A WOMAN'S EXPERIENCES IN VENEZUELA. 103 



They would always stop and make friends with us, with child- 

 like curiosity asking where we came from, and why we 

 wanted birds and lizards and butterflies, and murmuring the 

 words dear to every woman's heart in all lands, " Que joven- 

 cita!" which literally translated is "What a young little 

 thing ! " Very simple-hearted are these poor Indian women 

 and so hard are their lives that at a very early age do they 

 cease to be jovencila. 



We would often meet the wandering tribes of Guarauno 

 Indians, who live nearly always upon the marcli, carrying 

 all their worldly possessions upon their backs and sleeping 

 wherever night happens to find them. They very rarely 

 knew even a word of Spanish and shunned any intercourse 

 with strangers, scorning the inventions of civilization and 

 using the poisoned arrows of their ancestors. 



One Sunday morning one of the laborers at the near-by 

 Pitch Lake, bearing the pious name of Jose de Jesus Zamoro, 

 came into headquarters to invite us to a dance that afternoon 

 at his house. The house of Zamoro had nothing particularly 

 to recommend it as a ballroom; for the floor was of dirt, the 

 ceiling low and the walls windowless. But it was crowded; 

 the air stifling and the dancers dripping with perspiration. 

 The music was wild and strange, the man who shook the 

 maracas — an instrument consisting of two gourds filled with 

 dried seeds which is shaken in time to the music — often 

 breaking into a weird song, making up the words as he went 

 along, with some joke about each dancer. As the songster's 

 zeal waxed high he described himself as being so great that 

 " where he stood the earth trembled." 



Between dances the ladies' last partners were supposed to 

 take them into the next room where drinks were for sale. 

 This was the explanation of Zamoro's zeal for dances: music 

 and dance hall were free, but a substantial profit came from 

 the drinks. 



