These scattered features of the countryside, this trait of solitude and grandeur, characterizes the course of the Orinoco, one of the greatest New World rivers. Everywhere water, like land, displays its unique characteristics. The Orinoco bed has no similarities with the Meta, Guaviare, Río Negro or Amazon beds. These differences do not depend solely on the width or speed of the current; they derive from a combination of relations easier to grasp on the spot than to define precisely. In the same way, the shape of the waves, the color of the water, the kind of sky and clouds, all help a navigator guess whether he is in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean or in the equinoctial part of the Pacific.

Having outlined the general aim, I will now briefly glance at the collections and observations we made. The maritime war during our stay in America made communications with Europe very uncertain and, in order for us to avoid losses, forced us to make three different collections. The first we sent to Spain and France, the second to the United States and England, and the third, the most considerable, remained constantly with us. Towards the end of our journey this last collection formed forty-two boxes containing a herbal of 6, equinoctial plants, seeds, shells and insects, and geological specimens from Chimborazo, New Granada and the banks of the Amazon, never seen in Europe before. After our journey up the Orinoco, we left a part of this collection in Cuba in order to pick it up on our return from Peru and Mexico. The rest followed us for five years along the Andes chain, across New Spain, from the Pacific shores to the West Indian seas. The carrying of these objects, and the minute care they required, created unbelievable difficulties, quite unknown in the wildest parts of Europe. Our progress was often held up by having to drag after us for five and six months at a time from twelve to twenty loaded mules, change these mules every eight to ten days, and oversee the Indians employed on these caravans. Often, to add new geological specimens to our collections, we had to throw away others collected long before. Such sacrifices were no less painful than what we lost through accidents. We learned too late that the warm humidity and the frequent falls of our mules prevented us from preserving our hastily prepared animal skins and the fish and reptiles in alcohol. I note these banal details to show that we had no means of bringing back many of the objects of zoological and comparative anatomical interest whose descriptions and drawings we have published. Despite these obstacles, and the expenses entailed, I was pleased that I had decided before leaving to send duplicates of all we had collected to Europe. It is worth repeating that in seas infested with pirates a traveler can only be sure of what he takes with him. Only a few duplicates that we sent from America were saved, most fell into the hands of people ignorant of the sciences. When a ship is held in a foreign port, boxes containing dried plants or stones are merely forgotten, and not sent on as indicated to scientific men. Our geological collections taken in the Pacific had a happier fate. We are for their safety to the generous work of Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society of London, who, in the middle of Europe's political turmoils, has struggled ceaselessly to consolidate the ties that unite scientific men of all nations.

Every day we went botanizing in the Turbaco forests from five in the morning until dark: these long walks would have been a delight in this fertile marshy soil if we had not been devoured by mosquitoes, zancudos, chigoes and numberless insects already described in the Orinoco part of this narrative. In the midst of these wonderful forests, smelling the flowers of the Crinum erubescens and Pancratium littorale, we often came across Indian conucos, little banana and maize plantations where Indians, ever ready to flee from whites, live during the rainy season. This taste for the jungle and isolation typifies the American Indian. Though the Spanish population has mixed with the Indian population in Turbaco, the latter display the same lack of culture as in the Guianan missions. Examining their farming tools, the way they build their bamboo huts, their clothes and crude arts, I ask myself what the copper race has earned by contact with European civilization.

During our stay at Cura we made numerous excursions to the rocky islands in the middle of Lake Valencia, to the hot springs at Mariara, and the high mountain called El Cucurucho de Coco. A narrow, dangerous path leads to the port of Turiamo and the famous coastal cacao plantations. Throughout all our excursions we were surprised not only by the progress of culture but also by the increase in the numbers of the free, hard-working population, used to manual work and too poor to buy slaves. Everywhere whites and mulattos had bought small isolated farms. Our host, whose father enjoyed an income of 40, piastres a year, had more land than he could farm; he distributed plots in the Aragua valley to poor families who wanted to grow cotton. He tried to surround his enormous plantation with free working men, because they wanted to work for themselves, or for others. Count Tovar was busy trying to abolish slavery and hoped to make slaves less necessary for the important estates, and to offer the freed slaves land to become farmers themselves. When he left for Europe he had broken up and rented land around Cura. Four years later, on returning to America, he found fine cotton fields and a little village called Punta Samuro, which we often visited with him. The inhabitants are all mulatto, zambo (80) and freed slaves. The rent is ten piastres a fanega of land; it is paid in cash or cotton. As the small farmers are often in need, they sell their cotton at modest prices. They sell it even before harvest, and this advance is used by the rich landowners to make the poor dependent on them as day workers. The price of labor is less than it is in France. A free man is paid five piastres a month without food, which costs very little as meat and vegetables are abundant. I like quoting these details about colonial agriculture because they prove to Europeans that there is no doubt that sugar, cotton and indigo can be produced by free men, and that the miserable slaves can become peasants, farmers and landowners.

