At midday we stopped at a deserted spot called Algodonal. I left my companions while they beached the boat and prepared the meal. I walked along the beach to observe a group of crocodiles asleep in the sun, their tails, covered with broad scaly plates, resting on each other. Small herons, as white as snow, walked on their hacks, even on their heads, as if they were tree trunks. The crocodiles were grey- green, their bodies were half covered in dried mud. From their color and immobility they looked like bronze statues. However, my stroll almost cost me my life. I had been constantly looking towards the river, and then, on seeing a flash of mica in the sand, I also spotted fresh jaguar tracks, easily recognizable by their shape. The animal had gone off into the jungle, and as I looked in that direction I saw it lying down under the thick foliage of a ceiba, eighty steps away from me. Never has a tiger seemed so enormous.

In the cool of dawn we set off to climb the Turimiquiri. This is the name given to the Cocollar peak, which forms one large mountain range with the Brigantín, called before by the Indians Sierra de los Tageres. We traveled a part of the way on the horses that run free on the savannahs, but are used to being saddled. Even when they look heavily laden they climb the slipperiest slopes with ease. Wherever the sandstone appears above ground the land is even and forms small plateaux succeeding each other like steps. Up to 700 feet, and even further, the mountain is covered with grass. On the Cocollar the short turf begins to grow some 350 toises above sea-level, and you continue to walk on this grass up to 1, toises high; above those strips of grassy land you find, on virtually inaccessible peaks, a little forest of cedrela, javillo (Hura crepitans) and mahogany. Judging by local conditions, the mountainous savannahs of the Cocollar and Turimiquiri owe their existence to the destructive custom of Indians burning the woods to make pasture land. Today, after a thick tangle of grass and alpine plants have been covering the ground for over three centuries, seeds of trees cannot root themselves in the ground and germinate, despite the wind and the birds that continually bring them from the distant jungle.

The moment of leaving Europe for the first time is impressive. We vainly recall the frequency of communications between the two worlds; wevainly reflect how, thanks to the improved state of navigation, we may nowcross the Atlantic, which compared to the Pacific is but a shortish arm ofthe sea; yet what we feel whenwe begin our first long-distance voyage is none the less accompanied by adeep emotion, unlike any we may have felt in our youth. Separated from theobjects of our dearest affections, and entering into a new life, we areforced to fall back on ourselves, and we feel more isolated than we have ever felt before.

