If the Jesuit system had been followed, languages that cover a large amount of the continent would have become almost general. In Terra Firma and on the Orinoco, Carib and Tamanaco alone would be spoken, and in the south and south-west, Quechua, Guarani, Omagua and Araucan. By appropriating these languages with regular grammatical forms, the missionaries would have had a more intimate contact with their Indians. The numberless difficulties arising from missions with a dozen different tribes would have vanished with the confusions of their languages, and the Indian, by preserving an American language, would have retained individuality and national identity.

May 13th. We left Mandavaca at half past two in the morning. After six hours of travelling we passed the mouth of the Idapa or Siapa on the east. It rises on the Uturan mountain. It has white waters. Its upper course has been strangely misrepresented on La Cruz's and Surville's maps, which all later maps have imitated. We stopped near the Cunuri raudal. The noise of the little cataract got much louder during the night. Our Indians said that meant certain rain. It fell before sunrise. However, the araguato monkeys' continuous wails had warned us that rain was approaching.

The night was very dark and it would take us two hours to reach the village of Maypures. We were soaked to the skin, and after it stopped raining the zancudos returned. My companions were undecided as to whether to camp in the harbor or walk to the village. Father Zea insisted on going to the village where, with help from Indians, he had begun to build a two-floored house. 'You will find there, he said naively, 'the same comforts as you have out of doors. There are no tables or chairs but you will suffer less from mosquitoes because in the mission they are not as shameless as down by the river. We followed the missionary's advice. He ordered torches of copal to be lit. These are tubes of bark filled with copal resin. At first we passed beds of slippery rock, then a thick palm grove. We twice had to cross streams over tree trunks. The torches burned out. They give off more smoke than light, and easily extinguish. Our companion, Don Nicolas Soto, lost his balance in the dark crossing a marsh and fell off a tree trunk. For a while we had no idea how far he had fallen, but luckily it was not far and he was not hurt. The Indian pilot, who spoke Spanish quite well, did not stop saying how easy it would be to be attacked by snakes or jaguars. This is the obligatory topic of conversation when you travel at night with Indians. They think that by frightening European travelers they will become more necessary to them, and will win their confidence.

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)

As rain was pouring down we had to sleep in the overcrowded hut. The Indians slept only from eight at night to two in the morning; the rest of the time they chatted and prepared their bitter cupana drink, poking the fire and complaining of the cold, even though the temperature was 21°C. This custom of staying awake, even of getting up four or five hours before dawn, is common to the Guiana Indians.

Due to the thickness of the vegetation, made up of a plant of the Musaceae family, it was hard to find a path. We had to make one through that jungle of musaceous plants; the negroes led us, cutting a path with machetes. We saw the peak at intervals through breaks in the cloud, but soon we were covered in a thick mist and could only proceed using the compass; with each step we risked finding ourselves at the edge of a precipice, which fell 6, feet down to the sea. We had to stop, surrounded by cloud down to the ground, and we began to doubt if we would reach the eastern peak before sunset. Luckily the negroes carrying the water and the food had arrived, so we decided to eat something. But the meal did not last long because either the Capuchin father had not calculated our numbers properly or the slaves had already eaten everything. We found only olives and some bread. We had been walking for nine hours without stopping or finding water. Our guides seemed to lose heart, and wanted to go back. Bonpland and I had difficulty in persuading them to stay with us.