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cavers of the gtjacharo. 
That which confers most celebrity on the valley of Caripe, 
besides the extraordinary coolness of its climate, is the great 
Cueva, or Cavern of the Guacharo,* In a country where 
the people love the marvellous, a cavern which gives birth to 
a river, and is inhabited by thousands of nocturnal birds, 
the fat of which is employed in the Missions to dress food, 
is an everlasting object of conversation and discussion. The 
cavern, which the natives call “ a mine of fat,” is not in the 
valley of Caripe itself, hut three short leagues distant from 
the convent, in the direction of west-south-west. It opens 
into a lateral valley, which terminates at the Sierra del 
G uacharo. 
We set out for the Sierra on the 18th of September, 
accompanied by the alcaldes, or Indian magistrates, and the 
greater part of the monks of the convent. A narrow path 
led ns at first towards the south, across a fine plain, covered 
with beautiful turf. We then turned westward, along the 
margin of a small river which issues from the mouth of’ the 
cavern. We ascended during three quarters of an hour, 
sometimes in the water, which was shallow, sometimes be- 
tween the torrent and a wall of rocks, on a soil extremely 
slippery and miry. The falling down of the earth, the scat- 
tered trunks of trees, over which the mules could scarcely 
pass, and the creeping plants that covered the ground, ren- 
dered this part of the road fatiguing. We were surprised 
to find here, at scarcely 500 toises above the level of the 
3ea, a cruciferous plant, Eaphanus pinnatus. Plants of this 
family are very rare in the tropics ; they have in some sort 
a northern character, and therefore we never expected to 
see one on the plain of Caripe at so inconsiderable an eleva- 
tion. The northern character also appears in the Galium 
caripense, the Valeriana seandens, and a sanicle not unlike 
the 8. marilandica. 
At the foot of the lofty mountain of the Guacharo, we were 
* The province of Guaeharucu, which Delgado visited in 1534, in the 
expedition of Hieronimo de Ortal, appears to have been situated south or 
south-east of Macarapana, Has its name any connexion with those of 
the cavern and the bird ? or is this last of Spanish origin ? (Laet, Nova 
Orbis, p. G7G). Guacharo means in Castilian “one who cries and laments 
now the bird of the cavern of Caripe, and the guaeharaca (Phasianu* 
parraka), are very noisy birds. 