In 1797 the San Fernando missionary had led his men to the banks of the Guaviare river on one of those hostile incursions banned both by religion and Spanish law. They found a Guahiba mother with three children in a hut, two of whom were not yet adults. They were busy preparing cassava flour. Resistance was impossible; their father had gone out fishing, so the mother tried to run off with children. She had just reached the savannah when the Indians, who hunt people the way whites hunt blacks in Africa, caught her. The mother and children were tied up and brought back to the river bank. The monks were waiting for this expedition to end, without suffering any of the dangers. Had the mother resisted the Indians would have killed her; anything is allowed in this hunting of souls (conquista espiritual), and it is especially children that are captured and treated as poitos or slaves in the Christian missions. They brought the prisoners to San Fernando, hoping that the mother would not find her way back by land to her home. Separated from those children who had gone fishing with their father the day she was kidnapped, this poor woman began to show signs of the deepest despair. She wanted to bring those children in the power of the missionaries back home, and several times ran off with them from the San Fernando village but the Indians hunted her down each time. After severely punishing her the missionary took the cruel decision of separating the mother from her two infants. She was led alone to a mission on the Río Negro, up the Atabapo river. Loosely tied up, she sat ill the bow of the boat. She had not been told where she was going; but she guessed by the sun's position that she was being taken away from her house and native land. She managed to break her bonds and jumped into the water and swam to the river bank. The current pushed her to a bank of rock, which is named after her today. She climbed up and walked into the jungle. But the head of the mission ordered his Indians to follow and capture her. She was again caught by the evening. She was stretched out on the rock (the Piedra de la Madre) where she was beaten with manatee whips. Her hands tied up behind her back with the strong cords of the mavacure, she was then dragged to the Javita mission and thrown into one of the inns called casas del rey. It was the rainy season and the night was very dark. Impenetrable forests separate the Javita and San Fernando missions some 25 leagues apart in a straight line. The only known route was by river. Nobody ever tried to go by land from one mission to another, even if only a few leagues away. But this did not prevent a mother separated from her children. Her children were at San Fernando so she had to find them, rescue them from Christians, and bring them back to their father on the Guaviare. The Guahiba woman was not closely supervised in the inn. As her hands were bloodied the Javita Indians had loosened her bindings. With her teeth she managed to break the cords, and she disappeared into the night. On the fourth day she was seen prowling round the hut where her children were being kept at the San Fernando mission. This woman had just carried out, added the monk telling us this sad story, 'something that the toughest Indian would not have even considered. She had crossed the jungle in a season when the sky is continuously covered with cloud, when the sun appears. only for a few minutes for days on end. Had she followed the flow of water? But flooding had forced her to walk far from the river, in the middle of jungles where the river is imperceptible. How many times must she have been blocked by thorny liana growing round trees! How many times must she have swum across streams! What on earth could this luckless woman have eaten during her four days' walk? She said that she had eaten only those large black ants called vachacos that climb up trees and hang resinous nests from branches. We pressed the missionary to tell us whether the Guahiba woman had finally enjoyed peace and happiness with her family. He did not want to satisfy our curiosity. But on our return from the Río Negro we learned that this Indian woman was not even left to recover from her wounds before she was again separated from her children, and sent to a mission on the Upper Orinoco. She died by refusing to eat food, as do all Indians when faced with great calamities. (112)

Near the Maypures village grows an Impressive tree some 60 feet high called by the colonists the fruta de burro. It is a new species of annona. The tree is famous for its aromatic fruit whose infusion is an efficient febrifuge. The poor missionaries of the Orinoco who suffer tertian fevers most of the year rarely travel without a little bag of fruta de burro.

When we arrived in Esmeralda, most of the Indians were returning from an excursion they had made beyond the Padamo river to pick juvias, the fruit of the bertholletia, and a liana that gives curare. Their return was celebrated with a feast called in this mission the fiesta de las juvias, which resembles our harvest festivals. Women had prepared plenty of alcohol and for two days you met only drunk Indians. Among people who attach importance to palm-tree fruits and other useful trees, the period when these are harvested is marked by public celebrations. We were lucky to find an Indian slightly less drunk than others, who was making curare with the recently picked plants. He was the chemist of the locality. Around him we saw large clay boilers used to cook the vegetable juices, as well as shallow vessels used for evaporation, and banana leaves rolled into filters to separate the liquid from the fibers. The Indian who was to teach us was known in the mission as master of the poison, amo del curare; he had that same formal and pedantic air that chemists were formerly accused of in Europe. 'I know, he said, 'that whites have the secret of making soap, and that black powder which scares away the animals you hunt when you miss. But the curare that we prepare from father to son is superior to all that you know over there. It is the sap of a plant that "kills silently", without the victim knowing where it comes from.

At the foot of the tall Guàcharo mountain, and only 400 steps from the cave, we still could not make out its entrance. The torrent flows from a ravine, cut by the waters, under a ledge of rocks that blocks out the sky. The path follows the winding rivulet. At the last bend you suddenly come across the enormous grotto opening. This is an imposing scene, even for those used to the picturesque higher Alps. I had seen the caves of the Derbyshire peaks where, lying flat on a boat, we went down an underground stream under an arch 2 feet high. I had visited the beautiful grotto of Treshemienshiz in the Carpathian mountains, and the Hartz and Franconia caves, which are vast cemeteries with bones of tigers and hyenas, and bears as large as horses. Nature in every zone follows immutable laws in the distribution of rocks, mountains and dramatic changes in the planet's crust. Such uniformity led me to expect that the Caripe caves would not differ from what I had previously seen in my travels. The reality far exceeded my expectations.