The Otomacs do not eat all clays indiscriminately: they choose alluvial beds where the earth is oilier and smoother to touch. They do not mix the clay with maize flour or turtle fat or crocodile fat. In Paris we analysed a ball of earth brought back from the Orinoco and found no trace of organic matter. The savage will eat anything as long as it satisfies his hunger. Earth becomes his staple diet, for it is hard to find even a lizard or a fern root or a dead fish floating on the water. Surprisingly, during the flood season, the Otomac does not get thin; in fact he remains very tough, and without a swollen belly.

While we unloaded the pirogue we investigated the impressive spectacle of a great river squeezed and reduced to foam. Instead of just describing my own sensations I shall try to paint an overall view of one of the most famous spots in the New World. The more imposing and majestic a scene, the more important it is to capture it in its smallest details, to fix the outline of the picture that you want to present to the reader's imagination, and to simply describe the particular characteristics of the great monuments of nature.

Beyond the Great Cataracts an unknown land begins. This partly mountainous and partly flat land receives tributaries from both the Amazon and the Orinoco. No missionary writing about the Orinoco before me has passed beyond the Maypures raudal. Up river, along the Orinoco for a stretch of over 100 leagues, we came across only three Christian settlements with some six to eight whites of European origin there. Not surprisingly, such a deserted territory has become the classic place for legends and fantastic histories. Up here serious missionaries have located tribes whose people have one eye in the middle of their foreheads, the heads of dogs, and mouths below their stomachs. It would be wrong to attribute these exaggerated fictions to the inventions of simple missionaries because they usually come by them from Indian legends. From his vocation, a missionary does not tend towards skepticism; he imprints on his memory all that the Indians have repeated and when back in Europe delights in astonishing people by reciting facts he has collected. These travelers' and monks' tales (cuentos de viajeros y frailes) increase in improbability the further you go from the Orinoco forests towards the coasts inhabited by whites. When at Cumanà you betray signs of incredulity, you are silenced by these words, 'The fathers have seen it, but far above the Great Cataracts màs arriba de los Raudales.

Between the 4th and 8th degrees of latitude the Orinoco not only divides the great jungles of Parima from the bare savannahs of the Apure, Meta and Guaviare but also separates tribes of very different customs. On the west the Guahibo, Chiricoa and Guamo tribes wander through treeless plains. They are filthy, proud of their independence, wild, and hard to settle in a fixed place to do regular work. Spanish missionaries call them indios andantes (wandering Indians). On the east of the Orinoco live the Maco, Saliva, Curacicana and Pareca tribes; they are tame, peaceful farmers who easily adapt to missionary discipline.