In our publications Bonpland and I have considered every phenomenon under different aspects, and classed our observations according to the relations they each have with one another. To convey an idea of the method followed, I will outline what we used in order to describe the volcanoes of Antisana and Pichincha, as well as Jorullo, which on the night of the 20th of September 1759 rose 1, feet up from the plains of Mexico. We fixed the position of these remarkable mountains in longitude and latitude by astronomical observations. We took the heights of different parts with a barometer, and determined the dip of the needle and magnetic forces. We collected plants that grew on the slopes of these volcanoes, and specimens of different rocks. We found out the exact height above sea-level at which we made each collection. We noted down the humidity, the temperature, the electricity and the transparency of the air on the brinks of Pichincha and Jorullo; we drew the topographical plans and geological profiles of these volcanoes by measuring vertical bases and altitude angles. In order to judge the correctness of our calculations we have preserved all the details of our field notes.

It was Carnival Tuesday, and everywhere people celebrated. The amusements, called carnes tollendas (or 'farewell to the flesh'), became at times rather wild: some paraded an ass loaded with water, and whenever they found an open window pumped water into the room; others carried bags full of hair from the pica pica (Dolichos pruriens), which greatly irritates skin on contact, and threw it into the faces of passers-by.

Founded in 1555, under the government of Villacinda, by Alonso Díaz Moreno, Nueva Valencia is twelve years older than Caracas Some justifiably regret that Valencia has not become the capital of the country. Its situation on the plain, next to a lake, recalls Mexico City. If you consider the easy communications offered by the Aragua valleys with the plains and rivers entering the Orinoco; if you accept the possibility of opening up navigation into the interior through the Pao and Portuguesa rivers as far as the Orinoco mouth, the Casiquiare and the Amazon, you realize that the capital of the vast Venezuelan provinces would have been better placed next to the superb Puerto Cabello, under a pure, serene sky, and not next to the barely sheltered bay of La Guaira, in a temperate but always misty valley.

We took nine days to travel the 95 leagues from the island of Cucuruparu to the capital of Guiana, commonly called Angostura. We rarely spent the night on land, but the plague of mosquitoes was diminishing. On the morning of the 9th of June we met many boats filled with merchandise going up the Orinoco by sail towards the Apure. It is a much frequented trade route between Angostura and Torunos. Our travelling companion, Don Nicolas Soto, brother-in-law of the governor of Barinas, took this route to return to his family. During the great floods months are lost struggling against the currents. Boatmen are forced to moor to tree trunks and haul themselves up river. In this winding river they can take days just to advance 200 to 300 toises.

As the missionaries struggle to penetrate the jungles and gain the Indian land, so white colonists try, in their turn, to invade missionary land. In this long-drawn-out struggle the secular arm continually tends to take over those Indians tamed by the missions, and missionaries are replaced by priests. Whites and mestizos, favored by corregidores, have established themselves among the Indians. The missions are transformed into Spanish villages and the Indians soon forget even the memory of their own language. So civilization slowly works its way inland from the coast, sometimes hindered by human passions.

Guessing from some signs on an old Portuguese map, the captain of thePizarro thought we were opposite a small fort built north of Teguise, thecapital of Lanzarote. Mistaking some basaltic crags for a castle he salutedit properly by hoisting the Spanish flag and sending a boat with an officerto the supposed fort to find out if the English were lurking in these waters. We were not a little surprisedto discover that the land we took for the coast of Lanzarote was the smallisland of Graciosa, and that for several leagues around there was not asound of life.

The treatment of the copper-colored Indians was accompanied by the same acts of inhumanity that later were meted out to the black Africans, with the same consequences of making both conquered and conquering wilder. From that time wars between the Indians became more common; prisoners were dragged from the interior to the coasts to be sold to whites who chained them to their boats. Yet the Spaniards at that period, and long after, were one of the most civilized nations of Europe. The light that art and literature shed over Italy was reflected on every nation whose language stemmed from the same source as that of Dante and Petrarch. One might have expected a general sweetening of manners as the natural consequence of this noble awakening of the mind, this soaring of the imagination. But across the seas, wherever the thirst for riches led to the abuse of power, the nations of Europe have always displayed the same characteristics. The noble century of Leo X was marked in the New World by acts of cruelty that belonged to a barbaric past.