What a contrast between the Cueva of Caripe and those caverns of the north crowned with oaks and gloomy larch-trees! 'But this luxury of vegetation embellishes not only the outside of the vault, it appears even in the vestibule of the grotto.

We saw with astonishment plantain-leaved Heliconias, eighteen feet high, the Praga palm-trees, and arborescent Arums follow the banks of the river, even to those subterranean places.

The vegetation continues in the Cave of Caripe, as in the deep crevices of the Andes, half excluded from the light of day; and does not disappear till, advancing in the interior, we reach thirty or forty paces from the entrance.

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