After the rain ceased, the next morning about seven, we paddled up stream in the cayuco. I have never seen rocks so curiously corroded; in some places they were like fossil bones of mammoth size, then like battered capitals and fluted columns, always of rather smooth surface, sometimes quite perforated. In the hollows were ferns, selaginellas, and sometimes curious spiders; one rock was just like some monster crawling into the river. On the right bank several small springs trickled in, and on the other side a swift-flowing creek added materially to the volume of the river. Still we were getting into shallower water, and after passing in one way and another fifteen rapids or _corrientes_, we came to a huge tree that completely blocked our way. With a satisfied feeling, we declined to drag our heavy cayuco over, but beached her on a sand-spit, and waited for the return through the forest of part of our men whom we had sent to explore inland. Wild figs of good size came tumbling into the stream from the trees above; but they were not to our taste, although Guillermo said they were eaten when ripe. While we waited, a large canoe came down from the mahogany region miles above, and the three Caribs in it dragged it over the log with great labor. Besides their petácas, they had mahogany mortars for rice-hulling, and mahogany platters. In the forest their work is task-work, and they often have half the day to themselves; in this leisure time they carve the rejected butts into various useful articles, which they sell at the _Boca_, or mouth of the river. As we returned, we saw another use to which the ever-present machete is put; it is in turn knife, axe, adze, hammer, spoon, back-scratcher, shovel, pump-handle, door-bolt, blind-fastener,—and now a fishing-rod! Guillermo actually split the head of a large fish that was in the shadow of a rock,—a fish weighing some five pounds!