The macavahu, called by the missionaries viuditas, or 'widows in mourning', has soft glossy black hair. Its face is a kind of whitish-blue square mask, which contains its eyes, nose and mouth. Its ears have an edge; are small, pretty and hairless. Its neck has a white area in two rings. Its feet, or hind legs, are black like its body, but its forehands are white outside and black inside. These white spots led the missionaries to recognize a veil, a neck scarf and the gloves of a widow in mourning. The character of this little monkey, which sits up on its hind legs to eat, is not related to its appearance. It has a wild and shy air, and often refuses food even when ravenous. We have seen it remain motionless for hours without sleeping, attentive to everything happening around it. The viudita, when alone, becomes furious at the sight of a bird, and climbs and runs with astonishing speed, and, like a eat, leaps on to its prey and eats all it can. The viuditas accompanied us throughout our entire voyage on the Casiquiare and Río Negro. It is an advantage to study animals for several months in the open air, and not indoors where they lose their natural vivacity.

A dreadful accident almost made me put off my Orinoco journey, or postpone it for a long time. On the 27th of October, the night before the eclipse, we were strolling along the gulf shore as usual, to take some fresh air and observe high tide. Its highest point in this area was no more than 12 to 13 inches. It was eight at night and the breeze had not begun. The sky was overcast and during this dead calm it was extremely hot. We were crossing the beach that separates the landing-stage from the Guaiquerí Indian village. I heard somebody walking behind me; as I turned I saw a tall man, the color of a mulatto, and naked to the waist. Just above my head he was holding a macana, a huge stick made of palm-tree wood, enlarged at the end like a club. I avoided his blow by leaping to the left. Bonpland, walking at my right, was less lucky. He had noticed the mulatto later than I had; he received the blow above his temple and fell to the ground. We were alone, unarmed, some half a league from any houses, in a vast plain bordered by the sea. The mulatto, instead of attacking me, turned back slowly to grab Bonpland's hat, which had softened the blow and fallen far from us. Terrified at seeing my travelling companion on the ground and for a few seconds unconscious I was worried only about him. I helped him up; pain and anger doubled his strength. We made for the mulatto who, either due to that cowardice typical of his race or because he saw some men far off on the beach, rushed off into the tunal, a coppice of cacti and tree aviccenia. Luck had him fall as he was running, and Bonpland, who had reached him first, began fighting with him, exposing himself to great danger. The mulatto pulled out a long knife from his trousers, and in such an unequal fight we would surely have been wounded if some Basque merchants taking the fresh air on the beach had not come to our aid. Seeing himself surrounded the mulatto gave up all idea of defending himself: then he managed to escape again and we followed him for a long time through the thorny cacti until he threw himself exhausted into a cow shed from where he let himself be quietly led off to prison.

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.