In March 1799 I was presented at the Court of Aranjuez and the King received megraciously. I explained the motives that prompted me to undertake a journeyto the New World and the Philippines, and presented a memoir of my plans tothe Secretary of State. Señor de Urquijo supported my petition and overcame everyobstacle in my path, proceeding with commendable generosity given I had nopersonal relationship with him. The zeal with which he helped me can be dueonly to his love for science.

Such is the memory attached to this fatal rock called the Piedra de la Madre. If I have dawdled over this touching story of maternal love in an often vilified race, it is because I wanted to make public this story heard from monks to prove that even missions should obey laws.

The syndic in Cumanà had recommended us to the missionaries who run the Chaima Indian mission. This recommendation was all the more useful to us as the missionaries, zealous for the purity of their parishioners' morals, and wary of the indiscreet curiosity of strangers, tended to apply an ancient rule of their order according to which no white secular person could remain more than one night in an Indian village. In general, to travel agreeably in Spanish missions it would not be wise to trust solely to the passport issued by the Madrid Secretary of State: you must arm yourself with recommendations from the ecclesiastical authorities, especially the custodians of convents, or the generals of orders residing in Rome, who are far more respected by missionaries than bishops. Missions have become, in reality, a distinct, almost independent, hierarchy, despite being primitive or canonical institutions.

During a herborizing trip to Rinconada, we tried vainly to penetrate into the crevice. We wanted to closely study the rocks inside that seemed to cause those extraordinary fires. The thickness of the vegetation with its tangle of liana and thorny plants blocked the way Fortunately the inhabitants of the valley took an active part in our researches, not out of fear of a volcanic eruption, but because their imagination was struck by the idea that the Risco de Cuchivano contained a gold mine. They would not listen to our explanation that there could he no gold in secondary limestone; they wanted to know 'what the German miner thought about the richness of the vein' Since the times of Charles V and the government of the Welsers, the people of Terra Firma have retained a belief that Germans know all about exploiting mines. No matter where I was in South America, as soon as people knew where I had been born they brought me mineral samples. In the colonies all the French are doctors, and all Germans miners.

We stayed in the Atures mission just the time needed to have the canoes taken down the cataracts. The bottom of our small boat was so worn that we took great care to prevent it cracking. We said good-bye to Father Bernardo Zea who, after two months of travelling with us, sharing all our sufferings, remained in Atures. The poor man continued to have fits of tertian fever, a chronic condition that did not worry him at all. During this second stay in Atures other fevers raged. Most of the Indians could not leave their hammocks; to get some cassava bread we had to ask the independent Piraoas tribe to find some for us. Up to now we had escaped fevers, which I believe are not always contagious.

A grass from Switzerland grows on the granite rocks of the Magellan Strait. (74) New Holland contains more than forty European phanerogamous plants. The greater amount of these plants, found equally in the temperate zones of both hemispheres, are completely absent in the intermediary or equinoctial regions, on plains and on mountains. A hairy-leafed violet, which signifies the last of the phanerogamous plants on Tenerife, and long thought specific to that island, can be seen 300 leagues further north near the snowy Pyrenean peaks. Grasses and sedges of Germany, Arabia and Senegal have been recognized among plants collected by Bonpland and myself on the cold Mexican tablelands, on the burning Orinoco banks and on the Andes, and at Quito in the Southern hemisphere. How can one believe that plants migrate over regions covered by sea? How have the germs of life, identical in appearance and in internal structure, developed at unequal distances from the poles and from the oceans, in places that share similar temperatures? Despite the influence of air pressure on the plants' vital functions, and despite the greater or lesser degree of light, it is heat, unequally distributed in different seasons, that must be considered vegetation's most powerful stimulus.

Missionaries have managed to rid the Indians of certain customs concerning birth, entering puberty and burying the dead; they have managed to stop them painting their skin or making incisions in their chins, noses and cheeks; they have banished the superstitious ideas that in many families are passed down mysteriously from father to son; but it was far easier to suppress practices and memories than it was to replace the old ideas with new ones. In the missions the Indian has a far more secure life than he had before. He is no longer a victim of the continuous struggle between man and the elements, and he leads a more monotonous and passive life than the wild Indian, but he is also less likely to animate his own spiritual development. His thinking has not increased with his contact with whites; he has remained estranged from the objects with which European civilization has enriched the Americas. All his acts seem dictated exclusively by wants of the moment. He is taciturn, without joy, introverted and, on the outside, serious and mysterious. Someone who has been but a short time in a mission could mistake his laziness and passivity for a meditative frame of mind.