We left Caracas on the 7th of February, on a fresh afternoon, ready to begin our journey to the Orinoco. The memory of this period is today more painful than it was years ago. In those remote countries our friends have lost their lives in the bloody revolutions that gave them freedom and then alternatively deprived them of it. (76) The house where we lived is now a heap of rubble. Terrible earthquakes have transformed the shape of the ground; the city I described has disappeared. On the same spot, on the fissured ground, another city is slowly being built. The ruins, tombs for a large population, have already turned into shelter for human beings.

We left San Fernando on the 30th of March at four in the afternoon. The heat was suffocating; the thermometer marked 34'C in the shade despite a strong south-east wind. This wind prevented us from setting our sails. During our journey along the Apure, the Orinoco and the Rio Negro we were accompanied by the brother-in-law of the governor of the Barinas province, Don Nicolas Soto, recently arrived from Cadiz. To get to know land worthy of a European's curiosity he decided to spend seventy-four days with us in a narrow lancha, invaded by mosquitoes. The right bank of the Apure is somewhat better cultivated than the left bank where the Yaruro Indians have built huts with reeds and palm-leaf stalks. They live from hunting and fishing, and are skilled in hunting the jaguar whose skins, called 'tiger skins', reach Spain thanks to them. Some of these Indians have been baptized, but they never go to church. They are considered to be wild because they want to remain independent. Other Yaruro tribes accept missionary discipline. The people of this tribe look like a branch of the Mongol family. Their look is serious; their eyes elongated, their cheek-bones high and with a prominent nose.

Our boat was waiting for us in the Puerto de Arriba above the Atures cataract. On the narrow path that led to the embarcadero we were shown the distant rocks near the Ataruipe caves. We did not have time to visit that Indian cemetery though Father Zea had not stopped talking about the skeletons painted red with onoto inside the great jars. 'You will hardly believe, said the missionary, 'that these skeletons and painted vases, which we thought unknown to the rest of the world, have brought me trouble. You know the misery I endure in the Raudales. Devoured by mosquitoes, and lacking in bananas and cassava, yet people in Caracas envy me! I was denounced by a white man for hiding treasure that had been abandoned in the caves when the Jesuits had to leave. I was ordered to appear in Caracas in person and journeyed pointlessly over 150 leagues to declare that the cave contained only human bones and dried bats. However, commissioners were appointed to come up here and investigate. We shall wait a long time for these commissioners. The cloud of mosquitoes (nube de moscas) in the Raudales is a good defence.

You would think their mental stupidity greater than that of children when a white asks them questions about objects that have surrounded them since birth. Missionaries assured us that this is not due to timidity, and that among the missionary Indians in charge of public works this is not an innate stupidity but a block they have concerning the mechanisms of a language so different to their mother tongue. The Indians affirmed or denied whatever pleased the monks, and laziness, accompanied by that cunning courtesy common to all Indians, made them sometimes give the answers suggested by the questions. Travelers cannot be wary enough of this over-obliging approbation when they want to find out what Indians think. To test an Indian alcalde I asked him 'if he did not think that the Caripe river that comes from the Guacharo caves might not return there by some unknown entrance after climbing up the hill'. He looked as if he gave it serious thought for a while and answered in support of my theory: 'If it did not do this how else is there always water in the river?

The Indians we found at San Francisco Solano belong to two different tribes: the Pacimonales and the Cheruvichanenas. The latter came from a prestigious tribe living on the Tomo river, near the Manivas of the Upper Guiana, so I tried to find out from them about the upper course of the Río Negro, and where I could find its sources; but my interpreter could not make them understand the true sense of my question. They just repeated over and over again that the sources of the Río Negro and the Inirida were as close together as two fingers on a hand'. In one of the Pacimonales's huts we bought two great, beautiful birds: a toucan (piapoco), similar to the Ramphastos erythrorynchos, and an ana, a kind of macaw, with purple feathers like the Psittacus macao. In our canoe we already had seven parrots, two cock-of-the-rocks (pipra), a motmot, two guans or pavas del monte, two manaviris (cercoleptes or Viverra caudivolvula), and eight monkeys, of which three were new species. Father Zea was not too happy about the rate our zoological collection increased day by day, although he kept that to himself. The toucan resembles the raven in its habits and intelligence; it is a brave creature and easy to tame. Its long, strong beak serves as its defense. It becomes master of the house; steals whatever it can, frequently takes a bath, and likes fishing on the river bank. The one we bought was very young, yet throughout our journey it took malicious delight in molesting the sad, irritable monkeys. The structure of the toucan's beak does not oblige it to swallow food by throwing it into the air as some naturalists claim. It is true that it does have problems lifting food from the ground, but once food is seized in its long beak it throws back its head so that it swallows perpendicularly. When this bird wants to drink it makes an odd gesture; monks say it makes the sign of the cross over the water. Because of this creoles have baptized the toucan with the strange name of Diostedé (May God give it to you).

In Cumana, on San Francisco hill with its convent, an intense stink of sulphur was smelled on the 14th of December 1797 half an hour before the great catastrophe. In this same place the underground noise was loudest. At the same time flames were seen on the Manzanares river banks near the Capuchin hospital, and in the Gulf of Cariaco near Mariguitar. This phenomenon, so strange in non-volcanic countries, happens frequently in the calcareous mountains near Cumanacoa, in the Bordones river valley, on Margarita Island and on the plains of New Andalusia. On these plains the sparks of fire rose to a considerable height and were seen for hours in the most arid places. Some asserted that when the ground through which the inflammable substances rose was examined not the smallest crack was found. This fire, which recalls the springs of methane or the Salse of Modena and the will-o'-the-wisp of our marshes, does not burn the grass. The people, though less superstitious here than in Spain, call these reddish flames by the odd name of The Soul of the Tyrant Aguirre; imagining that the ghost of Lope de Aguirre, (29) harassed by remorse, wanders over these countries sullied by his crimes.