In America, from the Eskimos to the Orinoco banks, from the burning plains to the icy Strait of Magellan, mother tongues, quite different in terms of their roots, share the same physiognomy. We recognize striking analogies in grammatical structure, not only in the more learned languages like that of the Incas, the Aymara, the Guaranu, Cora and Mexican, but also in the more primitive ones. It is thanks to this structural analogy rather than words in common that the mission Indian learns another American language more easily than a metropolitan one. In the Orinoco jungle I have met the dullest Indians who speak two or three languages.

In two days we went down the Orinoco from Carichana to the Uruana mission, again passing the famous Baraguan Strait. The Uruana mission is situated in a very picturesque place. The little Indian village backs on to a high granite mountain. Rocks rise like pillars above the highest jungle trees. Nowhere else is the Orinoco more majestic than when viewed from Father Ramon Bueno's missionary hut. It is more than 2, toises wide and runs in a straight line east like a canal. The mission is inhabited by Otomacs, a barbaric tribe who offered us an extraordinary physiological phenomenon. The Otomacs eat earth; every day for several months they swallow quantities of earth to appease their hunger without any ill effect on their health. This verifiable fact has become, since my return to Europe, the object of lively disputes. Though we could stay only one day in Uruana it was sufficient to find out how the poya (balls of earth) are prepared, to examine the reserves of this the Indians keep, and how much is eaten in twenty-four hours. I also found traces of this perverse appetite among the Guamos, between the Meta and the Apure. Everybody speaks of earth eating or geophagie as anciently known. I shall limit myself to what I saw and heard from the missionary, doomed to twelve years among this wild, unruly Otomac tribe.

Guanaguana still does not have a church. The old priest, who had lived for more than thirty years in the American jungles, pointed out that the community's money, meaning the product of the Indians' work, should first be spent on building the missionary house; secondly on building a church; and lastly on their clothes. He seriously insisted that this order could not be altered on any account. The Indians can wait their turn as they prefer walking around completely naked to wearing the scantiest clothes. The spacious padre's house had just been finished and we noted with surprise that the terraced roof was decorated with a great number of chimneys that looked like turrets. Our host told us that this was done to remind him of his Aragonese winters, despite the tropical heat. The Guanaguana Indians grow cotton for themselves, the church and the missionary. The produce is supposed to belong to the community; it is with this communal money that the needs of the priest and altar are looked after. They have simple machines that separate the seed from the plant. Wooden cylinders of tiny diameter between which the cotton passes are activated, like a spinning-wheel, by pedals. However, these primitive machines are very useful and other missions are beginning to imitate them. But here, as in all places where nature's fertility hinders the development of industry, only a few hectares are converted into cultivated land, and nobody thinks of changing that cultivation into one of alimentary plants. Famine is felt each time the maize harvest is lost to a long drought. The Guanaguana Indians told us an amazing story that happened the year before when they went off with their women and children and spent three months al monte, that is, wandering about in the neighboring jungle and living off juicy plants, palm cabbages, fern roots and wild fruit. They did not speak of this nomadic state as one of deprivation. Only the missionary lost out because his village was left completely abandoned, and the community members, when they returned from the woods, appeared to be less docile than before.

The epidemic on board the Pizarro spread rapidly as soon as we neared the coast of Terra Firma. By night the thermometer regularly marked 22'C or 23'C, by day it rose to 24'C and 27'C. Congestion in the head, extreme dryness of skin and the failing of all strength became alarming symptoms but, having reached the end of the voyage, we flattered ourselves that the sick would recover their health as soon as we landed them on Margarita Island or at Cumana harbor, both known for their salubrity.

After dividing all that belongs to astronomy, botany, zoology, the political description of New Spain, and the history of the ancient civilizations of certain New World nations into separate works, many general results and local descriptions remained left over, which I could still collect into separate treatises. I had prepared several during my journey; on races in South America; on the Orinoco missions; on what hinders civilization in the torrid zone, from the climate to the vegetation; the landscape of the Andes compared to the Swiss Alps; analogies between the rocks of the two continents; the air in the equinoctial regions, etc. I had left Europe with the firm decision not to write what is usually called the historical narrative of a journey, but just to publish the results of my researches. I had arranged the facts not as they presented themselves individually but in their relationships to each other. Surrounded by such powerful nature, and all the things seen every day, the traveler feels no inclination to record in a journal all the ordinary details of life that happen to him.

Towards evening the captain weighed anchor and sailed west. Soon we came within sight of the little island of Cubagua, now entirely deserted but once famous for its pearl fisheries. There the Spaniards, immediately after Columbus's and Ojeda's journeys, had built a city called Nueva Cadiz, of which there is now not a trace. At the beginning of the sixteenth century Cubagua pearls were known in Seville, Toledo and the great fairs at Augsburg and Bruges. Nueva Cadiz had no water, so it had to be conveyed there from the Manzanares river. For some reason this water was thought to cause eye diseases.

The way Havana looks as you enter the port makes it one of the most pleasant and picturesque places on the American equinoctial coasts. (136) Celebrated by travelers from all over the world, this site is not like the luxurious vegetation along the Guayaquil banks, nor the wild majesty of Río de Janeiro's rocky coasts, but the charms that in our climates embellish cultivated nature are here joined to the power and organic vigor of tropical nature. In this sweet blend of impressions, the European forgets the dangers that threaten him in crowded West Indian cities; he tries to seize all the diverse elements in this vast countryside and contemplate the forts that crown the rocks to the east of the port, the inland basin surrounded by villages and farms, the palm trees reaching amazing heights, a town half hidden by a forest of ships' masts and sails. You enter Havana harbor between the Morro fort (Castillo de los Santos Reyes) and the San Salvador de la Punta fort: the opening is barely some 170 to 200 toises wide, and remains like this for one fifth of a mile. Leaving this neck, and the beautiful San Carlos de la Cabaìa castle and the Casa Blanca to the north, you reach the basin shaped like a clover whose great axis, stretching south-south-west to north-north-east, is about 2. miles long. This basin links up with three creeks, one of which, the Atares, is supplied with fresh water. The city of Havana, surrounded by walls, forms a promontory limited to the south by the arsenal; to the north by the Punta fort. Passing some sunken ships, and the Luz shoals, the water becomes some 5 to 6 fathoms deep. The castles defend the town from the west. The rest of the land is filled with suburbs (arrabales or barrios extra muros), which year by year shrink the Field of Mars (Campo de Marte). Havana's great buildings, the cathedral, the Casa del Gobierno, the admiral's house, the arsenal, the correo or post office, and the tobacco factory are less remarkable for their beauty than for their solidity; most of the streets are very narrow and are not yet paved. As stones come from Veracruz, and as transporting them is expensive, someone had recently come up with the strange idea of using tree trunks instead of paving-stones. This project was quickly abandoned, though recently arrived travelers could see fine cahoba (mahogany) tree trunks sunk into the mud. During my stay, few cities in Spanish America could have been more unpleasant due to the lack of a strong local government. You walked around in mud up to your knees, while the amount of four-wheeled carriages or volantes so typical of Havana, carts loaded with sugar cane, and porters who elbowed passers-by made being a pedestrian annoying and humiliating. The stench of tasajo, or poorly dried meat, stank out the houses and tortuous streets. I have been assured that the police have now remedied these inconveniences, and cleaned up the streets. Houses are more aerated; but here, as in ancient European cities, correcting badly planned streets is a slow process.