Several parts of the vast forests that surround the mountains were on fire. The reddish flames, half hidden by clouds of smoke, stunned us. The inhabitants set fire to the forests to improve their pasturage and to destroy the shrubs that choke the scant grass. Enormous forest fires are also caused by the carelessness of the Indians who forget to put out their camp fires. These accidents have diminished the old trees along the Cumanà-Cumanacoa road, and inhabitants have justly noticed that aridity has increased all over the province, not only because the land has more crevices from earthquakes, but also because it is less forested than it was before the conquest.

We spent the night on a dry, wide beach. The night was silent and calm and the moon shone marvelously. The crocodiles lay on the beach so that they could see our fire. We thought that maybe the glow of the fire attracted them, as it did fish, crayfish and other water creatures. The Indians showed us tracks in the sand from three jaguars, two of them young; doubtless a female with cubs come to drink water. Finding no trees on the beach we stuck our oars in the sand and hung our hammocks. All was peaceful until about eleven when a dreadful noise began in the jungle around us that made sleep impossible. Among the many noises of screeching animals the Indians could recognize only those that were heard separately; the fluted notes of the apajous, the sighs of the abuate apes, the roar of the jaguar and puma; the calls of the pecarry, sloth, hocco, parraka and other gallinaceous birds. When the jaguars approached the edge of the jungle our dog, who up to then had been barking continuously, began to growl and hid under our hammocks. Sometimes, after a long silence, we again heard the tiger's roar from the tops of trees, and then the din of monkeys' whistles as they fled from danger.

The Indians we found at San Francisco Solano belong to two different tribes: the Pacimonales and the Cheruvichanenas. The latter came from a prestigious tribe living on the Tomo river, near the Manivas of the Upper Guiana, so I tried to find out from them about the upper course of the Río Negro, and where I could find its sources; but my interpreter could not make them understand the true sense of my question. They just repeated over and over again that the sources of the Río Negro and the Inirida were as close together as two fingers on a hand'. In one of the Pacimonales's huts we bought two great, beautiful birds: a toucan (piapoco), similar to the Ramphastos erythrorynchos, and an ana, a kind of macaw, with purple feathers like the Psittacus macao. In our canoe we already had seven parrots, two cock-of-the-rocks (pipra), a motmot, two guans or pavas del monte, two manaviris (cercoleptes or Viverra caudivolvula), and eight monkeys, of which three were new species. Father Zea was not too happy about the rate our zoological collection increased day by day, although he kept that to himself. The toucan resembles the raven in its habits and intelligence; it is a brave creature and easy to tame. Its long, strong beak serves as its defense. It becomes master of the house; steals whatever it can, frequently takes a bath, and likes fishing on the river bank. The one we bought was very young, yet throughout our journey it took malicious delight in molesting the sad, irritable monkeys. The structure of the toucan's beak does not oblige it to swallow food by throwing it into the air as some naturalists claim. It is true that it does have problems lifting food from the ground, but once food is seized in its long beak it throws back its head so that it swallows perpendicularly. When this bird wants to drink it makes an odd gesture; monks say it makes the sign of the cross over the water. Because of this creoles have baptized the toucan with the strange name of Diostedé (May God give it to you).

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!

We were forced to cut our own track across the malpaís. The slope is very steep, and the volcanic blocks slipped under our feet. The rubble on the peak's summit has sharp edges and leaves gaps into which explorers risk falling up to their waists. Unfortunately the laziness and bad temper of our guides made this ascent more difficult. They were despairingly phlegmatic. The night before they had tried to convince us not to pass beyond the limit of the rocks. Every ten minutes they would sit down to rest; they threw away pieces of obsidian and pumice-stone that we had carefully collected. Finally we realized that none of them had ever visited the volcano's summit before.