On the 21st of February, at nightfall, we left the pretty Hacienda de Cura and set off for Guacara and Nueva Valencia. As the heat of the day was stifling we traveled by night. We crossed the village of Punta Zamuro at the foot of Las Viruelas mountain. The road is lined with large zamangs, or mimosa trees, reaching some 60 feet high. Their almost horizontal branches meet at more than 150 feet distance. I have never seen a canopy of leaves so thick and beautiful as these. The night was dark: the Rincòn del Diablo and its dentated rocks appeared every now and then, illuminated by the brilliance of the burning savannahs, or wrapped in clouds of reddish smoke. In the thickest part of the brush our horses panicked when they heard the howl of an animal that seemed to be following us. It was an enormous jaguar that had been roaming these mountains for three years. It had escaped from the most daring hunters. It attacked horses and mules, even when they were penned in, but not lacking food had not yet attacked human beings. Our negro guide screamed wildly to scare off the beast, which he obviously did not achieve.

Opposite Bermúdez's farm two spacious caves open out of Cuchivano's crevice. At times flames, which can be seen from great distances, burst out. They illuminate the surrounding mountains, and from the mark left on the rocks by these burning gases we could be tempted to believe they reach some 100 feet high. During the last violent Cumanà earthquake this phenomenon was accompanied by long, dull, underground noises.

The Guaiqueri belong to a tribe of civilized Indians inhabiting the coast of Margarita and the surroundings of the town of Cumana. They enjoy several privileges because they remained faithful to the Castilians from earliest times. Also the King names them in some decrees as 'his dear, noble and loyal Guaiquerias'. Those manning the two pirogues had left Cumana harbor at night. They were searching for building timber from the cedar forests (Cedrela odorata, Linn.) that stretch from Cape San Jose beyond the mouth of the Carupano river. They offered us fresh coconuts and stunningly colored fish from the Chaetodon genus. What riches these poor Indians held in their pirogues! Huge vijao (Heliconia bihai) leaves covered bunches of bananas; the scaly cuirass of an armadillo (Dasypus, cachicamo); the fruit of the calabash tree (Crescentia cujete), used by the Indians as a cup, quite common in European cabinets, vividly reminded us that we had reached the longed-for torrid zone.

It was at the cataracts that we first heard talk about the hairy man of the jungle, called salvaje, who rapes women, builds huts, and sometimes eats human flesh. Neither Indians nor missionaries doubt the existence of this man-shaped monkey, which terrifies them. Father Gili seriously related the story of a lady from San Carlos who praised the gentle character of the man of the jungle. She lived several years with him in great domestic harmony, and only asked hunters to bring her back home because she and her children (rather hairy also) 'were tired of living far from a church'. This legend, taken by missionaries, Spaniards and black Africans from descriptions of the orang-utang, followed us for the five years of our journey. We annoyed people everywhere by being suspicious of the presence of a great anthropomorphic ape in the Americas.

We suffered much from the heat, increased by the reverberation from the dry, dusty ground. However, the excessive effect of the sun held no harmful consequences for us. At La Guaira sunstroke and its effects on the brain are feared, especially when yellow fever is beginning to appear. One day I was on the roof of our house observing the meridian point and the temperature difference between the sun and shade when a man came running towards me and begged me to take a drink he had brought along with him. He was a doctor who had been watching me for half an hour out in the sun from his window, without a hat on my head, exposed to the sun's rays. He assured me that coming from northern climes such imprudence would undoubtedly lead that night to an attack of yellow fever if I did not take his medicine. His prediction, however seriously argued, did not alarm me as I had had plenty of time to get acclimatized. But how could l refuse his argument when he was so polite and caring? I swallowed his potion, and the doctor must now have included me in the list of people he had saved from fever that year. (67)

On the 1st of July we came across the wreck of a sunken ship. We could distinguish its mast covered in floating seaweed. In a zone where the sea is perpetually calm the boat could not have sunk. Perhaps its remains came from the northerly stormy area and were dragged there by the extraordinary whirling of the Atlantic Ocean in the Southern hemisphere.

In the Indian huts we found several vegetable productions brought from the Guiana mountains that fascinated us. I will mention only the fruit of the juvia or Brazil-nut, some extremely long reeds, and shirts made from marima bark. The almendron or juvia, one of the most impressive trees in the New World jungles, was virtually unknown before our journey to the Rio Negro.