The chief of one of the pirogues offered to stay on board to guide us as a coastal pilot. He was a most trustworthy Guaiqueri; a keen observer, and led by a genuine thirst for learning he had studied the produce of the sea and land around him. It was fortunate that the first Indian we met on arrival was a man whose knowledge was to prove extremely helpful for our journey's objectives. With great pleasure I record his name as Carlos del Pino, who accompanied us for sixteen months up and down the coast, and into the interior.

We suffered much from the heat, increased by the reverberation from the dry, dusty ground. However, the excessive effect of the sun held no harmful consequences for us. At La Guaira sunstroke and its effects on the brain are feared, especially when yellow fever is beginning to appear. One day I was on the roof of our house observing the meridian point and the temperature difference between the sun and shade when a man came running towards me and begged me to take a drink he had brought along with him. He was a doctor who had been watching me for half an hour out in the sun from his window, without a hat on my head, exposed to the sun's rays. He assured me that coming from northern climes such imprudence would undoubtedly lead that night to an attack of yellow fever if I did not take his medicine. His prediction, however seriously argued, did not alarm me as I had had plenty of time to get acclimatized. But how could l refuse his argument when he was so polite and caring? I swallowed his potion, and the doctor must now have included me in the list of people he had saved from fever that year. (67)

By the morning of the 21st of June we were on our way to the volcano's summit. The day was not fine and the peak's summit, generally visible from Orotava from sunrise to ten at night, was covered in cloud. What links an excursion to the peak with similar ones to Chamonix or Etna is that one is obliged to follow guides, and sees only what has already been seen and described by previous travelers.

It was at the cataracts that we first heard talk about the hairy man of the jungle, called salvaje, who rapes women, builds huts, and sometimes eats human flesh. Neither Indians nor missionaries doubt the existence of this man-shaped monkey, which terrifies them. Father Gili seriously related the story of a lady from San Carlos who praised the gentle character of the man of the jungle. She lived several years with him in great domestic harmony, and only asked hunters to bring her back home because she and her children (rather hairy also) 'were tired of living far from a church'. This legend, taken by missionaries, Spaniards and black Africans from descriptions of the orang-utang, followed us for the five years of our journey. We annoyed people everywhere by being suspicious of the presence of a great anthropomorphic ape in the Americas.

On my second visit to Havana in 1804 (139) I could not return to the Batabanò ciénaga and so I had these two species brought to me at great expense. Two crocodiles arrived alive. The eldest was 4 feet 3 inches long. They were captured with great difficulty and arrived on mules with their snouts muzzled and bound. They were lively and ferocious. In order to observe them we let them loose in a great hall, and from high pieces of furniture watched them attack large dogs. Having lived on the Orinoco, the Apure and the Magdalena for six months among crocodiles we enjoyed observing this strange animal before leaving for Europe, as they change from immobility to frenzied action quite suddenly. I counted thirty-eight teeth in the upper jaw and thirty in the lower. In the description that Bonpland and I made on the spot we deliberately marked that the lower fourth tooth rises over the upper jaw. The cayman sent from Batabanò died on the way and stupidly was not brought to us, so we could not compare the two species.

The following are the true facts, which I verified. The Otomacs, over months, eat three quarters of a pound of slightly baked clay daily. Their health is not affected. They moisten the clay to swallow it. It was not possible to find out what other vegetable or animal matter the Indians ate at the same time; but it is clear that the sensation of a full stomach came from the clay, and not from whatever else they might eat Everywhere in the torrid zone I noticed women, children, even full-grown men, show a great desire to swallow earth. Not an alkaline or calcareous earth to neutralize acid juices, but a fat, oily clay with a strong smell. They often have to tie children's hands to prevent them from eating earth when it stops raining. In the village of Banco, on the Magdalena, I saw Indian women potters continually swallowing great lumps of clay. They were not pregnant, and said, 'Earth is food that does not harm us. It could be asked why this mania for eating earth is so rare in the cool, temperate zones, compared to the Tropics; and why in Europe it is confined to pregnant women and sick children.