The Pimichín landing-stage is surrounded by a small cacao plantation. The trees are very robust and loaded with fruit all year round. When you think that the cacao tree is native to the Parima jungle, south of latitude 6, and that the humid climate of the Upper Orinoco suits this precious tree far more than the Caracas and New Barcelona air, which each year gets drier, then one regrets that this beautiful part of the world is in monks' hands as they discourage agriculture. We spent the night in a recently abandoned hut. An Indian family had left behind fishing tackle, earthen jars, mats woven with palm-tree petioles: all the household goods of these carefree people who are indifferent to property Large amounts of mani (a mixture of the resins moronobea and Amyris caraìa) lay in piles around the hut. This is used by Indians to pitch their canoes and to fix the bony ray spines on to their arrows. We found several jars filled with a vegetable milk, which is used as a varnish, called in the missions leche para pintar (milk for painting). They coat their furniture with this viscous juice. It leaves it a fine white; it thickens in contact with air to appear glossy. The more we study vegetable chemistry in the torrid zone the more we shall discover in remote spots still accessible to European trade, and already half prepared by the plants themselves, products that we believed belonged to the animal kingdom. These discoveries will be multiplied when, as the political state of the world now seems to show, European civilization flows towards the equinoctial regions of the New World.