The island of Tobago presents an extremely picturesque scene. It is a heap of rocks skillfully cultivated. The dazzling whiteness of the rocks stands out from the green of the scattered trees. High cylindrical cacti crown the mountain tops and give a peculiar quality to the tropical countryside. Just this sight tells the traveler that he is looking at the American coast, because the cacti are as unique to the New World as heaths are to the Old.

The view from Imposible is even more beautiful and extensive than that from the tableland of Quetepe. With our naked eyes we could easily pick out the flattened top of the Brigantín, whose exact geographic position must be verified, the landing-place and Cumanà outer harbor. The rocky coast of Araya stretched our before us. We were particularly struck by the extraordinary structure of the harbor known as Laguna Grande, or Laguna del Obispo. A vast basin, surrounded by high mountains, communicates with the Gulf of Cariaco via a narrow canal along which only one boat at a time may pass. With our eyes we traced the sinuosities of this arm of sea, which has dug a bed like a river between perpendicular rocks stripped of vegetation. This extraordinary view reminded us of the fantastic landscape that Leonardo da Vinci painted in the background of his famous portrait of Mona Lisa.

Our stay in Turbaco was extremely agreeable, and useful for our botanical collection. Even today those bamboo forests, the wild fertility of the land, the orchids carpeting the old ocotea and Indian fig-tree trunks, the majestic view of the snowy mountains, the light mist covering the valleys at sunrise, bunches of gigantic trees like green islands above a sea of mist, all return incessantly to my imagination. Our life at Turbaco was simple and hard-working; we were young, linked by similar tastes and characters, always full of hope in the future, on the eve of a journey that would take us to the highest Andean peaks, and volcanoes on fire in a country where earthquakes are common. We felt happier than at any other moment in our expedition. The years that have passed since then, not without bitterness and hardships, have added to the charms of these impressions; I would like to think that in his exile in the Southern hemisphere, in the isolation of Paraguay, my unfortunate friend Bonpland (145) might still recall our delightful herborizings. As Bonpland's health had cruelly suffered during our journey on the Orinoco and Casiquiare we decided to follow the advice of the locals and supply ourselves with all the comforts possible on our trip up the Magdalena. Instead of sleeping in hammocks or lying on the ground on skins, exposed to the nightly torment of mosquitoes, we did what was done in the country, and got hold of a mattress, a country-bed that was easy to unfold, as well as a toldo, a cotton sheet, which could fold under the mattress and make a kind of closed-off tent that no insects could penetrate. Two of these beds, rolled into cylinders of thick leather, were packed on to a mule. I could not praise this system more; it is far superior to the mosquito net.

Once on board we had to contend with strong winds. It poured with rain, and near by thunder rolled. Flocks of flamingos, egrets and cormorants flew past towards the shore. Only the alcatras, a large kind of pelican, continued to fish calmly in the gulf. We were eighteen on board, and the narrow pirogue, overloaded with sugar cane and bunches of bananas and coconuts, could hardly hold our instruments. The edge of the boat barely stood above the water-line.