Among the races making up the Venezuelan population blacks are important - seen both compassionately for their wretched state, and with fear due to possible violent uprisings - because they are concentrated in limited areas, not so much because of their total number. Of the 60, slaves in the Venezuelan provinces, 40, live in the province of Caracas. In the plains there are only some 4, to 5,000, spread around the haciendas and looking after the cattle. The number of freed slaves is very high as Spanish legislation and custom favor emancipation. A slave-owner cannot deny a slave his freedom if he can pay 300 piastres, (69) even if this would have cost the slave-owner double because of the amount of work the slave might have done.

How hard it is to express the pleasure we felt arriving at Angostura, capital of Spanish Guiana. The discomforts felt at sea in small boats cannot be compared to those felt under a burning sky, surrounded by swarms of mosquitoes, cramped for months on end in a pirogue that does not let you budge an inch because of its delicate balance. In seventy-five days we had traveled along the five great rivers of the Apure, the Orinoco, the Atabapo, the Rio Negro and the Casiquiare for 500 leagues, rarely sighting inhabited places. Although, after our life in the jungle, our clothes were not in good order, we hurried to present ourselves to the provincial governor Don Felipe de Ynciarte. He received us in the most considerate way, and lodged us in the house of the Secretary of the Intendencia. Coming from such deserted places we were struck by the bustle of a town of only 6, people. We appreciated what work and trade can do to make life more civilized. Modest houses seemed luxurious: anybody who spoke to us seemed witty. Long deprivations make small things pleasurable: how can l express the joy we felt on seeing wheat bread on the governor's table. I may be wrong in repeating what all travelers feel after long journeys. You enjoy finding yourself back in civilization, though it can be short-lived if you have learned to feel deeply the marvels of tropical nature. The memory of what you endured soon fades; as you reach the coasts inhabited by European colonists you begin to plan to make another journey into the interior.

April 18th. We set off at three in the morning in order to reach the cataracts known as the Raudal de Guahibos before nightfall. We moored at the mouth of the Tomo river, and the Indians camped on the shore. At five in the afternoon we reached the raudal. It was extremely difficult to row against the current and the mass of water rushing over a bank several feet high. One Indian swam to a rock that divided the cataract in two, tied a rope to it, and began hauling our boat until, halfway up, we were able to get off with our instruments, dried plants and bare provisions. Surprisingly we found that above the natural wall over which the river fell there was a piece of dry land. Our position in the middle of the cataract was strange but without danger. Our companion, the missionary father, had one of his fever fits, and to relieve him we decided to make a refreshing drink. We had taken on board at Apures a mapire, or Indian basket, filled with sugar, lemons and grenadillas, or passion-fruit, which the Spaniards call parchas. As we had no bowl in which to mix the juices we poured river water into one of the holes in the rock with a tutuma, and then added the sugar and acid fruit juices. In a few seconds we had a wonderfully refreshing juice, almost a luxury in this wild spot, but necessity had made us more and more ingenious. After quenching our thirst we wanted to have a swim. Carefully examining the narrow rocky dyke on which we sat, we saw that it formed little coves where the water was clear and still. We had the pleasure of a quiet bathe in the midst of noisy cataracts and screaming Indians. I enter into such detail to remind those who plan to travel afar that at any moment in life pleasures can be found.

The more travelers research into natural history, geography or political economy, the more their journey loses that unity and simplicity of composition typical of the earlier travelers. It is now virtually impossible to link so many different fields of research in a narrative so that what we may call the dramatic events give way to descriptive passages. Most readers, who prefer to be agreeably amused to being solidly instructed, gain nothing from expeditions loaded with instruments and collections.

I twice visited the island of Cuba, living there first for three months, and then for six weeks. Bonpland and I visited the neighborhood of Havana, the beautiful Guines valley, and the coast between Batabanò and the port of Trinidad.

After two hours' navigation we reached the mouth of the Tomo and the small mission of Davipe, founded in 1755 by an army lieutenant, and not by monks. Father Morillo, the missionary on the spot, with whom we stayed a few hours, received us with great hospitality, and even offered us some Madeira wine. As far as luxury foods go we would have preferred wheat bread; the absence of bread is felt far more over a long time than any alcoholic drink. Every now and then the Portuguese bring small quantities of Madeira wine to the Río Negro. But the word madera in Spanish means 'wood', so some monks, poorly versed in geography, were reluctant to celebrate mass with Madeira wine; they took it for a fermented liquor from some local tree, like palm-tree wine, and asked the superior of their order to decide if the vino de Madera was in fact a wine made from grapes or the sweet juice from a tree (de algún palo). Already, from the beginning of the conquest, the question of whether priests could celebrate mass with another fermented liquor similar to wine had been raised. The question, predictably, was decided negatively.

At Javita we had the pleasure of meeting a cultured, reasonable monk. We had to stay in his house the four or five days it took to carry our canoe along the Pimichín portage. Delay allowed us to visit the region, as well as rid us of an irritation that had been annoying us for the last two days: an intense itching in the articulations of our fingers and the backs of our hands. The missionary said this came from aradores (literally, 'ploughers') encrusted under our skin. With the aid of a magnifying glass we saw only lines, or whitish parallel furrows, which show why it is called an arador. The monks called for a mulatta who knew how to deal with all the little insects that burrow into human skin, from niguas, nuches and coyas to the arador. She was the curandera, the local doctor. She promised to remove all the insects irritating us, one by one. She heated the tip of a little stick on the fire and dug it into the furrows in our skin. After a long examination she announced, with that pedantic gravity peculiar to colored people, that she had found an arador. I saw a little round bag that could have been the egg of the acaride. I should have been relieved when this clumsy mulatta poked out three or four more of these aradores. But as my skin was full of acarides I lost all patience with an operation that had already lasted until well into the night. The next day a Javita Indian cured us incredibly quickly. He brought a branch of a shrub called uzao, which had little shiny leathery leaves similar to the cassia. With its bark he prepared a cold bluish infusion that smelled of liquorice. When he beat it it became very frothy. Thanks to a washing with this uzao infusion the itching caused by the aradores disappeared. We were never able to find flowers or fruit of this uzao; the shrub seemed to belong to the leguminous family. We dreaded the pain caused by these aradores so much that we took various branches with us right up to San Carlos.