The beach near the mouth of the small Santa Catalina river is lined with mangrove trees (Rhizophora mangle); but these mangroves (manglares) are not extensive enough to affect the salubrity of Cumana's air. Otherwise the plain is partly bare and partly covered with tufts of plants including the Avicennia tomentosa, the Scoparia dulcis, a shrub-like mimosa with very sensitive leaves, (28) and especially cassias, so many of which can be found in South America that on our travels we gathered more than thirty new species.

We could have included all these details in a work devoted solely to volcanoes in Peru and New Spain. Had I written the physical description of a single province I could have incorporated separate chapters on geography, mineralogy and botany, but how could I break the narrative of our travels, or an essay on customs and the great phenomena of general physics, by tiresomely enumerating the produce of the land, or describing new species and making dry astronomical observations? Had I decided to write a book that included in the same chapter everything observed from the same spot, it would have been excessively long, quite lacking in the clarity that comes from a methodical distribution of subject matter. Despite the efforts made to avoid these errors in this narration of my journey, I am aware that I have not always succeeded in separating the observations of detail from the general results that interest all educated minds. These results should bring together the influence of climate on organized beings, the look of the landscape, the variety of soils and plants, the mountains and rivers that separate tribes as much as plants. I do not regret lingering on these interesting objects for modern civilization can be characterized by how it broadens our ideas, making us perceive the connections between the physical and the intellectual worlds. It is likely that my travel journal will interest many more readers than my purely scientific researches into the population, commerce and mines in New Spain.

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.