I shall begin with the Chaimas, of whom some 15, live in the missions we visited. Their territory stretches over the high mountain range of the Cocollar and the Guàcharo, the banks of the Guarapiche, the Colorado river, the Areo and the Caìo de Caripe. According to a statistical survey made with great care by a father superior in the Aragonese Capuchin mission of Cumanà, nineteen mission villages, the oldest dating back to 1728, held 1, families, and a total of 6, people. From 1730 to 1736 the population was diminished by the ravages of smallpox, always more fatal for the copper-skinned Indians than for the whites.

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 stay in Turbaco was extremely agreeable, and useful for our botanical collection. Even today those bamboo forests, the wild fertility of the land, the orchids carpeting the old ocotea and Indian fig-tree trunks, the majestic view of the snowy mountains, the light mist covering the valleys at sunrise, bunches of gigantic trees like green islands above a sea of mist, all return incessantly to my imagination. Our life at Turbaco was simple and hard-working; we were young, linked by similar tastes and characters, always full of hope in the future, on the eve of a journey that would take us to the highest Andean peaks, and volcanoes on fire in a country where earthquakes are common. We felt happier than at any other moment in our expedition. The years that have passed since then, not without bitterness and hardships, have added to the charms of these impressions; I would like to think that in his exile in the Southern hemisphere, in the isolation of Paraguay, my unfortunate friend Bonpland (145) might still recall our delightful herborizings. As Bonpland's health had cruelly suffered during our journey on the Orinoco and Casiquiare we decided to follow the advice of the locals and supply ourselves with all the comforts possible on our trip up the Magdalena. Instead of sleeping in hammocks or lying on the ground on skins, exposed to the nightly torment of mosquitoes, we did what was done in the country, and got hold of a mattress, a country-bed that was easy to unfold, as well as a toldo, a cotton sheet, which could fold under the mattress and make a kind of closed-off tent that no insects could penetrate. Two of these beds, rolled into cylinders of thick leather, were packed on to a mule. I could not praise this system more; it is far superior to the mosquito net.