Beyond the village of Turmero, towards Maracay, you can observe on the distant horizon something that seems to be a tumulus covered in vegetation. But it is not a hill, nor a group of trees growing close together, but one single tree, the famous zamang de Guayre, known through the country for the enormous extent of its branches, which form a semi-spherical head some 576 feet in circumference. The zamang is a fine species of the mimosa family whose twisted branches are forked. We rested a long time under this vegetable roof. The branches extend like an enormous umbrella and bend towards the ground. Parasitical plants grow on the branches and in the dried bark. The inhabitants, especially the Indians, venerate this tree, which the first conquerors found in more or less the same state as it is in today. We heard with satisfaction that the present owner of the zamang had brought a lawsuit against a cultivator accused of cutting off a branch. The case was tried and the man found guilty.

Another characteristic common to both the New Andalusian coast and Peru is the frequency of earthquakes and the limits nature seems to have prescribed for these phenomena. In Cumana we ourselves felt violent seismic shocks; they were still rebuilding the ruined houses and so we were able to gather detailed information on the spot about the terrible catastrophe of the 14th of December 1797. These notions will be the more interesting as earthquakes have been considered up to now less from a physical and geographical point of view than from the way they disastrously affect the population and well-being of society.

There is no missionary at Esmeralda: the monk appointed to celebrate mass here lives in Santa Barbara, some 50 leagues away. To come upstream takes him four days and he only appears five or six times a year. An old soldier welcomed us in a friendly way; he took us for Catalan shopkeepers come to trade with the missions. When he saw our wads of paper for drying plants he laughed at our naive ignorance: 'You have come to a land where nobody is going to buy such a thing. Here few write. We use dried maize, banana and vijaho (heliconia) leaves, as you do paper in Europe, to wrap up small objects like needles, hooks and other things you have to look after carefully. This old soldier was both the civil and spiritual authority. He taught children, if not the catechism, then at least how to say the rosary, and he tolled the bells as a hobby. Sometimes he used the sacristan's stick in ways that did not amuse the Indians.

It took us five long days from the Villa de Pao to the port of Nueva Barcelona. As we got closer the sky became clearer, the ground more dusty and the air more burning hot This oppressive heat does not arise from the temperature but from fine sand floating in the air, which irradiates heat in all directions, and whips your face and the ball of the thermometer. In fact I never saw the mercury rise above 45. once in this sand wind in America.

The bottom of the crater is reached with danger. In a volcano such as Vesuvius, whose main activity is directed towards the summit, the depth of the crater varies with each eruption, but at the Tenerife peak the depth appears to have remained unchanged for a long time. Judging from what I could see, the actual site of the crater is properly speaking a solfatara; an area for interesting but not striking observations. The majesty of the site is due more to its height above sea-level, to the profound silence of these elevated regions, and to the immense space over which the eye ranges from the mountain's summit.

The last days of our crossing were not as peaceful as the mild climate and calm ocean had led us to hope. We were not disturbed by the dangers of the deep, but by the presence of a malignant fever that developed as we approached the West Indies. Between the overcrowded decks the heat was unbearable; the thermometer stayed at 36'C. Two sailors, several passengers and, strangely, two blacks from the Guinean coast and a mulatto child were attacked by an illness that threatened to turn into an epidemic. The symptoms were not as serious in all the sick; but some of them, even among the most robust, became delirious on the second day and lost all body strength. With that indifference which on passenger ships affects everything that is not to do with the ship's movements and speed, the captain did not for a moment think of applying the simplest remedies. He did not fumigate. A phlegmatic and ignorant Galician surgeon prescribed bleedings, attributing the fever to what he called the heat and corruption of blood. There was not an ounce of quinine on board and we, on boarding, had forgotten to bring a supply, more concerned for our instruments than for our health as we had not predicted that a Spanish ship would be without this Peruvian bark febrifuge.

Until the middle of the last century the mountains surrounding the Aragua valley were covered in forests. Huge trees of the mimosa, ceiba and fig families shaded the lake shore and kept it cool. The sparsely populated plain was invaded by shrubs, fallen tree trunks and parasitical plants, and was covered in thick grass so that heat was not lost as easily as from cultivated ground, which is not sheltered from the sun's rays. When the trees are felled, and sugar cane, indigo and cotton are planted, springs and natural supplies to the lake dry up. It is hard to form a fair idea of the enormous amount of evaporation taking place in the torrid zone, especially in a valley surrounded by steep mountains where maritime breezes blow, and whose ground is completely flat as if leveled by water. The heat prevailing on the lake shore is comparable to that in Naples and Sicily.