Some Indians are not content with coloring themselves evenly all over. They sometimes imitate European clothes by painting them on. We saw one at Parurama who had painted a blue jacket with black buttons on to his skin.

April 21st. After spending two and a half days in the little village of Maypures near the Great Cataracts, we embarked in the canoe that the Carichana missionary had got for us. It had been damaged by the knocks it had received in the river, and by the Indians' carelessness. Once you have passed the Great Cataracts (107) you feel you are in a new world; that you have stepped over the barriers that nature seems to have raised between the civilized coasts and the wild, unknown interior. On the way to the landing-stage we caught a new species of tree frog on the trunk of a hevea. It had a yellow belly, a back and head of velvety purple, and a narrow white stripe from its nose to its hind parts. This frog was 2 inches long; probably allied to the Rana tinctoria whose blood, so it is said, makes the feathers that have been plucked out of a parrot grow again in frizzled yellow and red if poured on to its skin.

We will not continue to describe in detail the local changes produced by the different earthquakes of Cumana. In order to follow our original plan we shall try to generalize our ideas, and include in one section everything that relates to these frightening and difficult-to- explain phenomena. If men of science who visit the Alps of Switzerland or the coasts of Lapland should broaden our knowledge about glaciers and the aurora borealis, then a traveler who has journeyed through Spanish America should mainly fix his attention on volcanoes and earthquakes. Every part of the earth merits particular study. When we cannot hope to guess the causes of natural phenomena, we ought at least to try to discover their laws and, by comparing numerous facts, distinguish what is permanent and constant from what is variable and accidental.

'Tengo en mi pueblo la fàbrica de loza' (I have a pottery works in my village), Father Zea told us and led us to the hut of an Indian family who were baking large earthenware vessels, up to 2. feet high, out in the open on a fire of shrubs. This industry is characteristic of the diverse branches of the Maypures tribes, cultivated since time immemorial. Wherever you dig up the ground in the jungle, far from any human habitations, you find bits of painted pottery. It is noteworthy that the same motifs are used everywhere. The Maypures Indians painted decorations in front of us that were identical to those we had seen on the jars from the Ataruipe caves, with wavy lines, figures of crocodiles, monkeys and a large quadruped that I did not recognize but which was always crouched in the same position.

We walked for hours in the shade of these plant vaults that scarcely let us catch glimpses of the blue sky, which appeared to be more of a deep indigo blue because the green, verging on brown, of tropical plants seemed so intense. A great fern tree (perhaps Aspidium caducum) rose above masses of scattered rock. For the first time we saw those nests in the shape of bottles or small bags that hang from the lower branches. They are the work of that clever builder the oriole, whose song blends with the noisy shrieking of parrots and macaws. These last, so well known for their vivid colors, fly around in pairs, while the parrots proper fly in flocks of hundreds. A man must live in these regions, particularly the hot Andean valleys, to understand how these birds can sometimes drown the noise of waterfalls with their voices.

At sunset on the 8th of June the look-out sighted from hiscrow's-nest a British convoy sailing along the coast towards thesouth-east. To avoid it we altered our course during the night. We werealso given orders not to put our lights on in the great cabin so that we would not be seen from afar. We constantly had to usedark-lanterns to make our observations of the sea's temperature, or readthe markings on our astronomical instruments. In the torrid zone, where twilight lasts a few minutes, we were condemned to inaction, insimilar circumstances, from six in the evening. For me this wasparticularly irritating as I have never suffered from seasickness and nosooner am I on board than I feel the urge towork more than ever.

Near the town of Orotava we came across great flocks of canaries. These birds, well known in Europe, were in general uniformly green; some had a yellowish tinge on their backs; their song was the same as that of the domesticated canary. It has been noted that those canaries captured in the island of Gran Canaria, and in the islet of Monte Clara, near Lanzarote, have a louder, more harmonious call. In every zone, among birds of the same species, each flock has its peculiar call. The yellow canaries are a variety now breeding in Europe; those we saw in cages had been bought at Cadiz and other Spanish ports. But the bird from the Canary Islands that has the most agreeable song is unknown in Europe. It is the capirote, which has never been tamed, so much does he love his freedom. I have enjoyed his sweet and melodious warbling in a garden in Orotava, but have never seen him close enough to judge what family he belongs to. As for the parrots supposedly seen during Captain Cook's stay at Tenerife, they never existed but in the narratives of some travelers who have copied from each other.