eir women withdraw behind the house, from
whence the latter examine the guests as though they were prodigies.
Cotton is plentiful and grows wild in Cauchieta, just as shrubs do in
our forests, and of this they make trousers which they wear.

Continuing their course along the same coast, the Spaniards suddenly
encountered about two thousand men armed according to the fashion of
the country, who prevented them from landing. They were so barbarous
and ferocious that it was impossible to establish the smallest
relations with them or to effect any trade; so, as our men were
satisfied with the pearls they had procured, they returned by the
same course to Curiana, where they remained for another twenty days
bountifully supplied with provisions.

It seems to me neither out of place nor useless to this history, to
here narrate what happened when they arrived within sight of the
coasts of Paria. They encountered by chance a squadron of eighteen
canoes full of cannibals engaged in a man-hunt: this was near the Boca
de la Sierpe and the strait leading to the gulf of Paria, which I have
before described. The cannibals unconcernedly approached the ship,
surrounding it, and shooting flights of arrows and javelins at our
men. The Spaniards replied by a cannon shot, which promptly scattered
them. In pursuing them, the ship's boat came up with one of their
canoes, but was able to capture only a single cannibal and a bound
prisoner, the others having all escaped by swimming. This prisoner
burst into tears, and by his gestures and rolling his eyes, gave it
to be understood that six of his companions had been cruelly
disembowelled, cut into pieces, and devoured by those monsters, and
that the same fate awaited him on the morrow. They made him a present
of the cannibal, upon whom he immediately threw himself, gnashing his
teeth and belabouring him with blows of a stick and his fists and with
kicks, for he believed that the death of his companions would not be
sufficiently avenged till he beheld the cannibal insensible and beaten
black and blue. When questioned as to the customs and usages of the
cannibals when they made expeditions to other countries, he said
they always carried with them, wherever they went, sticks prepared
beforehand which they planted in the ground at the place of their
encampment, and beneath whose shelter they passed the night.

Hanging over the door of one of the chieftains in Curiana, the
Spaniards found the head o