While the majority of settlements round the lake consist of a few palm-leaf huts, or houses on piles in the ancient fashion of the Indians, there are several towns of more or less importance. Altagracia, immediately opposite Maracaibo on the eastern shore, is the largest of these, and has a considerable importance on account of the agricultural products of its surroundings, with a fleet of fishing-boats, whose catches are sold in the town and thence shipped into the interior. Santa Rita, not far to the south, is in the midst of a fine goat-farming district, and the coco-palms along the lake shores are cultivated with great profit. At the extreme south-east corner of the lake there is a hamlet which bears a famous name, and has itself been of note in Venezuelan history. This is Gibraltar, founded by Gonzalo Piña Lidueña, afterwards Governor of the province, in 1597. It is said that during the night when he camped at this spot there was a total eclipse of the moon, reminding him of a bivouac at Gibraltar in Spain, where he had last seen the phenomenon; as a result he named the new settlement after the famous rock. The fertile lands around were so excellent for cacao and tobacco that the place soon became important, and substantial buildings were erected to accommodate the increasing population. Before long it was sacked and reduced to ruins by the Motilones Indians, but in 1666 was again so flourishing that the pirate Henry Morgan considered it worth taking, and the town, which had again grown up in 1678, was sacked a third time by Gramont. From one cause and another, chiefly the disturbances during the revolution against Spain, the place became deserted, and now only a few huts amid the ruins of the old stone buildings mark the site of the city, while the cacao and tobacco plantations have, through neglect, lost their prestige or been swallowed up by forest. San Carlos de Zulia, on the Escalante, is important by virtue of the through traffic from the haciendas in the interior to the shores of the lake, but it is not attractive, being, like the port of Encontrados, an insanitary, unhealthy, riverside village rather than a town. North of the cultivated lands on the west shore near Maracaibo, opposite the entrance of the lake, we have open, dry lands where the salt-pans are to be found, and on a lagoon in these plains stands Sinamaica, interesting for the Goajiro population, who preserve their primitive customs alongside the civilisation of the town.