Many chapels, called ermitas by the Spaniards, surround La Laguna. Built on hillocks among evergreen trees, these chapels add a picturesque effect to the countryside. The interior of the town does not correspond at all to its outskirts. The houses are solid, but very ancient, and the streets sad. A botanist should not complain of the age of these houses for the roofs and walls are covered with Sempervivum canariensis and the pretty trichomanes, mentioned by every traveler. The plants are watered by the abundant mists.

The Tuy valley has its 'gold mine', as do nearly all the places near mountains inhabited by white Europeans. I was assured that in 1780 foreign gold seekers had been seen extracting gold nuggets and had set up a place for washing the sand. The overseer of a nearby plantation had followed their tracks and after his death a jacket with gold buttons was found among his belongings, which according to popular logic meant that they came from the gold seam, later covered by a rock fall. It was no use my saying that from simply looking at the ground, without opening up a deep gallery, I would not be able to decide if there once had been a mine there - I had to yield to my host's entreaties. For twenty years the overseer's jacket had been the talking-point of the area. Gold dug out from the ground has; in the people's eyes, a special lure unrelated to the diligent farmer harvesting a fertile land under a gentle climate.

The perpetual cool that prevails in La Laguna makes the city the favorite home for the inhabitants of the Canaries. The residential capital of Tenerife is magnificently placed in a small plain surrounded by gardens at the foot of a hill crowned with laurel, myrtle and strawberry trees. It would be a mistake to rely on some travelers who believe the town lies by a lake. The rain sometimes forms an enormous sheet of water, and a geologist who sees the past rather than the present state of nature in everything would not doubt that the whole plain was once a great lake, now dried up. La Laguna has fallen from its opulence since the erupting volcano destroyed the port of Garachico and Santa Cruz became the trading center of the island. It has no more than 9, inhabitants, with nearly 400 monks distributed in six convents, though some travelers insist half the population wear cassocks. Numerous windmills surround the city, a sign that wheat is cultivated in this high country. The Guanches called wheat at Tenerife tano, at Lanzarote triffa; barley in Gran Canaria was called aramotanoque, and at Lanzarote tamosen. The flour of roasted barley (gofio) and goat's milk constituted the main food of these people about whose origins so many systematic fables have been written.

The old Indian called 'master of the poison' was flattered by our interest in his chemical procedures. He found us intelligent enough to think that we could make soap; for making soap, after making curare, seemed to him the greatest of human inventions. Once the poison was poured into its jars, we accompanied the Indian to the juvias fiesta. They were celebrating the Brazil-nut harvest, and became wildly drunk. The hut where the Indians had gathered over several days was the strangest sight you could imagine. Inside there were no tables or benches, only large smoked and roasted monkeys lined up symmetrically against the wall. These were marimondas (Ateles belzebuth) and the bearded capuchins. The way these animals, which look so like human beings, are roasted helps you understand why civilized people find eating them so repulsive. A little grill made of a hard wood is raised about a foot from the ground. The skinned monkey is placed on top in a sitting position so that he is held up by his long thin hands; sometimes the hands are crossed over his shoulders. Once it is fixed to the grill a fire is lit underneath; flames and smoke cover the monkey, which is roasted and smoked at the same time. Seems Indians eat a leg or arm of a roasted monkey makes you realize why cannibalism is not so repugnant to Indians. Roasted monkeys especially those with very round heads, look horribly like children. Europeans who are forced to eat them prefer to cut off the head and hands before serving up the rest of the monkey The flesh of the monkey is so lean and dry that Bonpland kept an arm and a hand, roasted in Esmeralda, in his Paris collections. After many years it did not smell in the least.

The position of San Fernando on a great navigable river, near the mouth of another river that crosses the whole province of Varinas, is extremely useful for trade. All that is produced in this province, the leathers, cocoa, cotton and top-quality Mijagual indigo, is washed down past this town to the Orinoco mouth. During the rainy season big ships come upstream from Angostura to San Fernando de Apure and along the Santo Domingo river as far as Torunos, the harbor for the town of Barinas. During this season the flooded rivers form a labyrinth of waterways between the Apure, Arauca, Capanaparo and Sinaruco rivers, covering a country of roughly 400 square leagues. At this point the Orinoco, deviating from its course, due not to neighboring mountains but to the rising counter-slopes, turns east instead of following its ancient path in the line of the meridian. If you consider the surface of the earth as a polyhedron formed of variously inclined planes you will see by simply consulting a map that between San Fernando de Apure, Caycara and the mouth of the Meta the intersection of three slopes, higher in the north, west and south, must have caused a considerable depression. In this basin the savannahs can be covered by 12 to 14 feet of water and turned into a great lake after the rains. Villages and farms look as though they are on shoals, rising barely 2 to 3 feet above the water surface. The flooding of the Apure, Meta and Orinoco rivers is also periodic. In the rainy season horses that roam the savannah do not have time to reach the plateaux and they drown in their hundreds. You see mares followed by foals, barely sticking up out of the water, swimming part of the day to eat grass. While swimming they are chased by crocodiles, and some carry crocodile tooth marks on their hides. Horse, mule and cow carcasses attract numberless vultures.

The fine Carib tribes inhabit only a small part of the country they once occupied before the discovery of America. European cruelty ensured that they completely vanished from the West Indies and Darien coasts. Once subdued they lived in populous villages in Nueva Barcelona province and Spanish Guiana. I think you could count more than 35, Caribs living in the Piritu llanos and on the banks of the Caroní and Cuyuni. If you add the independent Caribs living in the Cayenne and Pacaraymo mountains between the Essequibo and Branco river sources they would reach a total of 40, pure-blooded Indians. I linger on this point because the Caribs, before my voyage, had been supposed to have become extinct.

Almost all Cumanà's inhabitants witnessed this phenomenon as they got up before four in the morning to go to first mass. The sight of these fire-balls did not leave them indifferent, far to the contrary; the older ones recalled that the great 1766 earthquake was preceded by a similar manifestation. (63)