April 29th. The air was cooler, and without zancudos, but the clouds blocked out all the stars. I begin to miss the Lower Orinoco as the strong current slowed our progress. We stopped for most of the day, looking for plants. It was night when we reached the San Baltasar mission or, as the monks call it, la divina pastora de Baltasar de Atabapo. We lodged with a Catalan missionary, a lively and friendly man who, in the middle of the jungle, displayed the activities of his people. He had planted a wonderful orchard where European figs grew with persea, and lemon trees with mamey. The village was built with a regularity typical of Protestant Germany or America. Here we saw for the first time that white and spongy substance which I have made known as dapicho and zapis. We saw that this stuff was similar to elastic resin. But through sign language the Indians made us think that it came from under ground so we first thought that maybe it was a fossil rubber. A Poimisano Indian was sitting by a fire in the missionary hut transforming dapicho into black rubber. He had stuck several bits on to thin sticks and was roasting it by the fire like meat. As it melts and becomes elastic the dapicho blackens. The Indian then beat the black mass with a club made of Brazil-wood and then kneaded the dapicho into small balls some 3 to 4 inches thick, and let them cool. The balls appear identical to rubber though the surface remains slightly sticky. At San Baltasar they are not used for the game of pelota that Indians play in Uruana and Encaramada but are cut up and used as more effective corks than those made from cork itself. In front of the Casa de los Solteros - the house where men lived - the missionary showed us a drum made from a hollow cylinder of wood. This drum was beaten with great lumps of dapicho serving as drumsticks. The drum has openings that could be blocked by hand to vary the sounds, and was hanging on two light supports. Wild Indians love noisy music. Drums and botutos, the baked-earth before trumpets, are indispensable instruments when Indians decide to play music and make a show.

In the lands of the Río Negro Indians we found several of those green stones known as 'Amazon stones' because Indians claim that they come from a country of 'women without men', or 'women living alone'. Superstition attaches great importance to these stones, which are worn as amulets round the neck as popular belief claims they protect wearers from nervous diseases, fevers and poisonous snake bites. Because of this they have for centuries been traded between the Indians of the northern Orinoco and those in the south. The Caribs made them known on the coast. Up to a few years ago during debates about quinine these green stones were considered an efficient febrifuge in enlightened Europe; if we can count on the credulity of Europeans, there is nothing odd about Spanish colonizers appreciating these amulets as much as the Indians, or that these stones are sold at high prices. Usually they are shaped into cylinders with holes down the sides, and covered in inscriptions and figures. But it is not today's Indians who have perforated holes in such hard stones or carved animals and fruit. This work suggests another, older culture. The actual inhabitants of the torrid zone are so ignorant of how to carve hard stone that they think the green stone comes from soft earth, and that it hardens when carved.

The savannah we crossed to reach the Indian village of Santa Cruz is - made up of various very flat plateaux lying one above another. This geological phenomenon seems to show that they were once basins where water poured from one to the other. On the spot where we last saw the limestone of the Santa María jungle we found nodules of iron ore, and, if I was not mistaken, a bit of ammonite, but we could not detach it. The Santa Cruz mission is situated in the middle of the plain. We reached it as night fell, half dead with thirst as we had been eight hours without water. We spent the night in one of those ajupas known as 'kings' houses', which serve as tambos or inns for travelers. As it was raining there was no chance of making any astronomical observations so, on the next day, the 23rd of September, we set off for the Gulf of Cariaco. Beyond Santa Cruz thick jungle reappears. Under tufts of melastoma we found a beautiful fern, with leaves similar to the osmunda, which belonged to a new genus (Polybotria) of the polypodiaceous order.

Lake Valencia, called Tacarigua by the Indians, is larger than Lake Neuchâtel in Switzerland; its general form resembles Lake Geneva, situated at about the same altitude. Its opposite banks are notably different: the southern one is deserted, stripped of vegetation and virtually uninhabited; a curtain of high mountains gives it a sad, monotonous quality; in contrast, the northern side is pleasant and rural, and has rich plantations of sugar cane, coffee and cotton. Paths bordered with cestrum, azedaracs, and other perpetually flowering shrubs cross the plain and link the isolated farms. All the houses are surrounded by trees. The ceiba (Bombax hibiscifolius), with large yellow flowers, and the erythrina, with purple ones, whose overlapping branches give the countryside its special quality. During the season of drought, when a thick mist floats above the burning ground, artificial irrigation keeps the land green and wild. Every now and then granite blocks pierce through the cultivated ground; large masses of rocks rise up in the middle of the valley. Some succulent plants grow in its bare and cracked walls, preparing mould for the coming centuries. Often a fig tree, or a clusia with fleshy leaves, growing in clefts, crowns these isolated little summits With their dry withered branches they look like signals along a cliff. The shape of these heights betrays the secret of their ancient origins; for when the whole valley was still submerged and waves lapped the foot of the Mariara peaks (El Rincòn del Diablo) and the coastal chain, these rocky hills were shoals and islands.

I placed very active curare on the crural nerves of a frog without noticing any change, measuring the degree of its organs' irritability with an arc formed of heterogeneous metals. But these Galvanic experiments hardly worked on birds a few minutes after they had been shot with poison arrows. Curare works only when the poison acts on the vascular system. At Maypures, a colored man (a zambo, a cross between Indian and negro) was preparing one of those poison arrows that are shot in blowpipes, to kill small monkeys or birds for M. Bonpland. He was a carpenter of extraordinary strength. He stupidly rubbed the curare between slightly bleeding fingers and fell to the ground, dizzy for half an hour. Luckily it was a weak curare (destemplado), used for small animals, which may be revived later by placing muriate of soda in the wound. During our journey back from Esmeralda to Atures. I escaped from danger myself. The curare had attracted humidity and become liquid and spilled from a poorly closed jar on to our clothes. We forgot to check the inside of a sock filled with curare when washing our clothes. Just touching this sticky stuff with my hand I realized I should not pull on the poison sock. The danger was all the greater as my toes were bleeding from chigoe wounds.

Experience has shown that the mild climate and light air of this place are very favorable to the cultivation of the coffee tree, which, as is known, prefers altitudes. The Capuchin father superior, an active, educated man, introduced this new plant into the province. Before, indigo was cultivated in Caripe, but this plant, which needs plenty of heat, gave off so little dye that its cultivation had to be stopped. In the communal conuco we found many culinary plants, maize, sugar cane and a large area of coffee trees promising a rich harvest. In Caripe the conuco looks like a large, beautiful garden: Indians are obliged to work there every morning from six to ten. The Indian alcaldes (or magistrates) and alguaciles (or bailiffs) watch over these tasks. They are the high functionaries, who alone have the right to carry a walking-stick, and are appointed by the convent superiors. They are extremely proud of their status. Their pedantic and taciturn seriousness, their cold and mysterious air, and the zeal with which they fulfil their role in the church and communal assemblies make Europeans smile. We were still unaccustomed to these nuances of Indian temperament, found equally on the Orinoco, in Mexico and in Peru, among people totally different from each other in customs and language. The alcaldes came to the convent every day, less to deal with the monks about mission matters than to learn about the health of those travelers who had just arrived. As we gave them brandy, they visited us more than the monks thought proper.