The same reasons that slowed our communications also delayed the publication of our work, which has to be accompanied by a number of engravings and maps. If such difficulties are met when governments are paying, how much worse they are when paid by private individuals. It would have been impossible to overcome these difficulties if the enthusiasm of the editors had not been matched by public reaction. More than two thirds of our work has now been published. The maps of the Orinoco, the Casiquiare and the Magdalena rivers, based on my astronomical observations, together with several hundred plants, have been engraved and are ready to appear. I shall not leave Europe on my Asian journey before I have finished publishing my travels to the New World.

The farmers and their slaves cut a path through the jungle to the first Juagua river waterfall, and on the 10th of September we made our excursion to the Cuchivano crevice. Entering the cave we saw a disemboweled porcupine and smelled the stink of excrement, similar to that of European cats, and knew that a jaguar had been near by. For safety the Indians returned to the farm to fetch small dogs. It is said that when you meet a jaguar in your path he will leap on to a dog before a man. We did not follow the bank of the torrent, but a rocky wall overhanging the water. We walked on a very narrow ledge along the side of a precipice with a drop of some 200 to 300 feet. When it narrowed, so that we could not walk along it any further, we climbed down to the torrent and crossed it on foot, or on the backs of slaves, to climb up the other side. Climbing is very tiring, and you cannot trust the lianas, which, like thick rope, hang from tree-tops. Creepers and parasites hang loosely from the branches they grip; their stalks together weigh a lot, and if you slip and grab one of the lianas you risk bringing down a tangle of green branches. The vegetation became impenetrable the more we advanced. In some places the roots of trees grew in the existing cracks between strata and had burst the calcareous rock. We could hardly carry the plants we picked at each step. The canna, the heliconia with pretty purple flowers, the costus and other plants from the Amomum genus reach here the height of 8 to 50 feet. Their tender, fresh green leaves, their silky sheen and the extraordinary development of their juicy pulp contrast with the brown of the arborescent ferns whose leaves are so delicately jagged. The Indians made deep incisions in the tree trunks with their long knives to draw our attention to the beauty of the red-and gold-colored woods, which one day will be sought after by our furniture makers. They showed us a plant with composite flowers that reaches some 20 feet high (Eupatorium laevigatum), the so-called 'Rose of Belveria' (Brownea racemosa), famous for the brilliance of its purple flowers, and the local 'dragon's blood', a species of euphorbia not yet catalogued, whose red and astringent sap is used to strengthen the gums. They distinguished species by their smell and by chewing their woody fibers. Two Indians, given the same wood to chew, pronounced, often without hesitation, the same name. But we could not take advantage of our guides' wisdom, for how could they reach leaves, flowers and fruit (53) growing on branches some 50 to 60 feet above the ground? We were struck in this gorge by the fact that the bark of the trees, even the ground, were covered in moss and lichen.

Guanaguana still does not have a church. The old priest, who had lived for more than thirty years in the American jungles, pointed out that the community's money, meaning the product of the Indians' work, should first be spent on building the missionary house; secondly on building a church; and lastly on their clothes. He seriously insisted that this order could not be altered on any account. The Indians can wait their turn as they prefer walking around completely naked to wearing the scantiest clothes. The spacious padre's house had just been finished and we noted with surprise that the terraced roof was decorated with a great number of chimneys that looked like turrets. Our host told us that this was done to remind him of his Aragonese winters, despite the tropical heat. The Guanaguana Indians grow cotton for themselves, the church and the missionary. The produce is supposed to belong to the community; it is with this communal money that the needs of the priest and altar are looked after. They have simple machines that separate the seed from the plant. Wooden cylinders of tiny diameter between which the cotton passes are activated, like a spinning-wheel, by pedals. However, these primitive machines are very useful and other missions are beginning to imitate them. But here, as in all places where nature's fertility hinders the development of industry, only a few hectares are converted into cultivated land, and nobody thinks of changing that cultivation into one of alimentary plants. Famine is felt each time the maize harvest is lost to a long drought. The Guanaguana Indians told us an amazing story that happened the year before when they went off with their women and children and spent three months al monte, that is, wandering about in the neighboring jungle and living off juicy plants, palm cabbages, fern roots and wild fruit. They did not speak of this nomadic state as one of deprivation. Only the missionary lost out because his village was left completely abandoned, and the community members, when they returned from the woods, appeared to be less docile than before.

