Opposite Bermúdez's farm two spacious caves open out of Cuchivano's crevice. At times flames, which can be seen from great distances, burst out. They illuminate the surrounding mountains, and from the mark left on the rocks by these burning gases we could be tempted to believe they reach some 100 feet high. During the last violent Cumanà earthquake this phenomenon was accompanied by long, dull, underground noises.

At the Capuchin hospice in Caripe I collected, with Bonpland's help, a small list of Chaima words. The three languages most common in this province are Chaima, Cumanagoto and Carib. Here they have been seen as separate languages and a dictionary of each has been compiled for mission use. The few grammars printed in the seventeenth century passed into the missions and have been lost in the jungle. Damp air and voracious insects (termites known as comején) make preserving books in these hot lands almost impossible, and they are soon destroyed.

April 10th. We were unable to set sail until ten in the morning. It was hard to adapt to the new pirogue, which we saw as a new prison. To make it wider at the back of the boat we made branches into a kind of trellis, which stuck out on both sides. Unfortunately the leaf roof of this lattice-work was so low that you either had to lie down, and consequently saw nothing, or you had to stay hunched over. The need to transport pirogues across rapids, and even from one river to another, and the fear of giving too much hold to the wind by raising the toldo made this construction necessary for the little boats going up the Río Negro. The roof was designed for four people stretched Out on the deck or lattice-work, but your legs stuck far out, and when it rained half your body got wet. Worse still, you lie on oxhides or tiger skins, and the branches under the skins hurt you when you lie down. The front of the boat was filled with the Indian rowers, armed with 3-foot-long paddles in the form of spoons. They are all naked, sitting in twos, and row beautifully together. Their songs are sad and monotonous. The little cages with our birds and monkeys, increasing as we went on, were tied to the toldo and the prow. It was our travelling zoo. Despite losses due to accidents and sunstroke, we counted fourteen little animals when we came back from the Casiquiare. Every night when we established camp, our zoo and instruments occupied the middle; around them we hung our hammocks, then the Indians' hammocks and, outside, the fires we thought indispensable to scare off jaguars. At sunrise our caged monkeys answered the cries of the jungle monkeys.

Among the races making up the Venezuelan population blacks are important - seen both compassionately for their wretched state, and with fear due to possible violent uprisings - because they are concentrated in limited areas, not so much because of their total number. Of the 60, slaves in the Venezuelan provinces, 40, live in the province of Caracas. In the plains there are only some 4, to 5,000, spread around the haciendas and looking after the cattle. The number of freed slaves is very high as Spanish legislation and custom favor emancipation. A slave-owner cannot deny a slave his freedom if he can pay 300 piastres, (69) even if this would have cost the slave-owner double because of the amount of work the slave might have done.

No astronomical instruments had been brought along during the frontier expedition in this region, so with my chronometer, and by the meridional height of the stars, I established the exact location of San Baltasar de Atabapo, Javita, San Carlos de Río Negro, the Culimacarai rock and the Esmeralda mission. The map I drew has resolved any doubts about the reciprocal distances between the Christian outposts. When there is no other road but the tortuous and intricate river; when little villages lie hidden in thick jungle; when in a completely flat country with no mountains visible, you can read where you are on earth only by looking up to the sky.

When we were about to leave the Can mission we had an argument with our Indian muleteers. To our amazement they had discovered that we were transporting skeletons from the Ataruipe caves, and were sure that the mule carrying 'the corpses of our ancient relatives' would die on the journey. All our precautions to hide the bones had been useless; nothing escapes the Carib's sense of smell. We needed the missionary's authority to be able to leave. We had to cross the Can river in a boat and ford, or perhaps I should say swim, the Río de Agua Clara. Quicksand on the bottom made the crossing during the floods very tiring. You are surprised to find such strong currents in flat land. We spent unpleasant nights out at Matagorda and Los Riecitos. Everywhere we saw the same things: small huts made of reed and roofed with leather, men on horseback with lances, guarding the cattle, semi-wild herds of horned cattle all the same color, fighting for grass with horses and mules. Not a goat or a sheep in these immense steppes!

On the 12th we continued our journey to the Caripe monastery, center of the Chaima Indian missions. Instead of the direct road, we chose the one that passes by the Cocollar (54) and Turimiquiri mountains. We passed the little Indian village of Aricagua, pleasantly located in wooded hills. From there we climbed up hill for four hours. This part of the route is very tiring; we crossed the Pututucuar, whose river bed is packed with blocks of calcareous rock, twenty-two times. When we had reached the Cuesta del Cocollar, some 2, feet above sea-level, we saw, to our surprise, that the jungle of tall trees had vanished. Then we crossed an immense plain covered in grass. 0nly mimosas, with hemispheric tops and trunks some 4 to 5 feet in diameter, break the desolate monotony of the savannahs. Their branches are bent towards the ground, or spread out like parasols.