The hypothesis that during the Cumana earthquakes elastic fluids escape from the earth's surface seems confirmed by the dreadful noise heard during the shocks near the wells in the plain of Charas. Water and sand are sometimes thrown 20 feet high. Similar phenomena did not escape the ancients' notice in areas of Greece and Asia Minor, in caves, crevices and underground rivers. Nature, in its uniform progress, everywhere gives birth to the same ideas concerning the causes of earthquakes, and man, forgetting the measure of its force, tries to diminish the effect of underground explosions. What the great Roman naturalist Pliny said about how wells and caves are the cause is repeated by the most ignorant Indians of Quito when they show travelers the guaicos, or crevices, of Pichincha.

The macavahu, called by the missionaries viuditas, or 'widows in mourning', has soft glossy black hair. Its face is a kind of whitish-blue square mask, which contains its eyes, nose and mouth. Its ears have an edge; are small, pretty and hairless. Its neck has a white area in two rings. Its feet, or hind legs, are black like its body, but its forehands are white outside and black inside. These white spots led the missionaries to recognize a veil, a neck scarf and the gloves of a widow in mourning. The character of this little monkey, which sits up on its hind legs to eat, is not related to its appearance. It has a wild and shy air, and often refuses food even when ravenous. We have seen it remain motionless for hours without sleeping, attentive to everything happening around it. The viudita, when alone, becomes furious at the sight of a bird, and climbs and runs with astonishing speed, and, like a eat, leaps on to its prey and eats all it can. The viuditas accompanied us throughout our entire voyage on the Casiquiare and Río Negro. It is an advantage to study animals for several months in the open air, and not indoors where they lose their natural vivacity.

I have shown that winged insects which live in society and whose suckers contain a liquid that irritates skin make vast territories virtually uninhabitable. Other insects, just as small, called termites (comején) create insuperable obstacles to the progress of civilization in several hot countries. They rapidly devour paper, cardboard and parchment, and thus destroy archives and libraries. Whole provinces of Spanish America do not have any document that dates back more than a hundred years.

The titi of the Orinoco (Simia sciurea) is very common south of the cataracts. Its face is white, with a blue-black spot covering its mouth and the tip of its nose. No other monkey reminds you more of a child than the titi; the same innocent expression, the same cheeky smile, the same sudden shifts from joy to sadness. Its large eyes fill with tears the moment it is frightened. It is avid for insects, especially spiders. The cleverness of this little monkey is such that one we brought in our boat could perfectly distinguish different plates in Cuvier's Tableau élémentaire d'histoire naturelle. (98) Though the engravings are not colored yet the titi tried to catch a grasshopper or a wasp with its small hand every time we showed a plate with these insects represented. When several of these little monkeys are shut up in the same cage and exposed to rain they twist their tails round their necks and hug each other to warm themselves. The titis are delicate and timid little animals. They become sad and dejected when they leave the jungle and enter the llanos.

The syndic in Cumanà had recommended us to the missionaries who run the Chaima Indian mission. This recommendation was all the more useful to us as the missionaries, zealous for the purity of their parishioners' morals, and wary of the indiscreet curiosity of strangers, tended to apply an ancient rule of their order according to which no white secular person could remain more than one night in an Indian village. In general, to travel agreeably in Spanish missions it would not be wise to trust solely to the passport issued by the Madrid Secretary of State: you must arm yourself with recommendations from the ecclesiastical authorities, especially the custodians of convents, or the generals of orders residing in Rome, who are far more respected by missionaries than bishops. Missions have become, in reality, a distinct, almost independent, hierarchy, despite being primitive or canonical institutions.

Every day we went botanizing in the Turbaco forests from five in the morning until dark: these long walks would have been a delight in this fertile marshy soil if we had not been devoured by mosquitoes, zancudos, chigoes and numberless insects already described in the Orinoco part of this narrative. In the midst of these wonderful forests, smelling the flowers of the Crinum erubescens and Pancratium littorale, we often came across Indian conucos, little banana and maize plantations where Indians, ever ready to flee from whites, live during the rainy season. This taste for the jungle and isolation typifies the American Indian. Though the Spanish population has mixed with the Indian population in Turbaco, the latter display the same lack of culture as in the Guianan missions. Examining their farming tools, the way they build their bamboo huts, their clothes and crude arts, I ask myself what the copper race has earned by contact with European civilization.

We had been warned that we would find the insects at Esmeralda even more cruel and voracious' than in this branch of the Orinoco; despite this we looked forward to sleeping in an inhabited place, and botanizing a little at last. At our last camp on the Casiquiare we had quite a fright. I presume to describe something that might not greatly interest a reader, but should be part of a journal of incidents on a river in such wild country. We slept on the edge of the jungle. At midnight the Indians warned us that they had heard a jaguar growl very close to us; it seemed to be up a nearby tree. The jungle is so thick here that only animals who climb trees exist. As our fires gave off 'plenty of light, and as we had become hardened to fear, we did not worry too much about the jaguar's cries. The smell and barking of one of our dogs had attracted the jaguar. This dog, a large mastiff, had barked at the Start, but when the jaguar approached the dog howled and hid under our hammocks. Since the Apure we had been used to this alternating bravery and fear in a young, tame and affectionate dog. We had a terrible shock the next morning. When getting ready to leave, the Indians told us that our dog had disappeared'. There was no doubt that the jaguar had killed it. Perhaps when it no longer heard the roars it had wandered off along the shore, or perhaps we slept so deeply we never heard the dog's yelps. We were often told that on the Orinoco and the Magdalena old jaguars were so clever that they hunted their prey in the very camps, and twisted their victims' necks so that they could not shout. We waited a long while in case the dog was merely lost. Three days later we returned to the same place and again heard a jaguar roar. So the dog, which had been our companion from Caracas, and had often swum away from crocodiles, had ended up being devoured in the jungle.