Since I have returned from America one of those revolutions that shake the human race has broken out in the Spanish colonies, and promises a new future for the 14 million inhabitants spread out from La Plata to the remotest areas in Mexico. Deep resentments, exacerbated by colonial laws and maintained by suspicious policies, have stained with bloodshed areas that for three centuries once enjoyed not happiness but at least uninterrupted peace. Already in Quito the most educated citizens have been killed fighting for their country. While writing about certain areas I remembered the loss of dear friends.

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.

In the mountainous regions we have just crossed, Indians form half the population of the provinces of Cumanà and New Barcelona. Their number can be calculated at some 60,000, of which some 24, live in New Andalusia. The Indians of Cumanà do not all live in the mission villages. Some are dispersed around the cities, along the coasts, attracted by fishing, and some in the small farms on the llanos or plains. Some 15, Indians, all belonging to the Chaima tribe, live in the Aragonese Capuchin missions we visited. However, their villages are not as densely populated as in New Barcelona province. Their average population is only 500 to 600, while more to the west, in the Franciscan missions of Piritu, there are Indian villages with up to 3, inhabitants. If I calculated the Indian population in the provinces of Cumanà and New Barcelona to be some 60, I included only those living on Terra Firma, not the Guaiquerí on Margarita Island, nor the great number of independent Guaraunos living in the Orinoco delta islands. Their number is estimated, perhaps exaggeratedly, at some 6, to 8,000. Apart from Guaraunos families seen now and then in the marshes (Los Morichales), which are covered with moriche palms, for the last thirty years there have been no wild Indians living in New Andalusia.

Our first day in the missions corresponded to the first day of the rainy season. Every night a thick mist covered the sky like a uniform veil; only through clearings did I manage to make any observations of the stars. The thermometer marked between 18. and 20°C, which in this zone, and for a traveler arrived from the coast, appeared rather cold. In Cumanà I never saw the thermometer go lower than 21°C. The hottest hours are from midday to three in the afternoon when the thermometer rises to 26°C or 27°C. During the hottest hour of the day, two hours before the sun passes over the meridian, a storm regularly built up and then exploded. Thick black low clouds dissolved in rain; the downpour lasted two to three hours while the thermometer sunk to 5°C or 6°C. At about five the rain stopped, the sun appeared just before sunset, and the hygrometer moved towards the point of dryness; by eight or nine at night we were again enveloped in a thick mist. These different changes follow successively - we were assured day after day for months, yet not the slightest breeze was felt.

The decision we took on the night of the 14th of July had a happy influence on the direction of our travels. Instead of weeks, we spent year in this part of the world. Had not the fever broken out on board the Pizarro we would never have explored the Orinoco, the Casiquiare and the frontiers with the Portuguese possessions on the Rio Negro. We perhaps also owed to this circumstance the good health we enjoyed for such a long period in the equinoctial regions.

On the Cumana coast and on Margarita Island most share the opinion that the Gulf of Cariaco was formed as a consequence of a fracturing of the territory and a flooding from the sea. The memory of this powerful cataclysm had been preserved by the Indians up to the fifteenth century, and it is said that by Christopher Columbus's third voyage the Indians still talked about it as recent. In 1530 the inhabitants of the Paria and Cumana coasts were terrified by new shocks. The sea flooded the land and a huge crack was created in the Cariaco mountains and in the gulf of the same name. A great body of salt water, mixed with asphaltum, burst out of the micaceous schist. At the end of the sixteenth century earthquakes were very common and, according to tradition, the sea flooded the shore several times, rising some 90 to 500 feet above normal. The inhabitants fled to the San Antonio hills, and to the hill where the San Francisco convent stands today.