g cows or sheep.

Before Maracaibo is a very spacious and secure port, wherein may be
built all sorts of vessels, having great convenience of timber, which
may be transported thither at little charge. Nigh the town lies also a
small island called Borrica, where they feed great numbers of goats,
which cattle the inhabitants use more for their skins than their flesh
or milk; they slighting these two, unless while they are tender and
young kids. In the fields are fed some sheep, but of a very small size.
In some islands of the lake, and in other places hereabouts, are many
savage Indians, called by the Spaniards bravoes, or wild: these could
never be reduced by the Spaniards, being brutish, and untameable. They
dwell mostly towards the west side of the lake, in little huts built on
trees growing in the water; so to keep themselves from innumerable
mosquitoes, or gnats, which infest and torment them night and day. To
the east of the said lake are whole towns of fishermen, who likewise
live in huts built on trees, as the former. Another reason of this
dwelling, is the frequent inundations; for after great rains, the land
is often overflown for two or three leagues, there being no less than
twenty-five great rivers that feed this lake. The town of Gibraltar is
also frequently drowned by these, so that the inhabitants are
constrained to retire to their plantations.

Gibraltar, situate at the side of the lake about forty leagues within
it, receives its provisions of flesh, as has been said, from Maracaibo.
The town is inhabited by about 1,500 persons, whereof four hundred may
bear arms; the greatest part of them keep shops, wherein they exercise
one trade or another. In the adjacent fields are numerous plantations of
sugar and cocoa, in which are many tall and beautiful trees, of whose
timber houses may be built, and ships. Among these are many handsome and
proportionable cedars, seven or eight feet about, of which they can
build boats and ships, so as to bear only one great sail; such vessels
being called piraguas. The whole country is well furnished with rivers
and brooks, very useful in droughts, being then cut into many little
channels to water their fields and plantations. They plant also much
tobacco, well esteemed in Europe, and for its goodness is called there
tobacco de sacerdotes, or priest's tobacco. They enjoy nigh twenty
leagues of jurisdiction, which is bounded by very high mountains
perpetually covered with snow