorter and less flat, their cheekbones not so prominent, their physiognomy less Mongoloid. Their eyes, blacker than is usual among the Guiana hordes, show intelligence, almost a capacity for thought. Caribs have a serious manner and a sad look, common to all the New World tribes. Their severe look is heightened by their mania for dyeing their eyebrows with sap from the caruto, then lengthening and joining them together. They often paint black dots all over their faces to make themselves look wilder. The local magistrates, governors and mayors, who alone are authorized to carry long canes, came to visit us. Among these were some young Indians aged between eighteen and twenty, appointed by the missionaries. We were struck to see among these Caribs painted in annatto the same sense of importance, the same cold, scornful manners that can be found among people with the same positions in the Old World. Carib women are less strong, and uglier than the men. They do nearly all the housework and fieldwork. They insistently asked us for pins, which they stuck under their lower lips; they pierce their skin so that the pin's head remains inside the mouth. It is a custom from earlier savage times. The young girls are dyed red and, apart from their guayuco, are naked. Among the different tribes in the two continents the idea of nakedness is relative. In some parts of Asia a woman is not allowed to show a fingertip, while a Carib Indian woman wears only a 2-inch-long guayuco. Even this small band is seen as less essential than the pigment covering her skin. To leave her hut without her coat of annatto dye would be to break all the rules of tribal decency.

From the 22nd degree of latitude the surface of the sea was covered with flying fish (Exocoetuus volitans) they threw themselves 12, 15 and even 18 feet into the air and fell on deck. I do not hesitate to speak on a subject as common in travelogues as dolphins, sharks, seasickness and the phosphorescence of the ocean. There is nothing that does not interest a naturalist as long as he makes a detailed study. Nature is an inexhaustible source of study, and as science advances so new facts reveal themselves to an observer who knows how to interrogate her.

That the Cross is nearly perpendicular when it passes the meridian is known to all who inhabit the Tropics. It has been observed at which hour of the night, in different seasons, the Cross is erect or inclined. How often have we heard our guides exclaim in the savannahs of Venezuela or in the desert stretching from Lima to Trujillo, 'Midnight is past, the Cross begins to bend! How those words reminded me of that moving scene where Paul and Virginie, seated near the source of the river Lataniers, chat together for the last time, and where the old man, at the sight of the Southern Cross, warns them that it is time to separate!

April 30th. We continued upstream on the Atabapo for 5 miles, then instead of following this river to its source, where it is called the Atacavi, we entered the Temi river. Before reaching this tributary, near the Guasacavi mouth, a granite outcrop on the west bank fixed our attention: it is called the rock of the Guahiba Indian woman, or the Mother Rock, the Piedra de la Madre. Father Zea could not the explain its bizarre name, but a few weeks later another missionary told us a story that stirred up painful feelings. If, in these deserted places, man leaves hardly any traces behind him, it is doubly humiliating for a European to see in the name of a rock a memory of the moral degradation of whites that contrasts the virtue of a wild Indian with the barbarity of civilized men!