We spent the night on Isla Conserva. The Indians had lit a camp-fire near the water. Again we confirmed that the glow of the flames attracted crocodiles and dolphins (toninas) whose noise stopped us sleeping until we decided to put the fire out. That night we had to get up twice. I mention this as an example of what it means to live in the jungle. A female jaguar approached our camp-site when it brought a cub to drink water. The Indians chased it away, but we heard its cub's cries, like a cat's, for hours. A little later our large dog was bitten, or stung as the Indians say, by some enormous bats (94) that flew around our hammocks. The wound in its snout was tiny and the dog howled more from fear than pain.

When we carefully examine this wild part of America we imagine how it was in primitive times when the land was peopled in stages, and seem to be present at the birth of human societies. In the New World we do not see the progressive developments of civilization, those moments of rest, those stations in the lives of a people. Such is the wonderful fertility of nature that the Indian's field is a patch of land. To clear it means setting fire to branches. To farm means dropping a few seeds into the ground. However far back in time you go in thought in these dense jungles the Indians have got their food from the earth, but as this earth produces abundantly on a small patch, without much work, these people often change their homes along the river banks. Still today, the Orinoco Indians travel with their seeds, transporting what they cultivate (conucos), like the Arab does his tents.

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.

From the time we entered the torrid zone we never tired of admiring, night after night, the beauty of the southern sky, which as we advanced further south opened up new constellations. A strange, completely unknown feeling is awoken in us when nearing the Equator and crossing from one hemisphere to another; the stars we have known since infancy begin to vanish. Nothing strikes the traveler more completely about the immense distances that separate him from home than the look of a new sky. The grouping of great stars, some scattered nebulae that rival the Milky Way in splendor, and regions that stand out because of their intense blackness, give the southern sky its unique characteristics. This sight strikes the imagination of those who even, without knowledge of the exact sciences, like to stare at the heavens as if admiring a lovely country scene, or a majestic site. You do not have to be a botanist to recognize immediately the torrid zone by its vegetation. Even those with no inkling of astronomy know they are no longer in Europe when they see the enormous constellation of the Ship or the brilliant Clouds of Magellan rise in the night sky. Everything on earth and in the sky in the tropical countries takes on an exotic note.

When a traveler recently arrived from Europe steps into South American jungle for the first time he sees nature in a completely unexpected guise. The objects that surround him only faintly bring to mind those descriptions by famous writers of the banks of the Mississippi, of Florida and of other temperate regions of the New World. With each step he feels not at the frontiers of the torrid zone but in its midst; not on one of the West Indian Islands but in a vast continent where everything is gigantic; mountains, rivers and the masses of plants. If he is able to feel the beauty of landscape, he will find it hard to analyse his many impressions. He does not know what shocks him more: whether the calm silence of the solitude, or the beauty of the diverse, contrasting objects, or that fullness and freshness of plant life in the Tropics. It could be said that the earth, overloaded with plants, does not have sufficient space to develop. Everywhere tree trunks are hidden behind a thick green carpet. If you carefully transplanted all the orchids, all the epiphytes that grow on one single American fig tree (Ficus gigantea) you would manage to cover an enormous amount of ground. The same lianas that trail along the ground climb up to the tree-tops, swinging from one tree to another 100 feet up in the air. As these parasitical plants form a real tangle, a botanist often confuses flowers, fruit and leaves belonging to different species.

While Bonpland worked day and night dividing our herbal collections, thousands of obstacles prevented our departure from Havana. No ship would take us to Porto Bello or Cartagena. People seemed to enjoy exaggerating the difficulties faced crossing the isthmus and the time it takes to go by ship from Guayaquil to Lima. They reproached me for not continuing to explore those vast rich Spanish American lands that for over fifty years had not been open to any foreign travelers. Finding no boat I had to hire a Catalonian sloop anchored at Batabanò to take me to Porto Bello or Cartagena, depending on how the Santa Marta gales might blow. The prosperity of Havana, and its mercantile links with pacific ports, allowed me to procure funds for several years. I was able to exchange my revenues in Prussia for a part of General Don Gonzalo O'Farrill's: who was Minister to the Spanish Court in Prussia. On the 6th of March the sloop I had hired was ready to sail.