On the night of the 4th of July, at about the 16th degree of latitude, we saw the Southern Cross clearly for the first time it appeared strongly inclined and shone intermittently between clouds. When flashes of lightning passed across its center it shone with a silvery light. If a traveler may be permitted to speak of his personal emotions, I will add that on that night I saw one of the dreams of my earliest youth come true.

The supposed gold mine of Cuchivano, which was the object of our trip, was nothing but a hole that had been cut in one of the strata of black marl, rich in pyrites. The marly stratum crosses the torrent and, as the water washes out metallic grains, the people imagine that the torrent carries gold because of the brilliancy of the pyrites. We were told that after the great earthquake of 1765 the Juagua river waters were so filled with gold that 'men came from great distances and unknown countries' to set up washing places on the spot. They disappeared over night, having collected masses of gold. Needless to add that this is a fable. Some direct experiments made with acids during my stay at Caracas proved that the Cuchivano pyrites are not at all auriferous. My disbelief upset our guides. However much I said and repeated that from the supposed gold mine the most that could be found was alum and sulphate of iron, they continued to gather secretly all the pyrite fragments they saw sparkling in the water. The fewer mines there are in a country, the more the inhabitants hold exaggerated ideas about how easily riches are extracted from the depths of the earth. How much time was lost during our five-year voyage exploring ravines, at the insistence of our hosts, where pyrite strata have for centuries been called by the pretentious name of minas de oro! We have smiled so often seeing men of all classes - magistrates, village priests, serious missionaries - all grinding amphibole or yellow mica with endless patience, desperate to extract gold by means of mercury! This rage for searching for mines amazed us in a climate where the earth needs only to be slightly raked in order to produce rich harvests.

Those who have not traveled the great rivers of tropical America, like the Orinoco or the Magdalena, cannot imagine how all day long, ceaselessly, you are tormented by mosquitoes that float in the air, and how this crowd of little animals can make huge stretches of land uninhabitable. However used to the pain you may become, without complaining; however much you try to observe the object you are studying, the mosquitoes, jejenes and zancudos will tear you away as they cover your head and hands, pricking you with their needle-like suckers through your clothes, and climbing into your nose and mouth, making you cough and sneeze whenever you try to talk. In the Orinoco missions the plaga de las moscas, or plague of mosquitoes, is an inexhaustible subject of conversation. When two people meet in the morning the first questions they ask each other are, 'Que le han parecido los zancudos de anoche? and 'Como estamos hoy de mosquitos? ('How were the zancudos last night? and 'How are we for mosquitoes today?').

In Europe we calculate the number of inhabitants of a country by the extent of cultivation; in the Tropics, in the warmest and most humid parts of South America, very populated areas seem deserted because man cultivates but a small number of acres to feed himself. Without neighbors, virtually cut off from the rest of mankind, each family forms a different tribe. This isolated state retards the progress of civilization, which advances only as society becomes more populated and its connections more intimate and multiplied. But, on the other hand, solitude develops and strengthens liberty and independence; and has fed that pride of character which distinguishes the Castilian race.

While we unloaded the pirogue we investigated the impressive spectacle of a great river squeezed and reduced to foam. Instead of just describing my own sensations I shall try to paint an overall view of one of the most famous spots in the New World. The more imposing and majestic a scene, the more important it is to capture it in its smallest details, to fix the outline of the picture that you want to present to the reader's imagination, and to simply describe the particular characteristics of the great monuments of nature.

We dared to cross the last half of the Atures raudal in our boat. We landed every now and then on rocks, which act as dykes, forming islands. Sometimes water crashes over them, sometimes it falls into them with a deafening noise. It was here that we saw one of the most extraordinary scenes. The river rolled its waters over our heads, like the sea crashing against reefs, but in the entrance to a cavern we could stay dry as the large sheet of water formed an arch over the rocks. We had the chance to view this bizarre sight for longer than we wished. Our canoe should have passed around a narrow island on the eastern bank and picked us up after a long detour. We waited for several hours as night and a furious Storm approached. Rain poured down. We began to fear that our fragile boat had smashed against some rocks and that the Indians, as indifferent as ever to the distress of others, had gone off to the mission. There were only three of us, soaked to the skin and worrying about our pirogue, as well as thinking about spending the night in the Tropics, sleeping in the din of the cataracts. M. Bonpland proposed to leave me alone on the island with Don Nicolas Soto and swim the bit of the river between the granite dykes. He hoped to reach the jungle and seek help from Father Zea at Atures. We finally managed to dissuade him. He had no idea about the labyrinth of canals that split up the Orinoco or of the dangerous eddies. Then what happened under our noses as we were discussing this proved that the Indians had been wrong to say there were no crocodiles in the cataracts. We had placed our little monkeys on the tip of our island. Soaked by the rain, and sensitive to any fall in temperature, they began to howl, attracting two very old lead-grey crocodiles. Seeing them made me realize how dangerous our swim in this same raudal on our way up had been. After a long wait our Indians turned up just as the sun was setting.