I reckoned that it was my duty in this book to record all the data obtained from reliable sources concerning the seismic shocks that on the 26th of March 1812 destroyed the city of Caracas; in all the province of Venezuela more than 20, people perished. As a historian of nature, the traveler should note down the moment when great natural calamities happen, and investigate the causes and relations, and establish fixed points in the rapid course of time, in the transformations that succeed each other ceaselessly so that he can compare them with previous catastrophes. (77)

The farm we lodged at was a fine sugar-cane plantation. The ground is smooth like the bed of a dried lake. The Tuy river winds through land covered with banana trees and a little wood of Hura crepitans, Erythrina corallodrendon, and figs with nymphae leaves. The river is formed with quartz pebbles. I can think of no more pleasant bathe than that in the Tuy. The crystal-clear water remains at 18.6°C. This is cool for the climate; the sources of the river are in the surrounding mountains. The owner's house is situated on a hillock surrounded by huts for the negroes. Those who are married provide their own food. They are given, as everywhere in the Aragua valleys, a plot of land to cultivate, which they work on their Saturdays and Sundays, the free days of the week. They have chicken, and sometimes a pig. The owner boasts of their contentment in the same way that northern European landowners boast about the happy peasants on their land. The day we arrived three runaway negroes had been captured; newly bought slaves. I dreaded witnessing those punishments that ruin the charm of the countryside wherever there are slaves. Luckily, the blacks were treated humanely.