Leaving the tableland of Guardia we descended to the Indian village of Santa Cruz. First we reached a steep, extremely slippery slope that the missionaries strangely named Bajada del Purgatorio, or Descent of Purgatory. It consists of eroded slaty sandstone, covered with clay; the slope seems terribly steep. To go down, the mules draw their hind legs to their forelegs, lower their rumps and trust their luck sliding downhill. The rider has nothing to fear as long as he drops the reins and leaves the mule alone. From here to the left we saw the great pyramid of Guàcharo. This calcareous peak looks very picturesque, but we soon lost it to view when we entered the thick jungle known as Montana de Santa María. We spent seven hours crossing it. It is hard to imagine a worse path; a veritable ladder, a kind of gorge where, during the rainy season, torrent water rushes down the rocks step by step. The steps are from 2 to 3 feet high. The hapless animals first have to calculate how to pass their loads between the tree trunks, and then jump from one block to another. Scared of slipping they wait a few moments, as if studying the terrain, and then draw their four legs together like wild goats do. If the mule misses the nearest rock it sinks deep into the soft ochre clay that fills in the gaps between the rocks. When there are no rocks, the rider's feet and the mule's legs are supported by a tangle of enormous tree roots. The creoles have faith in the skill and instinct of their mules and remain in the saddle during the long dangerous descent. We preferred to dismount because we feared fatigue less than they do, and were more prepared to travel slowly as we never stopped collecting plants and examining the rocks.

For the past year so many obstacles had crossed my path that I couldhardly believe that at last my innermost desires would be fulfilled. Weleft Madrid in the middle of May and crossed Old Castile and the kingdomsof Le-n and Galicia to La Coruña, where we were to embark for the island of Cuba. The winter had been long and hard but now, duringour journey, we enjoyed the mild temperatures of spring that in the southusually begin in March or April. Snow still covered the tall granitic peaksof the Guadarrama but in the deep Galician valleys, which reminded me of the picturesque scenery ofSwitzerland and the Tyrol, the rocks were covered in flowering cistus andarborescent heaths. The traveler is happy to quit the Castilian plainsdevoid of vegetation and their intense winter cold and summers of oppressive heat.

The tunal is considered here and everywhere in the Spanish colonies as crucial to military defense; and when earthworks are raised the engineers propagate the thorny opuntia, as they keep crocodiles in the ditches. In regions where nature is so fertile, man uses the carnivorous reptile and a plant with an armor of thorns to his advantage.

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.

On the morning of the 19th of June we caught sight of the point of Naga, but the Pico de Teide remained invisible. Land stood out vaguely because a thick fog effaced the details. As we approached the natural bay of Santa Cruz we watched the mist, driven by wind, draw near. The sea was very rough, as it usually is in this place. After much sounding we anchored. The fog was so thick that visibility was limited to a few cables' length. Just as we were about to fire the customary salute the fog suddenly dissipated and the Pico de Teide appeared in a clearing above the clouds, illuminated by the first rays of sun, which had not reached us yet. We rushed to the bow of the corvette not to miss this marvelous spectacle, but at that very same moment we saw four English warships hove to near our stern, not far out in the open sea. We had passed them closely by in the thick fog that had prevented us from seeing the peak, and had thus been saved from the danger of being sent back to Europe. It would have been distressing for naturalists to have seen the Tenerife coasts from far off and not to have been able to land on soil crushed by volcanoes. We quickly weighed anchor and the Pizarro approached the fort as closely as possible to be under its protection. Here, two years before in an attempted landing, Admiral Nelson lost his arm to a cannon-ball. The English ships left the bay; a few days earlier they had chased the packet-boat Alcudia, which had left La Coruìa just before we did. It had been forced into Las Palmas harbor, and several passengers were captured while being transferred to Santa Cruz in a launch.

On my arrival at Terra Firma I was struck by the correlation between two natural phenomena: the destruction of Cumanà on the 14th of December 1797 and volcanic eruptions in the smaller West Indian Islands. Something similar happened at Caracas on the 26th of March 1812. In 1797 the volcano on Guadeloupe Island, on the Cumanà coast, seemed to have reacted; fifteen years later another volcano on San Vincente also reacted, and its effects were felt as far as Caracas and the banks of the Apure. Probably both times the center of the eruption was at an enormous depth in the earth, equidistant from the points on the earth's surface that felt the movement. The shock felt at Caracas in December 1811 was the only one that preceded the terrible catastrophe of the 26th of March 1812. In Caracas, and for 90 leagues around, not one drop of rain had fallen for five months up to the destruction of the capital. The 26th of March was a very hot day; there was no wind and no cloud. It was Ascension Day and most people had congregated in the churches. Nothing suggested the horrors to come. At seven minutes past four the first shock was felt. 'It was so violent that the church bells rang, and lasted five to six seconds. It was followed immediately by another lasting ten to twelve seconds when the ground seemed to ripple like boiling water. People thought the quake was over when an infernal din came from under the ground. It was like thunder but louder and longer than any tropical storm. Following this there was a vertical movement lasting three seconds followed by undulations. The shocks coming from these contrary movements tore the city apart. Thousands of people were trapped in the churches and houses. (78)