On the eve of Saint John's Day we were present at a country party in Little's garden. This gentleman, who greatly helped the Canarians during the last wheat famine, has cultivated a hill covered with volcanic debris. In this delicious place he has installed an English garden from which there is a magnificent view of the peak, of the villages along the coast, and of the island of Las Palmas on the edge of the great ocean. That view can only be compared to the views of Genoa and Naples bays; but Orotava is far superior to both in terms of the grandeur of its masses and the richness of its vegetation. As night fell the volcano's slopes presented us with a wonderful spectacle. Following a custom introduced by the Spaniards, though it dates back to remotest times, the shepherds lit the fires of Saint John. The scattered masses of fire and columns of smoke driven by the wind stood out from the deep green of the forests lining the peak. The shepherds' distant yells of joy were the only sounds that broke the silence of that night in those solitary places. (18)

According to my careful trigonometric calculations the Duida mountain rises 2, meters above the Esmeralda plain, some 2, meters, more or less, above sea-level. I say more or less because I had the bad luck to break my barometer before our arrival in Esmeralda. The rain had been so heavy that we could not protect this instrument from the damp and, with the unequal expansion of the wood, the tubes snapped. This accident especially annoyed me as no barometer had ever lasted so long on such a journey. The granite summit of the Duida falls so steeply that Indians have not managed to climb it. Though the mountains are not as high as people think, it is the highest point of the chain that stretches from the Orinoco to the Amazon.

We re-embarked at sunset and set sail, but the breeze was too weak toenable us to follow our route to Tenerife. The sea was calm; a reddish hazecovered the horizon, seeming to magnify everything. In such solitudes, by so many uninhabited islands, we savored the view of such a grandiose and wild nature. Theblack mountains of Graciosa had perpendicular walls some 500 to 600 feet high. Their shadows, projected across the sea, made thescene gloomy. The basalt rocks stuck out of the water like the ruins of avast building. Their existence reminded us of that bygone age whenunderwater volcanoes gave birth to new islands, or destroyed continents. Everything around us spoke of destructionand sterility; yet beyond this scene the coast of Lanzarote seemed morefriendly. In a narrow gorge, between two hills crowned with scatteredtrees, you could see some cultivated land. The last rays of sun lit up the ripe corn, ready for harvesting. Even thedesert is animated when you see some trace of man's work in it.

We stayed another month at Cumanà. The river journey we intended to take up the Orinoco and the Rio Negro demanded all kinds of preparation. We had to choose the easiest instruments to carry on narrow canoes; we had to provide ourselves with the funds for a ten-month trip inland across a country without communications with the coast. As astronomic determination of places was the main aim of our undertaking I did not want to miss the solar eclipse that would be visible at the end of October. I chose to wait until then in Cumanà where the sky is usually beautiful and clear. It was too late to reach the Orinoco river banks, and the high Caracas valley offered less favorable chances due to the mists that gather round the neighboring mountains. Having precisely fixed the Cumanà longitude I had a starting-point for my chronometric determinations, the only ones I could count on when usually I did not remain long enough to take lunar distances or to observe Jupiter's satellites.

We had been warned that we would find the insects at Esmeralda even more cruel and voracious' than in this branch of the Orinoco; despite this we looked forward to sleeping in an inhabited place, and botanizing a little at last. At our last camp on the Casiquiare we had quite a fright. I presume to describe something that might not greatly interest a reader, but should be part of a journal of incidents on a river in such wild country. We slept on the edge of the jungle. At midnight the Indians warned us that they had heard a jaguar growl very close to us; it seemed to be up a nearby tree. The jungle is so thick here that only animals who climb trees exist. As our fires gave off 'plenty of light, and as we had become hardened to fear, we did not worry too much about the jaguar's cries. The smell and barking of one of our dogs had attracted the jaguar. This dog, a large mastiff, had barked at the Start, but when the jaguar approached the dog howled and hid under our hammocks. Since the Apure we had been used to this alternating bravery and fear in a young, tame and affectionate dog. We had a terrible shock the next morning. When getting ready to leave, the Indians told us that our dog had disappeared'. There was no doubt that the jaguar had killed it. Perhaps when it no longer heard the roars it had wandered off along the shore, or perhaps we slept so deeply we never heard the dog's yelps. We were often told that on the Orinoco and the Magdalena old jaguars were so clever that they hunted their prey in the very camps, and twisted their victims' necks so that they could not shout. We waited a long while in case the dog was merely lost. Three days later we returned to the same place and again heard a jaguar roar. So the dog, which had been our companion from Caracas, and had often swum away from crocodiles, had ended up being devoured in the jungle.

I placed very active curare on the crural nerves of a frog without noticing any change, measuring the degree of its organs' irritability with an arc formed of heterogeneous metals. But these Galvanic experiments hardly worked on birds a few minutes after they had been shot with poison arrows. Curare works only when the poison acts on the vascular system. At Maypures, a colored man (a zambo, a cross between Indian and negro) was preparing one of those poison arrows that are shot in blowpipes, to kill small monkeys or birds for M. Bonpland. He was a carpenter of extraordinary strength. He stupidly rubbed the curare between slightly bleeding fingers and fell to the ground, dizzy for half an hour. Luckily it was a weak curare (destemplado), used for small animals, which may be revived later by placing muriate of soda in the wound. During our journey back from Esmeralda to Atures. I escaped from danger myself. The curare had attracted humidity and become liquid and spilled from a poorly closed jar on to our clothes. We forgot to check the inside of a sock filled with curare when washing our clothes. Just touching this sticky stuff with my hand I realized I should not pull on the poison sock. The danger was all the greater as my toes were bleeding from chigoe wounds.

The missionary from the Raudales looked after the preparations for our journey rather too well. He worried that there might not be enough Maco and Guahibo Indians on hand who knew the labyrinth of small canals and rapids that form the raudales and cataracts, so at night he put two Indians in the cepo, that is, they were tied to the ground and fastened together between two pieces of wood with a padlock. In the morning we were awoken by the shouts of a young Indian who was being brutally beaten with a whip of manatee skin. His name was Zerepe, an extremely intelligent Indian who later served us well, but at the time refused to travel with us. He had been born in the Atures mission; his father was from the Maco tribe and his mother from the Maypure; he had run off to the jungle (al monte) and lived with wild Indians for years. He had learned several languages, and the missionary used him as an interpreter. Not without difficulty did we obtain his pardon. 'Without severity, we were told, 'you would get nothing'.