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Updated: May 22, 2025
It seems to me neither out of place nor useless to this history, to here narrate what happened when they arrived within sight of the coasts of Paria. They encountered by chance a squadron of eighteen canoes full of cannibals engaged in a man-hunt: this was near the Boca de la Sierpe and the strait leading to the gulf of Paria, which I have before described.
Advancing as best he could amongst these raging waves, he discovered a strait some eight miles long, which resembled the entrance of a large harbour. The current flowed towards that strait, which he called Boca de la Sierpe, naming an island beside it, Margarita.
A couple of days later he sets off for the land of sun and sleep with what he calls his Spanish kit in a portmanteau. This he purchased in the "Sierpe" for forty pesetas at a ready-made tailor's, where it was labelled "Fantasia." It is merely a tweed suit, but, wearing it, Cartoner is safe from the reproach that doggeth the step of the British tourist abroad.
He kept to the left and, following the continental coasts towards the east, he crossed the gulfs of Veragua, Uraba, and Cachibacoa, touching finally with his ship at the region which, in our First Decade, we have explained was called Paria and Boca de la Sierpe.
He ran from Punta Galera, at the north-eastern extremity so named from the likeness of a certain rock to a galley under sail along the east and south of the island; turned eastward at Punta Galeota; and then northward, round Punta Icacque, through the Boca Sierpe, or serpent's mouth, into the Gulf of Paria, which he named 'Golfo de Balena, the Gulf of the Whale, and 'Golfo Triste, the Sad Gulf; and went out by the northern passage of the Boca Drago.
This island is called Rica and not Margarita, although many pearls are found there; for the name Margarita was first bestowed upon another island near Paria and the region called Boca de la Sierpe, where many pearls had likewise been found. Morales landed upon the island with only sixty men, the dimensions of his boats, called culches, not permitting him to take a larger number.
Through this channel the water ran continually and furiously to the northwards, as if it had been the mouth of some great river, which was the occasion of naming it Boca del Sierpe, because of the terror it put our people into; for, as they lay very securely at anchor, there came a stronger current of the water than usual, making a hideous noise and running furiously to the northwards; and being opposed by another current running out from the Gulf of Paria, they met with a hideous roaring noise, and caused the sea to swell up like a high mountain, or ridge of hills along the channel.
From Boca de la Sierpe to Cape Cuchibacoa, near which the coast line bends to the left, we measured about three thousand leagues. From the promontory of Cuchibacoa to the region of Caramaira, where the port of Carthagena is, the distance is about one hundred and seventy leagues.
Having taken what water they wanted, the admiral resolved to proceed to another mouth or channel which appeared towards the north-west, which he afterwards called Boca del Drago, or the Dragons Mouth, to distinguish it from the one where he then was, to which he had given the name of Boca del Sierpe, or the Serpents Mouth.
What I have recently learnt about the eastern shore is as follows: the entire country lying to the east between the promontory and shore which extend into the sea and receive the force of the waves, as far as Boca de la Sierpe and Paria, is called by the general name of Caribana.
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