The race of guàcharo would long ago have become extinct had not diverse circumstances combined to preserve them. The superstitious Indians rarely dare to penetrate deep into the grotto. It appears that these birds also nest in other nearby caves inaccessible to man. Perhaps this great cave is repopulated by colonies coming from smaller ones because the missionaries assured us that these birds had not diminished in numbers. When the gizzards of the young birds in the cave are opened they contain all kinds of hard and dried fruits, which, under the name of semilla del guàcharo, are a famous remedy against intermittent fevers. The adult birds carry these seed to their young. They are carefully collected and sent to the sick at Cariaco.

The destruction of the forests, the clearing of the plains, and the cultivation of indigo over half a century has affected the amount of water flowing in as well as the evaporation of the soil and the dryness of the air, which forcefully explains why the present Lake Valencia is decreasing. By felling trees that cover the tops and sides of mountains men everywhere have ensured two calamities at the same time for the future: lack of fuel, and scarcity of water. Trees, by the nature of their perspiration, and the radiation from their leaves in a cloudless sky, surround themselves with an atmosphere that is constantly cool and misty. They affect the amount of springs by sheltering the soil from the sun's direct actions and reducing the rainwater's evaporation. When forests are destroyed, as they are everywhere in America by European planters, with imprudent haste, the springs dry up completely, or merely trickle. River beds remain dry part of the year and are then turned into torrents whenever it rains heavily on the heights. As grass and moss disappear with the brushwood from the mountainsides, so rainwater is unchecked in its course. Instead of slowly raising the river level by filtrations, the heavy rains dig channels into the hillsides, dragging down loose soil, and forming sudden, destructive floods. Thus, the clearing of forests, the absence of permanent springs, and torrents are three closely connected phenomena. Countries in different hemispheres like Lombardy bordered by the Alps, and Lower Peru between the Pacific and the Andes, confirm this assertion.

The Chaimas have extreme difficulty in coping with numerical relationships. I did not meet one who could tell me whether he was eighteen or sixty years old. The Chaima language has words to express high numbers, but few Indians know how to use them. As they need to count the more intelligent ones count in Spanish up to thirty or forty, and even that seems a great mental strain. In their own language they cannot count up to six. Since European savants have dedicated themselves to the study of the structure of American languages we cannot attribute the imperfection of a language to what appears to be the stupidity of a people. We recognize that everywhere languages offer greater richnesses and more nuances than can be supposed from the lack of culture of the people speaking them.

There we met the district corregidor, Don Alejandro Mejía, an amiable and well-educated man. He gave us three Indians who would cut us a path through the jungle with machetes. In this country, where people rarely travel, the vegetation is so fertile that a man on horseback can barely make his way along the jungle paths tangled with liana and branches during the rainy season. To our great annoyance the Catuaro missionary insisted on leading us to Cariaco, and we could not decline his offer. He told us a dreadful story. The independence movement, which had nearly broken out in 1798, had been preceded and followed by trouble among the slaves at Cariaco. An unfortunate negro had been condemned to death and our host was going to Cariaco to give him some spiritual comfort. How tedious this journey became. We could not escape talking about 'the necessity of slavery, the innate wickedness of the blacks, and how slavery benefited Christians'!

The missionary from the Raudales looked after the preparations for our journey rather too well. He worried that there might not be enough Maco and Guahibo Indians on hand who knew the labyrinth of small canals and rapids that form the raudales and cataracts, so at night he put two Indians in the cepo, that is, they were tied to the ground and fastened together between two pieces of wood with a padlock. In the morning we were awoken by the shouts of a young Indian who was being brutally beaten with a whip of manatee skin. His name was Zerepe, an extremely intelligent Indian who later served us well, but at the time refused to travel with us. He had been born in the Atures mission; his father was from the Maco tribe and his mother from the Maypure; he had run off to the jungle (al monte) and lived with wild Indians for years. He had learned several languages, and the missionary used him as an interpreter. Not without difficulty did we obtain his pardon. 'Without severity, we were told, 'you would get nothing'.

Days passed quickly in the Capuchin convent in the Caripe mountains, despite our simple but monotonous life. From sunrise to sunset we toured the forests and mountains near by looking for plants, and have never collected so many. When the heavy rain stopped us travelling far we visited Indian huts and the communal conuco, or attended the nightly meetings when the alcaldes handed out the work for the following day. We did not return to the convent until bells called us for meals in the refectory with the monks. At dawn we sometimes accompanied them to the church to attend doctrina, that is, religious classes for Indians. It was hard explaining dogma to people who hardly knew Spanish. The monks are almost completely ignorant of the Chaima Indian language, and the resemblance of sounds between the languages muddles the poor Indians so that strange ideas arise. One day we witnessed a missionary struggling to explain to his class that invierno, winter, and infierno, hell, were not the same thing, but as different as hot and cold. The Chaima Indians know winter only as the rainy season, and imagine that 'the white's hell' is a place where the evil are exposed to horrific rainstorms. The missionary lost his temper, but it was useless; the first impression caused by the almost identical words persisted; in the Indians' minds the images of rain and hell could not be separated.

The external edges of La Caldera are almost perpendicular, rather like the Somma seen from the Atrio del Cavallo. We got to the bottom of the crater following a trail of broken lava from the eastern breach of the wall. We only felt the heat above the crevices, which exhaled watery vapors with a strange buzzing sound. Some of these crevices can be found on the outside of the crater, on the external parapet that surrounds it. A thermometer placed inside one of them rose suddenly from 68°C to 75°C. This would have risen higher, but we had to pull the thermometer out to prevent our hands from being burned It might be thought that these vapors, which escape in puffs of air, contain muriatic or sulphuric acids, but when condensed they had no particular taste. Experiments showed that these chimneys exhale pure water only.