The guàcharo is about the size of our chickens, with the mouth of our goatsuckers and the gait of vultures, with silky stiff hair around their curved beaks. The plumage is of a dark bluish-grey with small streaks and black dots; great white patches in the shape of a heart, bordered with black, mark its wings, head and tail. Its eyes are wounded by daylight; they are blue and smaller than those of the goatsuckers or flying frogs. The wing-span, seventeen or eighteen quill feathers, is 3. feet. The guàcharo leaves the cave at nightfall when there is a moon. It is the only grain-eating nocturnal bird that we know of to date; the structure of its feet shows that it does not hunt like our owls. It eats hard seed, like the nutcracker (bullfinch). The Indians insist that the guàcharo does not chase beetles or moths like the goatsucker. It is sufficient to compare their beaks to be convinced that they lead completely different lives.

A dreadful circumstance forced us to stay a whole month in Angostura. The first days after our arrival we felt tired and weak, but completely healthy. Bonpland began to study the few plants that he had managed to protect from the humidity while I was busy determining the longitude and latitude of the capital and observing the dip of the magnetic needle. All our work was interrupted. On almost the same day we were struck by an illness that took the form of a malignant typhus in my travelling companion. At that time the air in Angostura was quite healthy and, as the only servant we had brought from Cumana showed the same symptoms, our generous hosts were sure that we had caught the typhus germs somewhere in the damp Casiquiare jungles. As our mulatto servant had been far more exposed to the intense rains, his illness developed with alarming speed. He got so weak that after eight days we thought he was dead. However, he had only fainted, and he later recovered. I too was attacked by a violent fever; I was given a mixture of honey and quinine from the Caroni river (Cortex angosturae), a medicine recommended by the Capuchin monks. My fever continued to rise, but vanished the following day. Bonpland's fever was more serious, and for weeks we worried about his health. Luckily be was strong enough to look after himself; and took medicines that suited him better than the Caroni river quinine. The fever continued and, as is usual in the Tropics, developed into dysentery. During his illness Bonpland maintained his strength of character and that calmness which never left him even in the most trying circumstances. I was tortured by premonitions. It was I who had chosen to go up-river; the danger to my companion seemed to be the fatal consequence of my rash choice.

The days before and after the eclipse were accompanied by strange atmospheric phenomena. We were in the season called winter here, that is, when clouds build up and release short stormy downpours. From the 10th of October to the 3rd of November the horizon is covered over each night by a reddish mist, quickly spreading across the sky-blue vault in a more or less thick veil. When this reddish mist lightly covered the sky not even the brightest stars could be seen even at their highest points. They twinkled at all altitudes as if after a rainstorm.

The old Indian called 'master of the poison' was flattered by our interest in his chemical procedures. He found us intelligent enough to think that we could make soap; for making soap, after making curare, seemed to him the greatest of human inventions. Once the poison was poured into its jars, we accompanied the Indian to the juvias fiesta. They were celebrating the Brazil-nut harvest, and became wildly drunk. The hut where the Indians had gathered over several days was the strangest sight you could imagine. Inside there were no tables or benches, only large smoked and roasted monkeys lined up symmetrically against the wall. These were marimondas (Ateles belzebuth) and the bearded capuchins. The way these animals, which look so like human beings, are roasted helps you understand why civilized people find eating them so repulsive. A little grill made of a hard wood is raised about a foot from the ground. The skinned monkey is placed on top in a sitting position so that he is held up by his long thin hands; sometimes the hands are crossed over his shoulders. Once it is fixed to the grill a fire is lit underneath; flames and smoke cover the monkey, which is roasted and smoked at the same time. Seems Indians eat a leg or arm of a roasted monkey makes you realize why cannibalism is not so repugnant to Indians. Roasted monkeys especially those with very round heads, look horribly like children. Europeans who are forced to eat them prefer to cut off the head and hands before serving up the rest of the monkey The flesh of the monkey is so lean and dry that Bonpland kept an arm and a hand, roasted in Esmeralda, in his Paris collections. After many years it did not smell in the least.

Our guides led us to the 'mine'. We turned west, and finally reached the Quebrada de Oro. On the hillside there was hardly a trace of a quartz seam. The landslide, caused by rain, had so transformed the ground that we could not even think of exploring it. Huge trees now grew where twenty years before gold seekers had worked. It is likely that there are veins in the mica-slate containing this venerable metal, but how could I judge if it was worth exploiting or if the metal was to be found in nodules? To compensate our efforts, we set to botanizing in the thick wood around the Hato.

The Indians of this area have preserved the belief that 'during the great flood, when their ancestors had to take to the canoes to escape, the sea waves beat against the Encaramada rocks'. This tradition is found in nearly all the tribes of the Upper Orinoco. When the Tamanacu are asked how the human race survived that great catastrophe they answer: 'A man and a woman saved themselves on a high mountain called Tamanacu and there threw seed from the mauritia palm over their heads, and little men and women were born from the seeds who repopulated the world. Among wild tribes we find a simple version of a legend that the Greeks had embellished with their great imagination! A few leagues from Encaramada a rock called Tepu-mereme (Painted Rock) rises in the middle of the savannah. It is covered with animal drawings and symbolic signs. The representations that we have found on rocks in uninhabited places - stars, suns, jaguars, crocodiles - do not seem to be related to religious cults. These hieroglyphic figures are frequently carved so high up that only scaffolding could reach them. When we asked the Indians how they could have carved those images, they answered, smiling, as if only whites could ignore such an obvious answer: During the great waters, their ancestors reached those rocks in their canoes.

The amount of identical species in the two continents and in the two hemispheres is far less than early travelers once led us to think. The high mountains of equinoctial America have their plantains, valerians, arenarias, ranunculuses, medlars, oaks and pines, which from their features we could confuse with European ones, but they are all specifically different. When nature does not present the same species, she repeats the same genera. Neighboring species are often found at enormous distances from each other, in low regions of a temperate zone, and on mountains on the equator. And, as we found on La Silla at Caracas, they are not the European genera that have colonized mountains of the torrid zone, but genera of the same tribe, which have taken their place and are hard to distinguish