The Catuaro mission is situated in a very wild place. The church is surrounded by tall trees. At night jaguars hunt the Indians' chickens and pigs. We lodged in the priest's house, a monk of the Observance congregation, to whom the Capuchins had given this mission because they did not have enough priests in their own community. He was a doctor in theology, a little, dried-up and petulant man. He entertained us with stories about the trial he had had with the superior of his convent, with the enmity of his brothers and the injustice of the alcaldes, who, ignoring his privileges, once threw him in jail. Despite these set-backs he had conserved an unfortunate liking for what he called metaphysical questions. He wanted to know what I thought of free will, of how to raise the soul from the prison of the body, and, above all, about animal souls. When you have crossed a jungle in the rainy season you do not feel like these kind of speculations. Besides, everything about this little Catuaro mission was odd, even the priest's house. It had two floors, and had become the object of a keen rivalry between secular and ecclesiastical authorities. The priest's superior found it too luxurious for a missionary; and wanted the Indians to demolish it; the governor opposed this strongly, and his will prevailed.

In the missions there are a few villages where families belong to different tribes, speaking different languages. Societies composed of such heterogeneous elements are difficult to govern. In general, the padres have settled whole tribes, or large parts of them, in villages not far from each other. The Indians see only those of their own tribe, for lack of communication and isolation are the main aims of missionary policy. Among the tamed Chaimas, Caribs and Tamanacs racial characteristics are retained if they are allowed to keep their respective languages. If man's individuality is reflected in his dialects, then these in their turn influence thoughts and feelings. This intimate link between language, national character and physical constitution ensures the differences and idiosyncrasies of the tribes, which in turn constitutes an unending source of movement and life at the mental level.

At the mouth of the Zama river we entered into a fluvial network worthy of attention. The Zama, Mataveni, Atabapo, Tuamini, Temi and Guianai rivers have aguas negras, that is, seen as a mass they appear brown like coffee, or greenish-black. These waters are, however, beautifully clear and very tasty. I have observed that crocodiles and mosquitoes, but not the zancudos, tend to avoid the black waters.

The Casiquiare Indians, though easily reverting to barbaric customs, show some intelligence in the missions, work well and learn Spanish. As most missions have two or three tribes speaking different languages the language of the missionaries lets them communicate with each other. I saw a Poignave Indian talk in Castilian with a Guahibo, though both had left the jungle only three months before. Every quarter of an hour one spoke a carefully prepared phrase in which the verb, following the grammar of their own languages, was always a gerund ('When me seeing the father, the father me saying...').

We left the Esmeralda mission on the 23rd of May. We were not exactly ill, but emaciated and weak thanks to the torment of mosquitoes, the bad food and the long journey on that narrow and damp pirogue. We did not go further up the Orinoco than the mouth of the Guapo; had we wanted to reach the Orinoco sources we would have gone beyond this point, but private travelers are not authorized to leave pacified areas. From the Guapo river to the Guaharibo cataract there are only 15 leagues. But the cataract is crossed by a liana bridge where Indians armed with bows and arrows stop whites from entering their lands. Up to the present time the Orinoco posed two distinct problems for geographers: its sources, and the nature of its communications with the Amazon. This latter was the aim of our journey.