Indians assured us that upstream on the Orinoco, from its mouth to its junction with the Apure, not one island nor one beach could be found to harvest eggs. The large arrau turtle fears inhabited places where there are many boats. It is a shy and suspicious animal, which raises its head above the water and hides on hearing the slightest noise. The beaches where nearly all the Orinoco turtles seem to annually gather is situated between the junction of the Orinoco and Apure and the Great Cataracts or Raudales between Abruta and the Atures mission. It seems that arrau turtles cannot climb up the cataracts, and that beyond Atures and Maypures you only find terekay turtles.

After tobacco the most important product of the Cumanacoa valley is indigo, whose intense color makes it the equal of Guatemalan indigo. All the indigo factories that we visited are constructed along the same principles. Two vats, where the plants 'rot', are placed together. Each one measures 15 feet square and 2. feet deep. From these upper vats the liquid passes into beaters where the water-mill is placed. The axle-tree of the great wheel crosses the two beaters. It is nailed with ladles, fixed to long handles, for the beating. From another percolating vat the coloured starch passes to the drying-boxes, spread on planks of Brazil-wood on small wheels so that they can be pushed under a roof in case of sudden rain. These sloping and low roofs give the drying-boxes the appearance of hothouses from a distance. In the Cumanacoa valley the fermentation of the plant takes place amazingly quickly; usually it does not take longer than four or five hours. This can be attributed to the humidity and the absence of sun during the plant's development.

From the 22nd degree of latitude the surface of the sea was covered with flying fish (Exocoetuus volitans) they threw themselves 12, 15 and even 18 feet into the air and fell on deck. I do not hesitate to speak on a subject as common in travelogues as dolphins, sharks, seasickness and the phosphorescence of the ocean. There is nothing that does not interest a naturalist as long as he makes a detailed study. Nature is an inexhaustible source of study, and as science advances so new facts reveal themselves to an observer who knows how to interrogate her.

We cannot question that the earth, when split open and shaken by shocks, sometimes emits gaseous substances into the atmosphere in places remote from active volcanoes. At Cumana, as we have already observed, flames and vapors mixed with sulphurous acid rise from the most arid soil. In other parts of the same province the earth throws up water and petroleum. At Riobamba, a muddy, inflammable mass, called moya, issues from crevices that close up again and pile up into hills. Seven leagues from Lisbon, near Colares, during the terrible earthquake of the 1st of November 1755, flames and a column of thick smoke rose up from the rock face of Alvidras and, according to some witnesses, from the depths of the sea. This smoke lasted several days and was thicker when the underground noises accompanied the strongest tremors.

On leaving Spain I had promised to join his expedition wherever I could reach it. Bonpland, as active and optimistic as usual, and I immediately decided to split our herbals into three lots to avoid the risk of losing what had taken so much trouble to collect on the banks of the Orinoco, Atabapo and Río Negro. We sent one collection by way of England to Germany, another via Càdiz to France, and the third we left in Havana. We had reason to congratulate ourselves on this prudence. Each collection contained virtually the same species; if the cases were taken by pirates there were instructions to send them to Sir Joseph Banks or to the natural history museum in Paris. Luckily I did not send my manuscripts to Càdiz with our friend and fellow traveler Father Juan Gonzalez, who left Cuba soon after us but whose vessel sank off Africa, with the loss of all life. We lost duplicates of our herbal collection, and all the insects Bonpland had gathered. For over two years we did not receive one letter from Europe; and those we got in the following three years never mentioned earlier letters. You may easily guess how nervous I was about sending a journal with my astronomical observations and barometrical measurements when I had not had the patience to make a copy. After visiting New Granada, Peru and Mexico I happened to be reading a scientific journal in the public library in Philadelphia and saw: 'M. de Humboldt's manuscripts have arrived at his brother's house in Paris via Spain. I could scarcely suppress an exclamation of joy.

The extreme purity of the black waters is confirmed by their transparency, and by the way they clearly reflect all the surrounding objects. The minutest fish are visible at a depth of 20 or 30 feet. It is easy to see the river bottom, which is not muddy but composed of a dazzlingly white granite or quartz sand. Nothing can be compared to the beauty of the Atabapo river banks, overloaded with vegetation, among which rise the palms with plumed leaves, reflected in the river water. The green of the reflected image seems as real as the object seen with your eyes.

April 29th. The air was cooler, and without zancudos, but the clouds blocked out all the stars. I begin to miss the Lower Orinoco as the strong current slowed our progress. We stopped for most of the day, looking for plants. It was night when we reached the San Baltasar mission or, as the monks call it, la divina pastora de Baltasar de Atabapo. We lodged with a Catalan missionary, a lively and friendly man who, in the middle of the jungle, displayed the activities of his people. He had planted a wonderful orchard where European figs grew with persea, and lemon trees with mamey. The village was built with a regularity typical of Protestant Germany or America. Here we saw for the first time that white and spongy substance which I have made known as dapicho and zapis. We saw that this stuff was similar to elastic resin. But through sign language the Indians made us think that it came from under ground so we first thought that maybe it was a fossil rubber. A Poimisano Indian was sitting by a fire in the missionary hut transforming dapicho into black rubber. He had stuck several bits on to thin sticks and was roasting it by the fire like meat. As it melts and becomes elastic the dapicho blackens. The Indian then beat the black mass with a club made of Brazil-wood and then kneaded the dapicho into small balls some 3 to 4 inches thick, and let them cool. The balls appear identical to rubber though the surface remains slightly sticky. At San Baltasar they are not used for the game of pelota that Indians play in Uruana and Encaramada but are cut up and used as more effective corks than those made from cork itself. In front of the Casa de los Solteros - the house where men lived - the missionary showed us a drum made from a hollow cylinder of wood. This drum was beaten with great lumps of dapicho serving as drumsticks. The drum has openings that could be blocked by hand to vary the sounds, and was hanging on two light supports. Wild Indians love noisy music. Drums and botutos, the baked-earth before trumpets, are indispensable instruments when Indians decide to play music and make a show.