Despite their authority the missionaries could not persuade the Indians to go any further on into the cavern. The lower the vault the more piercing the screaming of the guàcharos became. Thanks to the cowardice of our guides we had to retreat. We found that a bishop of Saint Thomas of Guiana had gone further than us. He had measured 2, feet from the mouth to where he stopped, but the cavern went further. The memory of this feat was preserved in the Caripe convent, without precise dates. The bishop had used torches made from white Castile wax, while we had torches made of tree bark and resin. The thick smoke from our torches in the narrow underground passage hurt our eyes and made breathing difficult.

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.

On our way to the port of Orotava we passed through the pretty villages of Matanza and Victoria. These names are found together in all the Spanish colonies and contrast in an ugly way with the peaceful feelings those countries inspire. Matanza signifies slaughter, and the word alone recalls the price at which victory was won. In the New World it generally indicates the defeat of the Indians; at Tenerife the village of Matanza was built in a place where the Spaniards were defeated by the Guanches, who were soon sold as slaves in Europe. (15)

Caracas is the capital of a country almost twice the size of Peru and only a little smaller than Nueva Granada (Colombia). This country is officially called in Spanish the Capitanía-General de Caracas or the Capitanía-General de las Provincias de Venezuela, and has nearly a million inhabitants, of whom some 60, are slaves. The copper-colored natives, the indios, form a large part of the population only where Spaniards found complex urban societies already established. In the Capitanía-General the rural Indian population in the cultivated areas outside the missions is insignificant. In 1800 I calculated that the Indian population was about 90,000, which is one ninth of the total population, while in Mexico it rose to almost 50 per cent.

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!

The plain, or rather tableland, on which Cumanacoa stands is only 104 toises above sea-level, three or four times lower than the inhabitants of Cumanà, who have an exaggerated view of how cold it is up there, think it is. The climatic difference between the two neighboring towns is due less to the height of one of them than to local weather conditions. Among these causes are the proximity of the jungle, the frequency of rivers falling down narrow valleys, the amount of rain and those thick fogs that block out sunlight. The cool climate surprises us all the more because, as in the town of Cartago, at Tomependa on the Amazon, as in the Agarua valleys west of Caracas, very great heat is felt though the height varies between 200 and 480 toises above sea-level. In plains, as well as on mountains, isothermal lines are not constantly parallel to the equator or the surface of the earth. Meteorology's great problem will be to determine the direction of these lines and variations due to local causes, and to discover the constant laws in the distribution of heat.

The most majestic palm tree of its tribe, the palma real, gives the countryside around Havana its special character. It is the Oreodoxa regia in our description of American palms; its tall trunk, swelling slightly in the middle, rises 60 to 80 feet high; its upper part shines with a tender green, newly formed by the closing and dilation of the petioles, and contrasts with the rest, which is whitish and fissured. It looks like two columns, one on top of the other. The Cuban palma real has feathery leaves rising straight up towards the sky, curving only at the tips. The form of this plant reminded us of the vadgiai palm covering the rocks on the Orinoco cataracts, balancing its long arrows above the mist of foam. Here, like everywhere, as the population increases so vegetation diminishes. Around Havana, in the Regla amphitheater, these palms that so delighted me are now disappearing year by year. The marshy places covered with bamboos have been cultivated and are drying out. Civilization progresses; and today I am told that the land offers only a few traces of its former savage abundance. From the Punta to San Làzaro, from the Cabaìa to Regla, from Regla to Atares, everything is covered with houses: those circling the bay are lightly and elegantly built. The owners draw a plan and order a house from the United States, as if ordering furniture. As long as yellow fever rages in Havana, people will retire to their country houses and enjoy fresher air. In the cool nights, when ships cross the bay and leave long phosphorescent tracks in the water, these rural sites become a refuge for those who flee a tumultuous, over-populated city. (137)