They grow banana and cassava, but not maize. Like the majority of Orinoco Indians, those in Maypures also make drinks that could be called nutritious. A famous one in the country is made from a palm called the seje, which grows wild in the vicinity. I estimated the number of flowers on one cluster at 44, the fruit that fall without ripening amount to 8,000. These fruit are little fleshy drupes. They are thrown into boiling water for a few minutes to separate the pulp, which has a sweet taste, from the skin, and are then pounded and bruised in a large vessel filled with water. Taken cold, the infusion is yellowish and tastes like almond milk. Sometimes papelòn (unrefined sugar) or sugar cane is added. The missionary said that the Indians become visibly fatter during the two or three months when they drink this seje or dip their cassava cakes in it. The piaches, or Indian shamans, go into the jungle and sound the botuto (the sacred trumpet) under seje palm trees 'to force the tree to give a good harvest the following year'.

This Brazil-nut tree is usually not more than 2 to 3 feet in diameter, but reaches up to 520 feet in height. The fruit ripens at the end of May and, as they are as big as a child's head, make a lot of noise when they fall from so high up. I usually found between fifteen and twenty-two nuts in one fruit. The taste is very agreeable when the nuts are fresh; but its copious oil - its main use - quickly goes rancid. In the Upper Orinoco we often ate quantities of these nuts for want of food, and no harm came to us. According to trustworthy Indians only small rodents can break into this fruit, thanks to their teeth and incredible tenacity. But once the fruit have fallen to the ground all kinds of jungle animals rush to the spot: monkeys, manaviris, squirrels, cavies, parrots and macaws fight over the booty. All are strong enough to break the woody seed case, pick out the nut and climb back up the trees. 'They too have their fiestas, the Indians say as they return from the harvest To hear them complain about these animals you would think that the Indians alone are masters of the jungle.

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.

We crossed some violent rapids before reaching the Mandavaca mission. The village, also called Quirabuena, has only sixty inhabitants. Most of these Christian settlements are in such a deplorable condition that over a stretch of 50 leagues we counted barely 200 people. The river banks were more populated before the arrival of the missionaries. The Indians retreated into the jungle towards the east as the plains on the west are uninhabited. They live for part of the year off the large ants I have already described. In Mandavaca we met a good missionary who had spent 'over twenty years of mosquitoes in the Casiquiare jungles' and whose legs were so spotted by mosquito bites that you could hardly see he was a white. He spoke of his isolation, and the sad necessity that forced him to witness how the most atrocious crimes went unpunished. In Vasiva a few years before an Indian chief had eaten one of his wives after taking her from her conuco and fattening her up with plenty of food. If the Guiana Indians eat human flesh it is not because of privations, or during rituals, but out of vengeance after a victory or, as the missionaries say, 'out of their perverted greed'. Victory over an enemy horde is celebrated with a feast where parts of prisoners' corpses are eaten. During the night an enemy family is attacked, or an enemy found by chance in the jungle is killed by a poisoned arrow. The corpse is cut up and brought home like a trophy. Civilization has led man to sense the unity of the human race, the bonds that link him to customs and languages which he does not know. Wild Indians hate all those who do not belong to their tribe or family. Indians who are at war with a neighboring tribe hunt them as we would animals in the wood. When they see unknown jungle Indians arrive at their mission they say: 'They must be related to us as we understand what they say. They recognize only their own family: a tribe is but a reunion of relations. They recognize family and kin ties, but not those of humanity in general. No feelings of compassion prevent them from killing women or children of an enemy tribe. These latter are their favorite food after a skirmish or ambush.

The town of Cumana, capital of New Andalusia, lies a mile from the landing-stage or the boca battery where we stepped ashore after crossing the bar of the Manzanares river. We had to traverse a vast plain (el salado) between the Guaiqueri dwellings and the coast. The reverberation from the parched land increased the intense heat. The thermometer, plunged into the white sand, reached 37.7'C. The first plant we gathered from American soil was the Avicennia tomentosa (Mangle prieto), which scarcely reaches 2 feet high here. This shrub, with the sesuvium, the yellow gomphrena and the cacti, covered a ground saturated with soda salts; they belong to the scant social plants like European heaths, and in the torrid zone thrive only on the seashore and high in the Andean plateaux.

The port of Cumanà was closely blockaded, and we had to wait there two and a half months longer. We spent our time completing our collection of the flora of Cumanà, geologizing along the eastern part of the Araya peninsula, and observing numerous planetary eclipses. The live animals we had brought from the Orinoco intrigued all the Cumanà inhabitants. We wanted to send them to the zoo in Paris. The arrival of a French squadron gave us an unexpected opportunity to send the monkeys and birds on, but they all died in Guadeloupe.

I will not go into further details about the physiological properties of these New World poisons that kill so quickly without ever making you sick if taken in the stomach, and without warning you of death by violently exciting the marrow in your spine. On the Orinoco river banks you cannot eat chicken that has not been killed by a poison arrow. Missionaries claim that animal flesh is only worth eating if killed in this way. Though ill with tertiary fever Father Zea insisted every morning that a poison arrow and the live chicken due to be eaten by us be brought to his hammock. He did not want anybody else to kill the bird, despite his weakness. Large birds like the guan (pava de monte) or the curassow (alector), pricked in their thighs, die in two to five minutes, but it takes ten to twelve minutes for a pig or peccary to die. Bonpland found that the same poison bought in different villages revealed enormous differences.