A few minutes before the first shock there was a violent gust of wind, accompanied by flashes of lightning and large raindrops. The sky remained covered; after the storm the wind died down, staying quiet all night. The sunset was extraordinarily beautiful. The thick veil of clouds tore open into strips just above the horizon, forming shreds, and the sun shone at 12 degrees of altitude against an indigo-blue sky. Its disc appeared incredibly swollen, distorted and wavy at its edges. The clouds were gilded, and clusters of rays colored like the rainbow spread in every direction from its center. A great crowd had congregated in the main square. This phenomenon, the accompanying earthquake, thunder rolling as the earth shook, and that reddish mist lasting so many days were blamed on the eclipse.

The underground noise so frequently heard during earthquakes is not usually related to the strength of the shocks. At Cumana the noise constantly preceded the shocks, while at Quito, and recently at Caracas and in the West Indies, a noise like the discharge of a battery of guns was heard a long time after the shocks had ended. A third kind of phenomenon, and the most remarkable of all of them, is the rolling of those underground thunders that last several months without being accompanied by the slightest tremors.

We were received with eagerness by the monks of the hospice. The father superior was away but, notified of our departure from Cumanà, be had taken great pains to ensure our comfort at the convent. There was an inner cloister, typical of all Spanish monasteries. We used this enclosed space to install our instruments and get them working. In the convent we discovered a varied company; young monks recently arrived from Spain before being sent out to different missions, while old, sick missionaries recuperated in the healthy air of the Caripe bills. I was lodged in the father superior's cell, which had a notable library. To my surprise I found Feijòo's Teatro crítico, the Lettres édifiantes, and L'abbé Nollet's Traité d'électricité. Science has progressed to even the American jungles. The youngest of the Capuchin monks had brought with him a Spanish translation of Chaptal's treatise on chemistry, (56) which he intended to study in the isolation of the mission where he was to be abandoned on his own for the rest of his days. I doubt that the desire to learn can be kept alive in a young monk isolated on the banks of the Tigre river; but what is certain, and an honour to the spirit of this century, is that during our long stay in South American missions we never saw the least sign of intolerance.

We had been warned that we would find the insects at Esmeralda even more cruel and voracious' than in this branch of the Orinoco; despite this we looked forward to sleeping in an inhabited place, and botanizing a little at last. At our last camp on the Casiquiare we had quite a fright. I presume to describe something that might not greatly interest a reader, but should be part of a journal of incidents on a river in such wild country. We slept on the edge of the jungle. At midnight the Indians warned us that they had heard a jaguar growl very close to us; it seemed to be up a nearby tree. The jungle is so thick here that only animals who climb trees exist. As our fires gave off 'plenty of light, and as we had become hardened to fear, we did not worry too much about the jaguar's cries. The smell and barking of one of our dogs had attracted the jaguar. This dog, a large mastiff, had barked at the Start, but when the jaguar approached the dog howled and hid under our hammocks. Since the Apure we had been used to this alternating bravery and fear in a young, tame and affectionate dog. We had a terrible shock the next morning. When getting ready to leave, the Indians told us that our dog had disappeared'. There was no doubt that the jaguar had killed it. Perhaps when it no longer heard the roars it had wandered off along the shore, or perhaps we slept so deeply we never heard the dog's yelps. We were often told that on the Orinoco and the Magdalena old jaguars were so clever that they hunted their prey in the very camps, and twisted their victims' necks so that they could not shout. We waited a long while in case the dog was merely lost. Three days later we returned to the same place and again heard a jaguar roar. So the dog, which had been our companion from Caracas, and had often swum away from crocodiles, had ended up being devoured in the jungle.

It took us three days to reach the Cari Carib missions. The ground was not as cracked by the drought as in the Calabozo plains. A few showers had revived the vegetation. We saw a few fan palms (Corypha tectorum), rhopalas (Chaparro) and malpighias with leathery, shiny leaves growing far apart from each other. From far off you recognize where there might be water from groups of mauritia palms. It was the season in which they are loaded with enormous clusters of red fruit looking like fir-cones. Our monkeys loved this fruit, which tasted like overripe apples. The monkeys were carried with our baggage on the backs of mules and did all they could to reach the clusters hanging over their heads. The plains seemed to ripple from the mirages. When, after travelling for an hour, we reached those palms standing like masts on the horizon, we were amazed to realize how many things are linked to the existence of one single plant. The wind, losing its force as it strikes leaves and branches, piles sand round the trunks. The smell of fruit and the bright green of the leaves attract passing birds that like to sway on the arrow-like branches of the palms. All around you hear a murmur of sound. Oppressed by the heat, and used to the bleak silence of the llanos, you think you feel cooler just by hearing the sound of branches swaying. Insects and worms, so rare in the llanos, thrive here so that even one stunted tree, which no traveler would have noticed in the Orinoco jungles, spreads life around it in the desert.

The island of Chamberg is a granitic outcrop some 200 feet high, with two peaks linked by a saddle. The sides of the rock are bare; only a few white flowering clusia manage to grow there. But the view of the lake and surrounding plantations is magnificent, especially at sunset when thousands of heron, flamingo and wild duck fly over the water to roost on the island.

Almost all Cumanà's inhabitants witnessed this phenomenon as they got up before four in the morning to go to first mass. The sight of these fire-balls did not leave them indifferent, far to the contrary; the older ones recalled that the great 1766 earthquake was preceded by a similar manifestation. (63)