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.

Nothing can compare to the majestic tranquillity of the stars in the sky in this solitary place. At nightfall, when we stared at the point where the horizon meets the meadows on this gently rolling plain, it seemed, as later in the Orinoco steppes, as if we were seeing the surface of an ocean supporting the starry vault. The tree at whose feet we sat, the luminous insects dancing in the air, the shining constellations of the Southern hemisphere, everything reminded us that we were far from our homeland. And if, in the middle of this exotic nature, the sound of cow bells or the bellowing of a bull came from the small valleys, memories of our native land were suddenly awoken. It was as if we heard distant voices echoing across the ocean, magically carrying us from one hemisphere to another. How strangely mobile is man's imagination, eternal source of his joys and pains!

In the little Atures church we were shown remains of the Jesuits' wealth. A heavy silver lamp lay half buried in sand. This object did not tempt the Indians; the Orinoco natives are not thieves, and have a great respect for property. They do not even steal food, hooks or axes. At Maypures and Atures locks on doors are unknown.

Even when nature does not produce the same species in analogous climates, either in the plains of isothermal parallels or on tablelands whose temperature resembles that of places nearer the poles, (73) we still noticed a striking resemblance of appearance and physiognomy in the vegetation of the most distant countries. This phenomenon is one of the most curious in the history of organic forms. I say history, for reason cannot stop man forming hypotheses on the origin of things; he will always puzzle himself with insoluble problems relating to the distribution of beings.