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Here Kermit shot a big cayman. Our camp was alongside the graves of three men who at this point had perished in the swift water. Senhor Caripe told us many strange adventures of rubber-workers he had met or employed. One of his men, working on the Gy-Parana, got lost and after twenty-eight days found himself on the Madeirainha, which he thus discovered.
This nation, formerly very powerful, is separated from the mountains of Caripe by the Orinoco, by the vast steppes of Caracas and of Cumana; and by a barrier far more difficult to surmount, the nations of Caribbean origin. But notwithstanding distance, and the numerous obstacles in the way of intercourse, the language of the Chayma Indians is a branch of the Tamanac tongue.
He answered that in another part of the country, where a similar cavern exists inhabited by the same birds, they are called guacharos; that in that other cavern the cave of Caripe, as he called it thousands of birds exist, and that the Indians take the young birds for the sake of the oil which they contain.
Senhor Caripe, a first-class waterman, cool, fearless, and brawny as a bull, came with us as guide. Half a dozen times the loads were taken out and carried down. At one cataract the canoes were themselves dragged overland; elsewhere they were run down empty, shipping a good deal of water. At the foot of the cataract, where we dragged the canoes overland, we camped for the night.
The cavern of Caripe, situated nearly in the latitude of 10 degrees 10 minutes, consequently in the centre of the torrid zone, is elevated 506 toises above the level of the sea in the gulf of Cariaco.
The Grotto of Caripe preserves the same direction, the same breadth, and its primitive height of sixty or seventy feet, to the distance of 472 metres, or 1458 feet, accurately measured. We had great difficulty in persuading the Indians to pass beyond the anterior portion of the grotto, the only part which they annually visit to collect the fat.
We were assured that they are inhabited by nocturnal birds, the same as those we were soon to become acquainted with in the Cueva del Guacharo of Caripe. Near these caverns we saw strata of schistose marl, and found, with great astonishment, rock-crystals encased in beds of alpine limestone. They were hexahedral prisms, terminated with pyramids, fourteen lines long and eight thick.
Deposits of lamellar gypsum, containing numerous strata of marl, are found in patches on the steppes of Caracas and Barcelona; for instance, in the table-land of San Diego, between Ortiz and the Mesa de Paja; and near the mission of Cachipo. They appeared to me to cover the Jura limestone of Tisnao, which is analogous to that of Caripe, where we find it mixed with masses of fibrous gypsum.
We saw that the grotto was perceptibly contracted, retaining only forty feet in height, and that it continued stretching to north-east, without deviating from its primitive direction, which is parallel to that of the great valley of Caripe. It was a mixture of silex, alumina, and vegetable detritus.
The greater progress we make in geology, the more we feel the insufficiency of theories founded on observations merely local. On the 12th of September we continued our journey to the convent of Caripe, the principal settlement of the Chayma missions. At Cumana I heard it derived in a manner somewhat far-fetched from the Spanish word cogollo, signifying the heart of oleraceous plants.