On the morning of the 27th of February we visited the hot springs of La Trinchera, 3 leagues from Valencia. They flow more fully than any we had seen until then, forming a rivulet, which in the dry season maintains a depth of some 2 feet 8 inches of water. The carefully taken water temperature was 90.3°C. We had breakfast near the spring: our eggs were cooked in less than four minutes in the hot water. The rock from which the spring gushes is of real coarse-grained granite. Whenever the water evaporates in the air, it forms sediments and incrustations of carbonate of lime. The exuberance of the vegetation around the basin surprised us. Mimosas with delicate pinnate leaves, clusias and figs send their roots into the muddy ground, which is as hot as 85°C. Two currents flow down on parallel courses, and the Indians showed us how to prepare a bath of whatever temperature you want by opening a hole in the ground between the two streams. The sick, who come to La Trinchera to take steam baths, build a kind of framework with branches and thin reeds above the spring. They lie down naked on this frame, which, as far as I could see, was not very strong, perhaps even dangerous.

The trouble an Indian takes to avoid the insects proves that despite his different skin color he is just as sensitive to mosquito bites as any white. Irritability is increased by wearing warm clothes, by applying alcoholic liquors, by scratching the wounds, and - and this I have observed myself - by taking too many baths. By bathing whenever we could Bonpland and I observed that a bath, though soothing for old bites, made us more sensitive to new ones. If you take a bath more than twice a day the skin becomes nervously excited in a way nobody in Europe could understand. It seems as if all one's sensitivity has become concentrated in the epidermic layers. Today the dangers that prevent Spaniards navigating up the Orinoco do not come from wild Indians or snakes or crocodiles or jaguars but, as they naively say, from 'el sudar y las moscas' (sweating and mosquitoes).

Once the camp has been set up the Uruana missionary designates his representative or superintendent, who divides the beach into lots according to the number in each tribe who are to harvest. They are all mission Indians, as naked and stupid as jungle Indians: they are called reducidos and neofitos because they attend church when the bells toll, and kneel during Communion. With a long pole made of wood or bamboo, he examines the extent of the stratum of eggs. According to our calculations this reaches 120 feet from the shore, and 3 feet deep. The Indians dig with their hands, put the harvested eggs in baskets called mappiri, and bring them to the camp to throw them into great wooden troughs filled with water. The eggs are smashed with sticks, shaken about and exposed to the sun until the yolk, the oily floating part, thickens out. This oily substance collecting on the surface is scooped off and cooked on a hot fire. The animal oil turns into what is called manteca de tortuga by the Spaniards (turtle fat), and keeps better the longer it is cooked. If it is well done it is completely clear, without smell and barely yellow. Missionaries compare it with the best olive oil and not only use it for burning in lamps but also for cooking, as its taste does not spoil good food. However, we could never obtain the pure oil. Generally it stinks because the eggs are mixed up with the already formed but dead baby turtles.

When one speaks in Europe of a Guianan Indian we imagine a man whose head and waist are decorated with beautiful macaw, toucan and hummingbird feathers. Our painters and sculptors have for a long time seen these ornaments as typical of the native Americans. We were surprised not to find, on any of the Orinoco and Casiquiare banks, these fine feathers that travelers so frequently reported from Cayenne and Demerara. Most of the Guianan Indians, even those with the most developed intellectual faculties, who cultivate food and weave with cotton, are naked and poor. Extreme heat and sweating make clothes unbearable.