San Fernando is infamous for its suffocating heat throughout most of the year. This western part of the llanos is the hottest because the air from all the arid steppes reaches here. During the rainy season the heat of the llanos increases considerably, especially in July when the sky is covered with cloud. The thermometer reached 39. in the shade.

This site has something wild and tranquil, melancholic and attractive about it. In the midst of such powerful nature we felt nothing inside but peace and repose. In the solitude of these mountains I was less struck by the new impressions recorded at each step than by the fact that such diverse climates have so much in common. In the hills where the convent stands palm trees and tree fern grow; in the afternoon, before the rainfalls, the monotonous screaming of the howler monkeys seems like a distant wind in the forests. Despite these exotic sounds, and the strange plant forms and marvels of the New World, everywhere nature allows man to sense a voice speaking to him in familiar terms. The grass carpeting the ground, the old moss and ferns covering tree toots, the torrent that falls over steep calcareous rocks, the harmonious colors reflecting the water, the green and the sky, all evoke familiar sensations in the traveler.

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.

We passed some huts inhabited by mestizos. Each hut stands in the center of an enclosure containing banana trees, papaw trees, sugar cane and maize. The small extent of cultivated land might surprise us until we recall that an acre planted with bananas produces nearly twenty times as much food as the same space sown with cereals. In Europe our wheat, barley and rye cover vast spaces of land; in general arable lands border each other wherever inhabitants live on wheat. It is different in the torrid zone where man obtains food from plants that yield more abundant harvests more quickly. In these favored climates the immense fertility of the soil corresponds to the heat and humidity. A large population can be fed from a small plot of land covered with banana, cassava, yams and maize. The isolation of huts dispersed in the forest indicates to the traveler how fertile nature is.