190 
A SIHGTJLAE OHAEAOTEE. 
idleness, is followed at Maniquarez, and throughout tho 
whole peninsula of Anaya. The chief wealth of the inha- 
bitants consists in goats” which are of a very large and very 
fine breed, and rove in the fields like those at the Peak of 
Teneriffe. They have become entirely wild, and are marked 
like the mules, because it would be difficult to recognize 
them from their colour or the arrangement of their spots. 
These wild goats are of a brownish yellow, and are not varied 
in colour like domestic animals. If in hunting, a colonist 
kills a goat which he does not consider as his own pro- 
perty, lie carries it immediately to the neighbour to 
whom it belongs. During two days we heard it every- 
where spoken of as a very extraordinary circumstance, that 
an inhabitant of Maniquarez had lost a goat, on which 
it was probable that a neighbouring family had regaled 
themselves. 
Among the Mulattoes, whose huts surround the salt lake, 
we found a shoemaker of Castilian descent. He received 
us with the air of gravity and self-sufficiency which in those 
countries characterize ahnost all persons who are conscious 
of possessing some peculiar talent. He was employed in 
stretching the string of his bow, and sharpening his arrows 
to shoot birds. His trade of a shoemaker could not be very 
lucrative in a country where the greater part of the inha- 
bitants go barefooted; and be only complained that, on 
account of tbe dearness of European gunpowder, a man of 
his quality was reduced to employ tbe same weapons as the 
Indians. ” He was the sage of the plain; he understood the 
formation of the salt by the influence of the sun and full 
moon, the symptoms of earthquakes, the marks by which 
mines of gold and silver are discovered, and the medicinal 
plants, which, like all the other colonists from Chile to Cali- 
fornia, he classified into hot and cold.* Having collected the 
traditions of the country, he gave us some curious accounts 
of the pearls of Cubagua, objects of luxury, which he treated 
with the utmost contempt. To show us how familiar to him 
were the sacred writings lie took a pride in reminding us 
that Job preferred wisdom to all the pearls of the Indies. 
His philosophy was circumscribed to the narrow circle of 
the wants of life. The possession of a very strong ass, able 
* Exciting or debilitating, tbe sthenie and asthenic, of Brown’s system. 
