Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/60

the Rio Tocuyo in northwestern Venezuela on the 1st of October, crossed it, and went south in search of a tribe of dwarfs called the Ayemanes. He met these little people,^[1] who, he says, averaged five "palmos," or three and a half feet in height, and were well shaped.^[2] Thence he went south, from tribe to tribe, across the district of Barquicimeto, to the Cuybas, near Truxillo, and the Cuyones, against whom he could not make headway, and was obliged to turn toward the west. The farthest point he reached was Itabana, situated on a river which he calls the Coaheri, and which was perhaps the Apure. Here he turned back, and arrived again in Coro March 17, 1531. The material results of his journey were small. The country he passed through consisted by turns of rugged sierras and savannas. The tribes, warlike and partially cannibal, were nomadic or half-sedentary people, and his contact with them was usually of a hostile character. He obtained some gold (3000 pesos) from a tribe near Barquicimeto; and there, too, a report was current of a country rich in gold in the direction of the "Southern Sea." The whole campaign was a mere reconnaissance, but was at the same time to Federmann himself a preparatory school for his subsequent great expedition. Federmann went to Spain from Coro, and on the death of Dalfinger, shortly afterward, obtained the position of governor of Venezuela. But the Spanish colonists there protested most earnestly against his appointment, and in order to satisfy

1. Probably near the present Barquicimeto.
2. We should add to this that nobody but Federmann mentions these dwarfs.