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Updated: June 3, 2025
At Caripe, the conuco of the community presents the appearance of an extensive and beautiful garden. The natives are obliged to work in it every morning from six to ten, and the alcaldes and alguazils of Indian race overlook their labours. These men are looked upon as great state functionaries, and they alone have the right of carrying a cane.
One more cave I must tell you of, to show you how old some caves must be, and then I must stop; and that is the cave of Caripe, in Venezuela, which is the most northerly part of South America.
The Grotto of Caripe is the Tartarus of the Greeks; and the guacharos, which hover over the rivulet, uttering plaintive cries, remind us of the Stygian birds. At the point where the river forms the subterranean cascade, a hill covered with vegetation, which is opposite to the opening of the grotto, presents a very picturesque aspect.
Five or six hundred of them voluntarily quitted their marshes, a few years ago, and formed, on the northern and southern banks of the Orinoco, twenty-five leagues distant from Cape Barima, two considerable villages, under the names of Zacupana and Imataca. When I made my journey in Caripe, these Indians were still without missionaries, and lived in complete independence.
I believe the surest means by which geologic descriptions may be made to survive the change which the science undergoes in proportion to its progress, will be to substitute provisionally in the description of formations, for the systematic names of red sandstone, variegated sandstone, zechstein and Jura limestone, names derived from American localities, as sandstone of the Llanos, limestone of Cumanacoa and Caripe, and to separate the enumeration of facts relative to the superposition of soils, from the discussion on the analogy of those soils with those of the Old World.*
So great a uniformity led me to believe that the aspect of the cavern of Caripe would differ little from what I had observed in my preceding travels. The reality far exceeded my expectations.
The Grotto of Caripe is the Tartarus of the Greeks; and the Guacharos, which hover over the rivulet, uttering plaintive cries, remind us of the Stygian birds. . . . 'The missionaries, with all their authority, could not prevail on the Indians to penetrate farther into the cavern. As the vault grew lower, the cries of the Guacharos became more shrill.
In the latter case its presence seems to prove still more clearly that the limestones of Cumanacoa and Caripe are only two parts of the same system, alternating with sandstone, sometimes quartzose, sometimes slaty.
At the convent of Caripe as well as at the Orinoco, in Peru as well as in Mexico, I heard this opinion expressed, particularly by monks who had some vague notions of the Semitic languages. Did motives supposed to be favourable to religion, give rise to this extraordinary theory?
I cannot answer better than by giving Humboldt's account of the Cave of Caripe, on the Spanish main hard by, where he discovered them, or rather described them to civilised Europe, for the first time: 'The Cueva del Guacharo is pierced in the vertical profile of a rock. The entrance is towards the south, and forms a vault eighty feet broad and seventy-two feet high.
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