CONVENT OF CARIPE. 
251 
Chapter VII. 
Convent of Caripe. — Cavern of tlie Guacharo. — Nocturnal Birds. 
An alley of perseas led us to the Hospital of the Arago- 
nese Capuchins. Ve stopped near a eross of Brazil-wood, 
erected in the midst of a square, and surrounded with 
benches, on which the infirm monks seat themselves to tell 
their rosaries. The convent is backed by an enormous wall 
of perpendicular rock, covered with thick vegetation. The 
stone, which is of resplendent whiteness, appears only here 
and there between the foliage. It is difficult to imagine a 
more picturesque spot. It recalled forcibly to my remem- 
brance the valleys of Derbyshire, aud the cavernous moun- 
tains of Muggendorf, in Franconia. Instead of the beeches 
and maple trees of Europe we here find the statelier forms 
of the ceiba and the palm-tree, the praga and irasse. Num- 
berless springs gush from the sides of the rocks which 
encircle the basin of Caripe, and of which the abrupt slopes 
present, towards the south, profiles of a thousand feet in 
height. These springs issue, for the most part, from a few 
narrow crevices. The humidity which they spread around 
favours the growth of the great trees ; and the natives, who 
love solitary places, form their conueos along the sides of 
these crevices. Plantains and papaw trees are grouped 
together with groves of arborescent fern ; and this mixture 
of wild and cultivated plants gives the place a peculiar 
charm. Springs are distinguished from afar, on the naked 
flanks of the mountains, by tufted masses of vegetation* 
which at first sight seem suspended from the rocks, and 
* Among the interesting plants of the valley of Caripe, we found for 
the first time a calidium, the trunk of whicli was twenty feet high (C. arbo- 
reum) ; the Mikania micrantha, which may probably possess some of the 
alexipharmic properties of the famous gttaco of the Choco ; the Bauhinia 
obtusifolia, a very large tree, called guarapa by the Indians; the Wein- 
maunia glabra; a tree psychotria, the capsules of which, when rubbed 
between the fingers, emit a very agreeable orange smell ; the Dorstenia 
Houstoni (raiz de resfriado) ; the Martynia Craniolaria, the white flowers of 
which are six or seven inches long ; a scrophularia, having the aspect or 
the Verbascum miconi, and the leaves of which, ail radical and hairy, are 
marked with silvery glands. 
