The confidence of the Indians helped to make us feel braver. One agrees with them that tigers fear fire, and never attack a man in his hammock. If you ask the Indians why jungle animals make such a din at certain moments of the night they say, 'They are celebrating the full moon. I think that the din comes from deep in the jungle because a desperate fight is taking place. jaguars, for example, hunt tapir and peccaries, who protect themselves in large herds, trampling down the vegetation in their way.

When we were about to leave the Can mission we had an argument with our Indian muleteers. To our amazement they had discovered that we were transporting skeletons from the Ataruipe caves, and were sure that the mule carrying 'the corpses of our ancient relatives' would die on the journey. All our precautions to hide the bones had been useless; nothing escapes the Carib's sense of smell. We needed the missionary's authority to be able to leave. We had to cross the Can river in a boat and ford, or perhaps I should say swim, the Río de Agua Clara. Quicksand on the bottom made the crossing during the floods very tiring. You are surprised to find such strong currents in flat land. We spent unpleasant nights out at Matagorda and Los Riecitos. Everywhere we saw the same things: small huts made of reed and roofed with leather, men on horseback with lances, guarding the cattle, semi-wild herds of horned cattle all the same color, fighting for grass with horses and mules. Not a goat or a sheep in these immense steppes!

On the point of leaving we were surrounded by those inhabitants who called themselves whites and Spaniards. They begged us to ask the Angostura Government to let them return to the llanos, or at least to the Rio Negro missions. 'However serious our crimes, they said, 'we have expiated them after twenty years of hell in this swarm of mosquitoes. I pleaded their case in a report to the government on the industrial and commercial state of these countries.