Nothing could exceed the joy which these people evinced when after my first meal with them I borrowed a pair of drawers of one of the young men, and putting off my own clothes I substituted the drawers, and requested the females to paint me: to this the Cacique consented, and they immediately descended their own ladder, and ascended the other; after a great deal of laughter, and some disputes as to the beauty of the figures drawn on my body with this red unctious matter, I was complimented with a kiss from each of my _damas del tocador_, and told, that if I were not so white I should be very handsome. I returned the kindness which I had received by distributing among the females beads, bells, and combs; I also gave to Cushicagua my spoon, knife, and fork, and to the young men two glass bottles. My watch was the cause of universal astonishment, the motion of the seconds' hand when lying on the floor astounded them, conceiving that while I held the watch in my hand I communicated the motion to it: when I applied the watch to their ears their amazement was expressed in the most boisterous manner--they shouted and jumped, and then listened again! and at last it was concluded that I had a bird shut up in the little case, and that it was endeavouring to release itself by pecking a hole. I then opened it, and every one as he peeped laughed, and exclaimed, _manan, manan, chy trapichote_--no, no, it is a sugar-cane mill, this being the only piece of machinery they had ever seen, and the only resemblance consisted in its rotatory motion.
These Indians have two meals a day, one in the morning the other in the evening, composed chiefly of plantains, bananas, yucas, camotes, a little flesh meat procured in the woods, and fish, of which there is a great abundance in the river, to catch which they use the same means as the Esmeraldeños.
I asked the old Cacique what crimes he had to punish among his subjects; he told me, very few: theft he punished, he said, by taking from the thief double what he had stolen, which he gave to the person injured; if the thief could not satisfy the fine, he was delivered to the plaintiff as a slave until his services might satisfy the claim. Adultery he punished by obliging the man to maintain the woman as long as the husband might think proper, or else by keeping him in the stocks, which were under the house, till the husband begged his release. Murder, said he, never happens among us; and all small crimes I punish by flogging the criminals myself.