f a cannibal, which was regarded as a sort
of standard or helmet captured from the enemy, and constituted a great
honour for this chief.

There is a district on the coast of Paria, called Haraia, which is
remarkable for a peculiar kind of salt found there. It is a vast plain
over which the waves of the sea are driven in heavy weather and
when the waves subside and the sun comes out, the pools of water
crystallise into masses of the whitest salt, in sufficient quantity
for the natives to load all the ships that sail, did they arrive
before it rained. The first rainfall melts the salt, which is then
absorbed by the sands and thus returns through fissures in the earth,
to the sea which produces it. Others pretend that this plain is not
inundated by the sea, but that it possesses saline springs, more
bitter than sea water, which send forth their waters when the tempest
rages. The natives set great store on these salines, and they not
only use the salt in the same way that we do, but they mould it into
brick-shaped forms and trade it to foreigners for articles which they
do not themselves possess.

The bodies of the chiefs of the country are laid upon biers under
which a slow fire is lighted which consumes the flesh, little by
little, but leaves the bones and the skin intact. These dried bodies
are then piously preserved, as though they were their _penates_. The
Spaniards say that in one district they saw a man being thus dried for
preservation and in another a woman.

When, on the eighth day of the ides of February, the Spaniards were
ready to leave the country of Curiana, they found they had ninety-six
pounds of pearls at eight ounces to the pound, which they had obtained
at an average price of five cents.

Although their return voyage was shorter than when they came from
Hispaniola, it lasted sixty-one days, because continual currents
running from east to west not only retarded their speed, but sometimes
completely stopped the ship. Finally they arrived, loaded with pearls
like other people come loaded with straw. The commander, Pedro Alonzo
Nunez, concealed an important quantity of valuable pearls, and thus
cheated the royal revenues, to which a fifth of all merchandise
belongs.[9] His fellows denounced him, and Fernando de Vega, a learned
statesman, who was Governor of Galicia where they landed, arrested
him, and he was held in prison for a long time, but was finally
released; and even to this day he still claims t