The areas around the lake are unhealthy only in the dry season when the water-level falls and the mud bed is exposed to the sun's heat. The bank, shaded by woods of Coccoloba barbadensis and decorated with beautiful lilies, reminds one, because of the similar aquatic plants found there, of the marshy banks of our European lakes. Here we find pondweed (potamogeton), chara and cat's-tails 3 feet high, hardly different from the Typha augustifolia of our marshes. Only after very careful examination do we recognize each plant to be a distinct species, peculiar to the New World. How many plants from the Strait of Magellan to the cordilleras of Quito have once been confused with northern temperate ones owing to their analogy in form and appearance!

The Caribs have so dominated such a large part of the continent that the memory of their ancient grandeur has left them with a dignity and national superiority that is obvious in their manners and way of speaking. 'We alone are a tribe, they say proverbially, 'the others (oquili) are here to serve us. This scorn that Caribs have for their old enemies is so accentuated that I have seen a ten-year-old child froth with rage when called a Cabre or a Cavere. Yet he had never seen anyone from such a tribe, decimated by the Caribs after a long resistance. Among half-civilized tribes, as much as in civilized Europe, we find similar deep-seated hates where the names of enemy people have passed into language as the worst kind of insult.

The city, dominated by the fort, lies at the foot of a hill without greenery. Not one bell-tower nor one dome attract the traveler from afar; just a few tamarind trees and coconut and date palms stand out above the flat-roofed houses. The surrounding plains, especially near the sea, appear sad, dusty and arid, while fresh, luxuriant vegetation marks out the winding river that divides the city from its outskirts and the European settlers from the copper-colored Indians. The isolated, bare and white San Antonio mountain, with its fort, reflects a great mass of light and heat: it is made of breccia, whose strata contain fossil marine life. Far away towards the south you can make out a dark curtain of mountains. They are the high calcareous New Andalusian alps, topped with sandstone and other recent geological formations. Majestic forests cover this inland mountain chain linked along a forested valley with the salty, clayey and bare ground around Cumana. In the gulf and on its shores you can see flocks of fishing herons and gannets, awkward, heavy birds, which, like swans, sail along the water with their wings raised. Nearer the inhabited areas, you can count thousands of gallinazo vultures, veritable flying jackals, ceaselessly picking at carcasses. A gulf whose depths contain hot thermal springs divides the secondary from the primary and schistose rocks of the Araya peninsula. The two coasts are bathed by a calm blue sea lightly rippled by a constant breeze. A dry, pure sky, only lightly clouded at sunset, lies above the sea, over a peninsula devoid of trees and above the Cumana plains, while one sees storms building up and bursting into fertile downpours around the inland mountain peaks.

April 28th. It poured with rain as soon as the sun set and we were worried about the damage to our collections. The poor missionary suffered one of his fever attacks and begged us to leave before midnight. After passing the Guarinuma rapids the Indians pointed out the ruins of the Mendaxari mission, abandoned some time back. On the east bank of the river, near the little rock of Kemarumo in the middle of Indian plantations, we saw a gigantic ceiba (the Bombax ceiba). We landed to measure it; it was some 120 feet high, with a diameter of 14 or 15 feet.

The gathering of Indians at Pararuma again afforded a fascinating chance for civilized men to study the development of our intellectual faculties in savages. It is hard to recognize in this infancy of society, in this gathering of dull, silent, impassive Indians, the primitive origins of our species. We do not see here a human nature that is sweet and naive as described by our poets. We would like to persuade ourselves that these Indians, squatting by the fire, or sitting on huge turtle shells, their bodies covered in mud and grease, fixing their eyes stupidly for hours on the drink they are preparing, belong to a degenerate race rather than being a primitive type of our own species that, having been dispersed for ages in jungles, have fallen back into barbarism

The result of my labors have long since been published. My map of the Magdalena river appeared in 1816. Till then no traveler had ever described New Granada, and the public, except in Spain, knew how to navigate the Magdalena only from some lines traced by Bouguer. (142) Travel books have multiplied, and political events have drawn travelers to countries with free institutions who publish their journals too hurriedly on returning to Europe. They have described the towns they visited and stayed in, as well as the beautiful landscape; they give information about the people, the means of travel in boat, on mule or on men's backs. Though these works have familiarized the Old World with Spanish America, the absence of a proper knowledge of Spanish and the little care taken to establish the names of rivers, places and tribes have led to extraordinary mistakes. (143)

We had a tiring and dangerous climb up a bald granite hill. It would have been impossible to have kept our balance on the steep slippery surface of the rock had it not been for large feldspar crystals that stuck out and supported us. At the summit we were amazed at the extraordinary panorama. An archipelago of islands covered with palm trees filled the foamy river bed. The setting sun seemed like a ball of fire hanging over the plain. Birds of prey and goatsuckers flew out of reach above us. It was a pleasure to follow their shadows over the wall of rocks.