Their facial expression is not hard or wild but rather serious and gloomy. Their foreheads are small and barely salient, which is why in various languages of their territory they say about a beautiful woman that 'she is fat, with a narrow forehead'; their eyes are black, deep set and very elongated. The Chaimas, and all South American Indians, resemble the Mongols in the shape of their eyes, their high cheekbones, their straight and smooth hair, and an almost total absence of beard; yet they differ in the form of their noses. These are rather long and broad at the nostril, which opens downwards like a Caucasian nose. Their mouths are wide, with full lips but not fleshy, and frequently show their good nature. Between the nose and mouth are two furrows that diverge from the nostrils to the corners of the mouth. The chin is very small and round; the jaws very strong and wide.

The bamboo-lined road led us to the small village of San Fernando, located in a narrow plain, surrounded by steep calcareous cliffs. It was the first mission we visited in America. The houses, or rather shacks, of the Chaima Indians are scattered about, and are without vegetable gardens. The straight narrow streets cut each other at right angles. The thin irregular walls are made of clay and bound with lianas. The monotony of the houses, the serious and taciturn aspect of the inhabitants and the extreme cleanliness inside their homes reminded us of the establishments of the Moravian Brethren. (47) Each family cultivates the conuco de la comunidad, which is outside the village, as are their own individual vegetable plots. Adults of both sexes work there an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening. In the missions near the coast, the communal garden is nearly always planted with sugar cane or indigo and run by the missions. Their product, if the law is strictly followed, can be used only for the upkeep of the church and the purchase of whatever the priests may need. San Fernando's great square, in the center of the village, contains the church, the missionary's house and the modest building that goes pompously under the name of 'king's house' (casa del rey). This is the official hostel for travelers and, as we often confirmed, a real blessing in a land where the word 'inn' is unknown. These casas del rey can be found all over Spanish colonies, no doubt imitating the Peruvian tambos established by Manco Capac's laws. (48)

The electrometer gave no sign of electricity. As the storm gathered the blue of the sky changed to grey. The thermometer rose 3'C, as is usual in the Tropics, and a heavy rain fell. Being sufficiently adapted to the climate not to fear the effect of a tropical downpour we stayed on the shore to observe the electrometer. I held it more than twenty minutes in my hand, 6 feet above the ground. For several minutes the electric charge remained the same, and then I noticed that the electricity in the atmosphere was first positive, then nil, then negative. I have gone into these details on the electric charge in the atmosphere because newly arrived European travelers usually describe just their impressions of a tropical storm. In a country where the year is divided into two halves, the dry and the wet season, or as the Indians say in their expressive language, 'of sun and rain', it is interesting to follow meteorological phenomena as one season turns into the next.

Day was breaking when we left the ice cave. A layer of white fleecy cloud blocked out the lower regions of the surrounding islands. The clouds were spread out so uniformly and in such a flat way that they looked like an immense plain covered in snow. The colossal pyramid of the peak, the volcanic summits of Lanzarote, Fuerteventura and La Palma stuck up like reefs above a sea of fog. Their dark color contrasted vividly with the whiteness of the clouds.

Only those who have seen the quantity of ants that infest the countries of the torrid zone can picture the destruction and the sinking of the ground caused by these insects. They abound to such a degree in Valencia that their excavations resemble underground canals, which flood with water during the rains and threaten buildings. Here they have not used the extraordinary means employed by the monks on the island of Santo Domingo when troops of ants ravaged the fine plains of La Vega. The monks, after trying to burn the ant larvae and fumigate the nests, told the inhabitants to choose a saint by lot who would act as an Abogado contra las Hormigas. The choice fell on Saint Saturnin, and the ants disappeared as soon as the saint's festival was celebrated.

I placed very active curare on the crural nerves of a frog without noticing any change, measuring the degree of its organs' irritability with an arc formed of heterogeneous metals. But these Galvanic experiments hardly worked on birds a few minutes after they had been shot with poison arrows. Curare works only when the poison acts on the vascular system. At Maypures, a colored man (a zambo, a cross between Indian and negro) was preparing one of those poison arrows that are shot in blowpipes, to kill small monkeys or birds for M. Bonpland. He was a carpenter of extraordinary strength. He stupidly rubbed the curare between slightly bleeding fingers and fell to the ground, dizzy for half an hour. Luckily it was a weak curare (destemplado), used for small animals, which may be revived later by placing muriate of soda in the wound. During our journey back from Esmeralda to Atures. I escaped from danger myself. The curare had attracted humidity and become liquid and spilled from a poorly closed jar on to our clothes. We forgot to check the inside of a sock filled with curare when washing our clothes. Just touching this sticky stuff with my hand I realized I should not pull on the poison sock. The danger was all the greater as my toes were bleeding from chigoe wounds.

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.