The word 'Guaiqueri', like the words 'Peru' and 'Peruvian', owes its origin to a simple mistake. When Christopher Columbus's companions reached Margarita Island, on whose northern tip these Indians still live, they found several Indians fishing with harpoons, throwing these sharp-pointed sticks tied with string at the fish. Columbus's men asked the Indians in the Haitian language what their name was, but the Indians thought the foreigners referred to their harpoons made of the hard and heavy wood of the macana palm and answered: 'Guaike, guaike', meaning 'pointed stick'. These Guaiqueri are an intelligent and civilized tribe of fishermen, notably different from the wild Guarano from the Orinoco who build their houses up in the mauritia palm trees.

During the night we had left the Orinoco waters almost without realizing it. At sunrise we found ourselves in a new country, on the banks of a river whose name we had hardly heard mentioned, and which would lead us after a foot journey over Pimichín to the Río Negro on the Brazilian frontier. The father superior of the San Fernando mission said to us: 'First you must go up the Atabapo, then the Temi, and finally the Tuamini. If the black-water current is too strong to do this the guides will take you over flooded land through the jungle. In that deserted zone between the Orinoco and the Río Negro you will meet only two monks established there. In Javita you will find people to carry your canoe over land in four days to Caìo Pimichín. If the canoe is not wrecked go straight down the Río Negro to the fort of San Carlos, then go up the Casiquiare and in a month you will reach San Fernando along the Upper Orinoco. That was the plan drawn up for us, which we carried out, without danger, in thirty-three days. The bends are such in this labyrinth of rivers that without the map which I have drawn it would be impossible to picture the route we took. In the first part of this journey from east to west you find the famous bifurcations that have given rise to so many disputes, and whose location I was the first to establish through astronomic observations. One arm of the Orinoco, the Casiquiare (108) running north to south, pours into the Guainia or Río Negro, which in turn joins the Maraìon or Amazon.

It was moving to see the beach where we had first arrived, and where Bonpland had nearly lost his life. Among the cacti stood the Guaiquerí Indian huts. Every part of the landscape was familiar to us, from the forest of cacti to the huts and the giant ceiba, which grew near where we had swum every evening. Our Cumanà friends came to meet the lancha; botanizing had enabled us to meet people from all social classes. They were relieved as there had been news that Bonpland had died of fever on the banks of the Orinoco, and that we had sunk in a storm near the Urana mission.

Despite the speed of the current and the effort of our rowers it took us twelve hours on the river to reach the San Carlos fort on the Rio Negro. We left the mouth of the Casiquiare on our left, and the little island of Cumarai on our right. Here they believe that the fort lies on the equator itself but after my observations made on the Culimacari rock, it lies on 1.54'11".

The missionary in San Fernando was an Aragonese Capuchin, well advanced in years but very strong and lively. His obesity, his good humor and his interest in battles and sieges contradicted the ideas held in northern countries concerning the melancholic reveries and contemplative life of missionaries. Though extremely busy organizing the slaughter of a cow for the following day he received us good-naturedly, and let us hang our hammocks in a gallery of his house. Sitting in his redwood armchair most of the day without doing anything, he complained of what he called the laziness and ignorance of his countrymen. He asked us thousands of questions about the real purpose of our journey, which to him seemed hazardous and quite useless. Here, as on the Orinoco, we grew weary of the lively curiosity manifested by Europeans in the middle of American jungles for the wars and political storms in the Old World.

There is exciting chemical and physiological work to be done in Europe with the effects of New World poisons once we are sure that different poisons from different areas are properly distinguished. As far as our botanical knowledge about these poisonous plants is concerned we could sort out the differences only very slowly. Most Indians who make poison arrows completely ignore the nature of poisonous substances used by other tribes. A mystery surrounds the history of toxics and antidotes. Among wild Indians the preparation is the monopoly of piaches, who are priests, tricksters and doctors all at once; it is only with Indians from the missions that you can learn anything certain about such problematic matters. Centuries passed before any Europeans learned, thanks to Mutis's researches, that the bejuco del guaco is the most powerful antidote to snake bites, and which we were the first to describe botanically.