One place where spiky cacti of great size grow together is almost impossible to walk through. These areas, known as tunales, not only prevent bare-chested Indians from entering, but also anyone fully dressed. During our solitary walks we tried several times to penetrate the tunal that crowns the hill with the fort, along which runs a path. There we found thousands of examples of this strange plant. At times nightfall surprised us as there is no twilight. Then this place becomes dangerous, for the rattlesnake (Crotalus cumanensis), the coral and other poisonous snakes seek out these hot places to deposit their eggs in the sand.

Having given up hope of the mail-boat from Spain we boarded an American ship loaded with salt for Cuba. We had spent sixteen months on this coast and in the interior of Venezuela. On the 16th of November we left our Cumanà friends to cross the Gulf of Cariaco for Nueva Barcelona for the third time. The sea breeze was strong and after six hours we anchored off the Morro of Nueva Barcelona, where a ship was waiting to take us to Havana. (135)

A dreadful circumstance forced us to stay a whole month in Angostura. The first days after our arrival we felt tired and weak, but completely healthy. Bonpland began to study the few plants that he had managed to protect from the humidity while I was busy determining the longitude and latitude of the capital and observing the dip of the magnetic needle. All our work was interrupted. On almost the same day we were struck by an illness that took the form of a malignant typhus in my travelling companion. At that time the air in Angostura was quite healthy and, as the only servant we had brought from Cumana showed the same symptoms, our generous hosts were sure that we had caught the typhus germs somewhere in the damp Casiquiare jungles. As our mulatto servant had been far more exposed to the intense rains, his illness developed with alarming speed. He got so weak that after eight days we thought he was dead. However, he had only fainted, and he later recovered. I too was attacked by a violent fever; I was given a mixture of honey and quinine from the Caroni river (Cortex angosturae), a medicine recommended by the Capuchin monks. My fever continued to rise, but vanished the following day. Bonpland's fever was more serious, and for weeks we worried about his health. Luckily be was strong enough to look after himself; and took medicines that suited him better than the Caroni river quinine. The fever continued and, as is usual in the Tropics, developed into dysentery. During his illness Bonpland maintained his strength of character and that calmness which never left him even in the most trying circumstances. I was tortured by premonitions. It was I who had chosen to go up-river; the danger to my companion seemed to be the fatal consequence of my rash choice.

April 17th. After walking for three hours we reached our boat at about eleven in the morning. Father Zea packed provisions of clumps of bananas, cassava and chicken with our instruments. We found the river free of shoals, and after a few hours had passed the Garcita raudal whose rapids are easily crossed during high water. We were struck by a succession of great holes, more than 180 feet above the present water-level, that appeared to have been caused by water erosion. The night was clear and beautiful but the plague of mosquitoes near the ground was such that I was unable to record the level of the artificial horizon and lost the opportunity of observing the stars.

The San Francisco mission, situated on the left bank of the Casiquiare, was named after one of the leaders of the boundary expedition, Don Joseph Solano. This educated officer never got any further than San Fernando de Atabapo; he had never seen the Río Negro waters or the Casiquiare, or the Orinoco east of the Guaviare. Ignorance of the Spanish language drove geographers to locate erroneously on the famous La Cruz Olmedilla map the 400 league route made by Joseph Solano to the sources of the Orinoco. The San Francisco mission was founded not by monks but by military authorities. Following the boundary expedition, villages were built wherever an officer or a corporal stopped with his soldiers. Some of the Indians withdrew and remained independent; others, whose chiefs were caught, joined the missions. Where there was no church they were happy to raise a great red wooden cross, and to build a casa fuerte, that is, a house with long beams placed horizontally on top of each other, next to it. This house had two floors; upstairs were placed small cannons; downstairs two soldiers lived, served by Indian families. Tamed Indians established themselves around the casa fuerte. In the event of an attack soldiers would gather the Indians together by sounding the horn, or the baked-earth botuto. These were the nineteen so-called Christian establishments founded by Don Antonio Santos. Military posts had no effect in civilizing the Indians living there. They figured on maps and in mission works as pueblos (villages) and as reducciones apostòlicas.

We began to load the new pirogue. It was, like all Indian canoes, made from one tree trunk, hollowed out by axe and fire. It was 40 feet long and 3 feet wide. Three people could not squeeze together from one side to the other. These pirogues are so unstable that the weight must be distributed very equally and if you want to stand up for a second you must warn the rowers (bogas) to lean over the other side. Without this precaution water would pour in on the lopsided side. It is difficult to form an idea of the inconveniences of these miserable boats.

Nothing can compare to the majestic tranquillity of the stars in the sky in this solitary place. At nightfall, when we stared at the point where the horizon meets the meadows on this gently rolling plain, it seemed, as later in the Orinoco steppes, as if we were seeing the surface of an ocean supporting the starry vault. The tree at whose feet we sat, the luminous insects dancing in the air, the shining constellations of the Southern hemisphere, everything reminded us that we were far from our homeland. And if, in the middle of this exotic nature, the sound of cow bells or the bellowing of a bull came from the small valleys, memories of our native land were suddenly awoken. It was as if we heard distant voices echoing across the ocean, magically carrying us from one hemisphere to another. How strangely mobile is man's imagination, eternal source of his joys and pains!