So we sat far up in the bow and watched the mountains take form and the palms upon them become ever more distinct. From a land of mystery untrodden by man, we were soon to come upon a bit of land so prized by man that nations had almost gone to war over it—La Brea (_Bray’ah_) the strange lake of pitch hidden in the heart of the forest, with its strange birds and fish and animals; lying on the borderland between the foot-hills of the northern Andes and the world of mangroves which for many days had held us so safely in its heart. [Illustration: FIG. 14. FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE VENEZUELAN MOUNTAINS.] CHAPTER II. THE LAKE OF PITCH. Heretofore we had sailed and paddled through a land of mangroves and water, where, with the exception of one or two tiny muddy islets in the forest, there was no solid ground. One day the last of innumerable turns of a narrow _caño_ brought our sloop in sight of real earth—the first dry land of eastern Venezuela. A rough wooden wharf supporting a narrow-gauge line of rails appeared, and beyond rose a steep hill, dotted here and there with little thatched huts, each clinging to a niche scooped out of the clay. We were at the village of Guanoco (_Wah-no’co_), the shipping point of the pitch lake. A few steps beyond the last hut and one was in the primeval forest—so limited is man’s influence in this region of rapidly growing plants. For five miles the little toy rails zigzagged their uneven way through the jungle. On one side was swamp, into which one could penetrate but a short distance before encountering the advance-guard of the mangroves, the front of the vast host which stretched eastward mile after mile to the sea. West of the track the land rose ten or twenty feet in many places, but even where level it soon lost its swampy character. At the end of the line the strange pitch lake itself appeared as a great plain, on the borderland between low swamps and the foot-hills of the mountains. This was our tramping-ground, and we found it a veritable wonderland of birds and beasts and flowers. [Illustration: FIG. 15. COLONY OF 150 CASSIQUES’ NESTS IN ONE TREE.]