principal chiefs or caciques breakfast or dine, the servants bring up the wine by means of ladders attached to the tree trunks, and they are just as quick about it as our servants who, upon a level floor, serve drinks from a sideboard near the table. Approaching the tree of Abibaiba a discussion began between him and the Spaniards; the latter offering him peace and begging him to come down. The cacique refused and begged to be allowed to live in his own fashion. Promises were succeeded by threats, and he was told that if he did not come down with all his family they would either cut down or set fire to the tree. A second time Abibaiba refused, so they attacked the tree with axes; and when the cacique saw the chips flying he changed his mind and came down, accompanied by his two sons. They proceeded to discuss about peace and gold. Abibaiba declared that he had no gold, and that as he had never needed it, he had taken no pains to get it. The Spaniards insisting, the cacique said: "If your cupidity be such, I will seek gold for you in the neighbouring mountains and when I find it I will bring it to you; for it is found in those mountains you behold." He fixed a day when he would return, but neither then nor later did he reappear. The Spaniards came back, loaded with the supplies and the wines of the cacique, but without the gold they had counted upon. Nevertheless Abibaiba, his subjects, and his sons gave the same information concerning the gold mines and the Caribs who live upon human flesh, as I have mentioned, as did those at Comogra. They ascended the river another thirty miles and came to the huts of some cannibals but found them empty, for the savages, alarmed by the approach of the Spaniards, had taken refuge in the mountains, carrying everything they possessed on their backs. BOOK V While these things were happening on the banks of this river, an officer named Raia, whom Vasco Nuñez and Colmenares had left in charge of the camp at Rio Negro in the territory of the cacique Abenamacheios, driven either by hunger or fatality ventured to explore the neighbourhood with nine of his companions. He went to the neighbouring village belonging to the cacique Abraibes, and there Raia and two of his companions were massacred by that chief, the others succeeding in escaping. Some few days later Abraibes, sympathising with his relative and neighbour Abenamacheios, who had been driven from his house and had had his arm cut off by one of our foot-soldiers, gave the latter refuge in his house, after which he sought out Abibaiba, the cacique who lived in a tree. The latter, having been driven from his abode, also avoided attack by the Spaniards and wandered in the most inaccessible regions of the mountains and forests.