On the 8th of February we set off at sunrise to cross Higuerote, a group of tall mountains separating the valleys of Caracas and Aragua. Descending the woody slopes of Higuerote towards the south-west we reached the small village of San Pedro, 584 toises high, located in a basin where several valleys meet. Banana trees, potatoes and coffee grow there. In an inn (pulpería) we met several European Spaniards working at the Tobacco Office. Their bad temper contrasted with our mood. Tired by the route, they vented their anger by cursing the wretched country ('estas tierras infelices') where they were doomed to live, while we never wearied of admiring the wild scenery, the fertile earth and mild climate. From Las Lagunetas we descended into the Toy river valley. This western slope is called Las Cocuyzas, and is covered with two plants with agave leaves; the maguey of Cocuzza and the maguey of Cocuy. The latter belongs to the Yucca genus. Its sweet fermented juice is distilled into an alcohol, and I have seen people eat its young green leaves. The fibers of the full-grown leaves are made into extremely long cords. At Caracas cathedral a maguey cord has suspended the weight of a 350-pound clock for fifteen years. We spent two very agreeable days at the plantation of Don José de Manterola who, when young, had been attached to the Spanish Legation in Russia. Brought up and protected by Sr de Xavedra, one of the more enlightened administrators in Caracas, de Manterola wanted to leave for Europe when that famous man became minister. The governor of the province, fearing de Manterola's prestige, arrested him in the harbor and when the order from Spain finally arrived to release him from such an unjust arrest the minister had fallen from grace.

You would think their mental stupidity greater than that of children when a white asks them questions about objects that have surrounded them since birth. Missionaries assured us that this is not due to timidity, and that among the missionary Indians in charge of public works this is not an innate stupidity but a block they have concerning the mechanisms of a language so different to their mother tongue. The Indians affirmed or denied whatever pleased the monks, and laziness, accompanied by that cunning courtesy common to all Indians, made them sometimes give the answers suggested by the questions. Travelers cannot be wary enough of this over-obliging approbation when they want to find out what Indians think. To test an Indian alcalde I asked him 'if he did not think that the Caripe river that comes from the Guacharo caves might not return there by some unknown entrance after climbing up the hill'. He looked as if he gave it serious thought for a while and answered in support of my theory: 'If it did not do this how else is there always water in the river?

Days passed quickly in the Capuchin convent in the Caripe mountains, despite our simple but monotonous life. From sunrise to sunset we toured the forests and mountains near by looking for plants, and have never collected so many. When the heavy rain stopped us travelling far we visited Indian huts and the communal conuco, or attended the nightly meetings when the alcaldes handed out the work for the following day. We did not return to the convent until bells called us for meals in the refectory with the monks. At dawn we sometimes accompanied them to the church to attend doctrina, that is, religious classes for Indians. It was hard explaining dogma to people who hardly knew Spanish. The monks are almost completely ignorant of the Chaima Indian language, and the resemblance of sounds between the languages muddles the poor Indians so that strange ideas arise. One day we witnessed a missionary struggling to explain to his class that invierno, winter, and infierno, hell, were not the same thing, but as different as hot and cold. The Chaima Indians know winter only as the rainy season, and imagine that 'the white's hell' is a place where the evil are exposed to horrific rainstorms. The missionary lost his temper, but it was useless; the first impression caused by the almost identical words persisted; in the Indians' minds the images of rain and hell could not be separated.