The Indian pilot who had led us from San Fernando de Apure up to the Pararuma beach did not know his way through the Orinoco rapids, and no longer wanted to sail our boat. We had to accept his decision. Luckily the Carichana missionary agreed to loan us a fine pirogue quite cheaply. Father Bernardo Zea, missionary from Atures and Maypures near the Great Cataracts, even offered to accompany us himself to the Brazilian border. The number of Indians willing to carry the canoes along the cataracts was so few that without this monk's presence we risked waiting weeks in that humid and unhealthy area. Father Zea hoped to recover his health by visiting the Río Negro missions. He talked of those places with the enthusiasm that all those in the colonies feel when talking about far-off places.

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.

We spent the night on a dry, wide beach. The night was silent and calm and the moon shone marvelously. The crocodiles lay on the beach so that they could see our fire. We thought that maybe the glow of the fire attracted them, as it did fish, crayfish and other water creatures. The Indians showed us tracks in the sand from three jaguars, two of them young; doubtless a female with cubs come to drink water. Finding no trees on the beach we stuck our oars in the sand and hung our hammocks. All was peaceful until about eleven when a dreadful noise began in the jungle around us that made sleep impossible. Among the many noises of screeching animals the Indians could recognize only those that were heard separately; the fluted notes of the apajous, the sighs of the abuate apes, the roar of the jaguar and puma; the calls of the pecarry, sloth, hocco, parraka and other gallinaceous birds. When the jaguars approached the edge of the jungle our dog, who up to then had been barking continuously, began to growl and hid under our hammocks. Sometimes, after a long silence, we again heard the tiger's roar from the tops of trees, and then the din of monkeys' whistles as they fled from danger.

The position of San Fernando on a great navigable river, near the mouth of another river that crosses the whole province of Varinas, is extremely useful for trade. All that is produced in this province, the leathers, cocoa, cotton and top-quality Mijagual indigo, is washed down past this town to the Orinoco mouth. During the rainy season big ships come upstream from Angostura to San Fernando de Apure and along the Santo Domingo river as far as Torunos, the harbor for the town of Barinas. During this season the flooded rivers form a labyrinth of waterways between the Apure, Arauca, Capanaparo and Sinaruco rivers, covering a country of roughly 400 square leagues. At this point the Orinoco, deviating from its course, due not to neighboring mountains but to the rising counter-slopes, turns east instead of following its ancient path in the line of the meridian. If you consider the surface of the earth as a polyhedron formed of variously inclined planes you will see by simply consulting a map that between San Fernando de Apure, Caycara and the mouth of the Meta the intersection of three slopes, higher in the north, west and south, must have caused a considerable depression. In this basin the savannahs can be covered by 12 to 14 feet of water and turned into a great lake after the rains. Villages and farms look as though they are on shoals, rising barely 2 to 3 feet above the water surface. The flooding of the Apure, Meta and Orinoco rivers is also periodic. In the rainy season horses that roam the savannah do not have time to reach the plateaux and they drown in their hundreds. You see mares followed by foals, barely sticking up out of the water, swimming part of the day to eat grass. While swimming they are chased by crocodiles, and some carry crocodile tooth marks on their hides. Horse, mule and cow carcasses attract numberless vultures.

I have mentioned flying fish in order to draw the attention of naturalists to the extraordinary size of their natatory bladder. As this bladder takes up more than half the fish's body volume it probably contributes to its lightness. One could say that this reservoir of air 15 more adapted for flying than swimming. Flying fish, like almost all animals with gills, enjoy the possibility of breathing for a long time with the same organs both in air and in water. They pass much of their time in the air, although flying does not make them less wretched. If they leave the sea to escape from the voracious dolphin they meet frigate-birds, albatrosses and other birds in the air, which seize them in mid-flight. Thus, on the Orinoco banks, herds of capybara (Cavia capybara) rush from the water to escape crocodiles and fall prey to jaguars waiting for them on the banks. I doubt that flying fish leap from the water solely to escape their predators. Like swallows they shoot forward in thousands in straight lines, always against the waves. In our climate, by a clear-water river struck by the sun's rays, we often see single fish, with no reason to fear anything, leap into the air as if they enjoyed breathing air. Why aren't these games more frequent and prolonged with flying fish who, thanks to their pectoral fins and extreme lightness, fly easily in the air?

Batabanò Gulf, surrounded by a low marshy coast, looks like a vast desert. The sea is a greenish-brown. Our sloop was the only boat in the gulf, for this sea route is used only by smugglers or, as they are politely called here, 'traders' (los tratantes). One large island called Isla de Pinos, with mountains covered with pines, rises in this bay. We sailed east-south-east to clear the archipelago that Spanish pilots called Jardines (Gardens) and Jardinillos (Bowers), reaching the rocky island of Cayo de Piedras. Columbus named them the Queen's Gardens in 1494 when on his second voyage he struggled for fifty-eight days with the winds and currents between Pinos Island and the eastern cape of Cuba. A part of these so-called gardens is indeed beautiful; the scene changes all the time and the green contrasts with the white, barren sands. The sand seems to undulate in the sun's heat as if it were liquid.

At the point where the river becomes an underground cascade, the ground located near the opening is covered in greenery and looks extremely picturesque. You can see the outside from the far end of the straight gallery, some 240 toises away. Stalactites hanging from the ceiling, like floating columns, stand out from this green background. We shot our guns aimlessly in the dark wherever the screaming birds or the beating of wings made us suspect their nests lay ahead. Bonpland at last managed to kill two guàcharos dazzled by our torches. This is how I was able to sketch this bird, up to now completely unknown to naturalists. We struggled to climb the rise from which the rivulet fell. We saw that the grotto narrowed; its height shrunk to 40 feet as it followed a north-east direction, parallel to the Caripe valley.